Muslim communities across Australia have reported a marked increase in racially motivated attacks in the past 48 hours.
Callers to a new hotline set up to process reports of racial vilification against the Arabic community complained of Muslim women being spat on, followed, harassed, having their headscarves torn off and, in one case, assaulted.
The chairman of the Community Relations Commission for a Multicultural NSW, Mr Stepan Kerkyasharian, said the phones had not stopped all afternoon, with Muslim women appearing to be the most vulnerable targets.
The chairman of the Queensland Islamic Council, Sultan Deen, said stones and bottles were thrown at the side of a bus carrying children on the way to school in Brisbane yesterday. In Western Australia, a mosque in suburban Mirrabooka, was defiled with human faeces.
The Premier, Mr Carr, told ABC Radio that hate attacks against ethnic communities in Australia would not be tolerated.
“There is absolutely no lesson to be taken out of what’s happened in New York and Washington and using it here in the context of a debate over Tampa, refugees, or about some of the crime patterns we have detected in Sydney’s west,” he said. “It has no bearing on those things and it’s monstrous to suggest it has.”
Superintendent John Richardson, the local area commander of Campsie, which includes the Muslim heartland of Lakemba and Punchbowl, said reports on talkback radio describing public celebrations in the streets of Lakemba following news of the US terrorists attacks were “mischievous, inflammatory and completely untrue”.
The Lebanese Muslim Association is seeking legal advice following comments made by broadcaster Alan Jones on 2UE Radio yesterday morning.
A spokesman for the Lebanese Muslim Association, Mr Keysar Trad, said the organisation had received numerous complaints over Jones’s comments, which could be seen as inciting racial hatred and consequently be subject to the State’s racial vilification legislation.
Jones suggested to listeners on his breakfast program that the recent gang rapes in south-western Sydney might be “the first signs of an Islamic hatred toward the community” and asked the question: “Have we now, because of multi-culturalism, created an Islamic community in Australia that’s more aligned with Islam than it is with Australia?”
Mr Trad said: “These talkback hosts are promoting division in the community. If they can’t handle the responsibility they should quit before more innocent people are hurt.
“It’s got to the point where talkback hosts have made Muslim women prisoners in their own homes..”
Mr Kerkyasharian said: “What we need to bear in mind is for everyone to exercise restraint, and not to rush out and condemn fellow Australians simply because of their religion or ethnicity. It’s a question of leadership – not just from politicians, but also opinion makers.”
2UE’s general manager, Mr David Bacon, said the station had received many calls expressing radical views on all sides of the debate. “I believe that 2UE’s presenters, every one of them, have defused what is potentially an explosive situation. They have my complete confidence.”
