Behind the counter of his family’s kebab shop in Brisbane’s south, 17-year-old Burak was serving a customer when Pauline Hanson’s name came up. Unaware of the One Nation leader, he later searched for her on TikTok and found a video of her wearing a burqa in the Senate. 'I felt disrespected because it takes a lot of hate, inside a person, to come up with a stunt like that,' Burak said.
Young Australian Muslims like Burak say they feel alienated by Hanson’s anti-Islamic remarks and her party’s recent success in the South Australian election, where it won over 22% of the primary vote. This has sharpened concerns for the Muslim community, especially as Islamophobic incidents have increased since 7 October 2023, alongside a surge in antisemitic attacks.
Recent incidents include a man disrupting an iftar celebration in Ballarat, threatening letters sent to a major Sydney mosque, and a reported attempt to snatch a hijab from a teenage girl in Brisbane. Burak, who attends the Islamic College of Brisbane, said he now fears praying in public: 'I have to be more cautious as a Muslim in public because of the propaganda and the hate that is building.'
Sualyha, a classmate of Burak’s, worries that younger children may internalise such rhetoric. 'When people up the ladder create this rhetoric of every Muslim being bad … it trickles down,' she said. Ali Kadri, the college’s chief executive, noted that a primary student once told him: 'Pauline doesn’t like us.' He said the rhetoric makes young Muslims feel 'alienated within their own country'.
The college has employed full-time security guards for the first time this year, following years of anti-Islam incidents. Kadri warned that such rhetoric 'encourages people to take physical action', adding, 'If you say that there’s no good Muslim, that means every Muslim is a target.'
