On June 23, Amin Moniri, a Year 12 student in western Sydney, won the inaugural Edith Brutman Award in the National Harmony Day Competition. His short film, Stronger Together, featured passers-by at Bondi Beach writing short messages about what harmony means to them.

Brutman, the award’s namesake, was killed in the Bondi terror attack in December 2025. She had been active in the Jewish service organisation B’nai B’rith and was vice president of its anti-prejudice and anti-discrimination committee.

Social harmony is in short supply in Australia at the moment. According to the most recent Mapping Social Cohesion report by the Scanlon Foundation, just 46% of Australians say they have a sense of belonging, a sharp decline from 64% in 2020.

Similarly, in the 2026 Lowy Institute Poll, 73% of Australians said the country had benefited from cultural diversity. Strikingly, this is a nearly 20-point decline from 2024. The institute said it was largest movement on any societal question in the history of its polling.

The Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion is beginning its final block of public hearings this week, with a specific focus on how social cohesion can be strengthened.

In my view, the impact of the COVID pandemic, the failure of the Voice to Parliament referendum and the Israel-Hamas war have exacerbated polarisation in Australia in recent years. Yet, I believe there is a fourth issue that has been insufficiently investigated: the role of religion.

Challenges relating to religious identification

There are several ways the issue of religion is dividing people in Australia, as well as other Western countries.

First is the rise of secularism and secular opposition to religious worldviews. In the last census in 2021, 39% of Australians classified themselves as having no religion – up from 30% in 2016. It was the second-largest group after Christians at 44%.

This scepticism of religions is being felt globally. In the early 2000s, two scholars, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, wrote books that are highly critical of religion. Dawkins says he chose The God........

© The Conversation