After Bondi there are glimmers of hope for those resisting Islamophobia and racism |
I have faced these few weeks with a heavy heart. Like many Australian Arab Muslims, I experienced the horror of the Bondi attack not simply as a single moment of fear, but as the latest shock to an already overwhelmed collective nervous system. So many of our responses have been shaped by the ongoing genocide in Gaza and exhaustion about the relentless suspicion we face here in Australia.
An attack on any innocent life is an attack on our shared humanity. This is something most of us have been naming for more than two years. And we have been crying out for others to join us in recognising this awful fact.
The violence of the Bondi attack did not arrive in a vacuum. It landed on communities already carrying layered grief and accumulated trauma. Not only have we watched a livestreamed genocide in which our family, friends and those who resemble us have been killed in the most gruesome ways, we have also endured daily encounters with Islamophobia and racism.
Muslims in Australia have a long history of being treated as conditional members of the nation. The Bondi attack took place just 30 kilometres from Cronulla Beach, where white supremacist youth violently attacked many of our community members thirty years ago. Indeed, the horror in Bondi happened in the same December week as the Cronulla attacks.
There is a familiar and corrosive demand placed........