There are real issues related to hate in Australia, but conflation doesn’t help. On July 31 2025, Islamophobia Register released a press statement titled “When Solidarity is Silenced: Gaza, Islamophobia, and Racism in Australia”. The press release highlights real issues of Islamophobia and racism in Australian society, but also conflates these with things that may not be Islamophobia or racism. Islamophobia Register, which received a grant of over a million dollars from the Federal Government last year, has an important role in Australia, but there is a need to avoid conflation and ensure the data it presents is clear and transparent.
The volume of data so far in 2025
The statement says that “since 7 October 2023, the Register has recorded an over 530% increase in Islamophobic incidents, with more than 1,500 cases reported”. In December last year, they had 989 incidents reported, and this too was said to be a 530% increase compared to before October 7 2023. This means the level of reporting of Islamophobia has not increased in the last six months.
A distinction is also needed between the reports received and the number of those reports that Islamophobia Register determines are actually Islamophobic. A recent report from Islamophobia stated that from 1st of January 2023, to 31st of November 2024 they confirmed as actual incidents 309 of the reports related to in-person incidents and 366 of the reports related to online incidents (675 incidents in total for the 23 months, compared to 989 reports over just the last 14 months of that period). The July 31 press release does not state how many of the reported incidents so far in 2025 have been confirmed. Knowing the level of reporting is useful, but the level of reports that have been verified as Islamophobic is a far more important metric.
Conflation of reasonable consequences with hate incidents
The letter says the incidents this year include reports of “both Muslim and non-Muslim individuals facing disciplinary actions, reputational damage, or exclusion from professional and academic settings for expressing support for Palestinian human rights”. They give as examples, “Reprimands and investigations for social media posts”, “Disinvitations from speaking engagements”, and “Workplace complaints, suspension threats, and other punitive measures.” There is no indication of how many of the reports fall within this category. There is also no indication of how many of these were verified as actually being Islamophobic or racist by the Islamophobia Register.
Not every disciplinary action taken against someone supporting the Palestinian cause is inappropriate. Some reputational damage is well earned by what the person has said or done. Some exclusions from professional and academic settings are reasonable when a person has breached professional codes of ethics or organisational rules. Reprimands and investigations into social media posts can be valid when they violate employment contracts or company policies. Disinvitations from speaking engagements can be reasonable in some circumstances. Workplace complaints, suspension threats, and other punitive measures can all be appropriate when the rules and policies of the workplace are ignored.
This is not to say that none of the incidents are valid examples, but at the same time, there have been numerous examples of pro-Palestinian advocates (Muslim and non-Muslim) who have engaged in antisemitism and then faced consequences. Being pro-Palestinian does not grant immunity from the law, from consequences for breaching workplace policies, or from being held socially accountable for very public acts of racism.
A key example is Mr Haddad, a Muslim preacher in Sydney whose pro-Palestinian advocacy was found by the courts to have included significant antisemitism. The Online Hate Prevention Institute has seen antisemitism being increasingly prevalent in some pro-Palestinian activism, as we documented in our most recent report.
Palestinian advocacy need not be expressed in an antisemitic manner. Even anti-Zionism need not be expressed in an antisemitic manner. Unfortunately, far too often this activism is expressed in ways that seek to make use of antisemitic tropes or conspiracy theories. When this happens, as it did with Mr Haddad, it is only right that there are consequences, and those consequences are neither Islamophobic nor an example of anti-Palestinian racism.
It is unclear how many of the incidents may fall into this category, and how many of those might be false positives as they were, as in the action taken against Mr Haddad, a reasonable response to advocacy action that crosses into unlawful activity.
Conflating opposition to political activism with hate incidents
Some incidents may occur because of a person’s pro-Palestinian activism, not because of their identity as a Palestinian or a Muslim. This distinction is important. Incidents against political activists for the Palestinian cause are close to incidents against political activists calling for greater action on climate change. These incidents can be serious, they can be criminal, but that doesn’t make them “hate crimes” against a protected group. Police in Berlin, for example, opened 66 cases into violent attacks on members of the climate activist group “Last Generation” in the first five months of 2023 alone.
Islamophobia Register notes in its 2023-2024 report incident #2854 in which a petrol bomb was placed on a car outside a house that flew a Palestinian flag and displayed advocacy information in a window. The bomb has a note attached reading “ENOUGH! TAKE DOWN FLAG! ONE CHANCE!!!” It is clearly criminal, but there is no indication it is Islamophobic, and whether it is anti-Palestinian racism (as Islamophobia Register has classified it) or simply a crime done in opposition to the complainant’s political expression is open to question.
