Most recently, this past week, after Islamist terrorists attacked Jewish Australians celebrating Hanukkah at Bondi Beach, killing 15 people, including a child, the prime minister’s first instinct was to deflect from the ideological motivation by announcing changes to gun laws. He barely mentioned the very clear allegiance behind the slaughter. It took him until Thursday to announce legislative changes “to crack down on those who spread hate, division and radicalisation”.
It is too late. The terrorists in the Bondi massacre acted in the name of Islamic State. ISIS has celebrated its actions and taken credit for inspiring them. Naveed Akram, the younger of the two Bondi shooters, has a well-documented history of involvement with Haddad’s Dawah movement.
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Haddad is a known quantity. Yet it was left to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry to take him to court, to try to curb his hateful preaching. As civilians, the ECAJ couldn’t prevent the sermons or force the preacher to stop whipping up his congregation with racist and antisemitic lectures. In the end, he was required only to remove five lectures from social media, in which he had referred to Jews as “shifty”, “treacherous” and “vile people”, and “descendants of apes and pigs” (a quote from the Koran).
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke claims that Australia’s laws have been insufficient to act on this hate. Former home affairs boss Mike Pezzullo told Sky News that the changes Burke announced in response to the terrorism have been available to the government for a long time. They have been discussed in detail by the security community. Only the will to act was lacking.
Albanese is still avoiding references to radical Islamism wherever possible. And the National Imams Council has washed its hands of the matter, declaring that “ISIS is an evil and dangerous terrorist organisation with NO connection to Islam”. The motivating ideology of the terrorists – which they believed in, even if moderate Muslims feel no kinship with them – was hardly mentioned in the prime minister’s “plan of action” press conference on Thursday. Where there is no accountability, there can be no effective action. It is as important to recognise the perpetrators as it is the victims of this attack.
Albanese was sent an angel last Sunday, to guide him through this defining moment. Ahmed al Ahmed, one of the Bondi heroes, who tackled the gun out of one of the shooter’s hands at great risk to his own life, is a Muslim. He has furnished a vivid reminder that religion is not by itself the problem. We let down Muslims like al Ahmed when we fail to zero in on the values and actions that people choose to take as a result of their faith.
Anthony Albanese meets Bondi hero Ahmed al Ahmed at St George Hospital on Tuesday.Credit: Prime Minister’s Office via AP
For two long and eventful years, Albanese has been political, cowardly and tardy in responding to the greatest challenge of his prime ministership. It is unearned luck that a hero has given him a way to make a constructive distinction between a religion and its perversion. He must take it before it slips away. Australians know in their hearts that an attack on a peaceful minority is an attack on us all.
Parnell Palme McGuinness is an independent insights and advocacy strategist. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens.