Reported Islamophobic attacks in Australia have surged dramatically, with Muslim women overwhelmingly targeted. The failure of political leaders and institutions to respond meaningfully is deepening fear, trauma and exclusion.

Muslims in Australia and especially Muslim women are facing violence, prejudice, discrimination and exclusion.

Since 7 October 2023, and throughout the years of the Gaza genocide, the Islamophobia Register has documented a 619 per cent increase in reported incidents of Islamophobia with women being disproportionately targeted, making up 75 per cent of all reports submitted.

The report notes that “these in-person incidents included physical assaults that caused hospitalisations, a genuine bomb being left at a home, an arson attack, graffiti attacks calling for the killing of Muslims, vandalism including the desecration of a mosque, hate mail, Muslim women having their hijabs pulled off and being spat on, school children being targeted, and nearly 200 hundred instances of Islamophobic verbal abuse, including threats of murder and rape.”

At the same time there has been little political focus on this issue, and indeed it has become worse with limited public awareness and at the very best a minimal national coordination to address anti-Muslim hatred. The Federal government has appointed an Islamophobia Envoy but the media nor the political leadership has given his report little coverage.

The actions of the NSW police on the evening of 9 February, during a peaceful rally protesting the Gaza genocide and the visit of the Israeli Premier, when police brutally violated a brief, peaceful act of worship shocked........

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