On one view, if hostility to anyone displaying a Palestinian flag or expressing support for the Palestinian people is considered anti-Palestinian racism, then hostility to anyone displaying an Israeli flag, or expressing support for Israel, must be antisemitism. This reasoning would mean all anti-Zionism is antisemitic.
A second view, one expressed in the Wertheim v Haddad judgement, is that if a reasonable ordinary person would perceive something as being about politics, or against a country or political entity, then it is not about people and not racism. That would mean that the petrol bomb and threat, while criminal, were against the political activity of Palestinian advocacy, and not about Palestinians as people, so not anti-Palestinian racism.
A third view, which is a refinement of the second view, adds that sometimes symbolism can represent identity. A cartoon of Mohamed is sometimes not representative of Mohamed himself, but rather of “all Muslims”. As we explained in a past report, in the Danish cartoons of 2005, Mohamed wearing a turban with a bomb in it was an Islamophobic statement saying Muslims are terrorists. Similarly, a Palestinian flag can sometimes identify someone as Palestinian, not simply as a supporter of the Palestinian cause. An Israeli flag can similarly sometimes identify someone not just as Zionist or supporter of Israel, but as Jewish. Where someone is attacked, harassed, or discriminated against because of who they are, that is racism.
It is unclear how many of the incidents are a result of people being targeted due to opposition to local political activism, rather than hate of Muslims or Palestinians.
Disentangling conflation by perpetrators and victims
In their report Islamophobia Register notes, “The intersectional relationship between Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian hate is complex and contested.”
They note that they “received multiple reports demonstrating that the perpetrators of incidents were conflating Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian prejudice, and that the victims who reported the incidents similarly saw them as connected”.
Where this is done by the perpetrator, it is Islamophobia. In one incident listed in the report, a person explained, “I was carrying a Palestinian flag and a man approached screaming, ‘You Muslims are all terrorists.” Assuming the person was not Muslim, or was Muslim but not visibly so, the flag is the only explanation for how they were selected as the target of what was clearly an Islamophobic incident. That does not mean all abuse directed against people holding a Palestinian flag or symbol is Islamophobic; it depends on how the abuse is expressed.
On the other hand, where a victim is conflating matters, it should be classified objectively. Had the man said, “You Palestinians are all terrorists”, it should be classified as anti-Palestinian racism, and not Islamophobia, regardless of whether the report thought it was Islamophobic. Had the statement been, “You activists are supporting Hamas, who are terrorists”, it would be a political comment and neither Islamophobic nor racist, though it might still be harassment because of the way it was expressed.
The need to keep focused
The Islamophobia Register press statement, titled “When Solidarity is Silenced: Gaza, Islamophobia, and Racism in Australia”, focused primarily on protecting Palestinian activism from criticism or consequences. It did so without differentiating between cases where that protection is deserved and cases where it is being used to shield those who have engaged in criminal or racist activity from what may be reasonable and appropriate consequences.
The same day as the Islamophobia Register press release was issued, the Islamic Council of Victoria warned of rising Islamophobia and called for the government to provide funding for greater security for mosques. They noted how the mosque at the offices of the Islamic Council of Victoria has been targeted by a right-wing group (we assume the local neo-Nazis), resulting in five security incidents in just the last two weeks.
There is no mention of these incidents in the press release from Islamophobia Register. There is no mention of a new rise in Islamophobia. In fact, if incidents related to political activity, to pro-Palestinian Solidarity, are making up an increased percentage of the reported incidents, then this means the number of actual Islamophobic incidents being reported is decreasing. If this is occurring at the same time as actual Islamophobic incidents are on the rise, as ICV states, that would suggest the level of under-reporting to Islamophobia Register is increasing.
Conclusion
The focus on protecting pro-Palestinian activism from all criticism may be coming at the expense of efforts to better capture data on Islamophobia itself. This, in turn, might be a side effect of the grant they received, which had a focus on both Islamophobia and supporting Palestinians. There is certainly some anti-Palestinian racism, but it is far less common than Islamophobia itself.
Australia needs Islamophobia Register. We need their help to separate what is real Islamophobia and real anti-Palestinian racism from the conflations. The work of defending pro-Palestinian activists, particularly from what may in some cases be consequences resulting from the activists’ unlawful or discriminatory actions, is something perhaps best left to others.
To protect the quality of their work, if Islamophobia Register wishes to move into the political advocacy space and address cases of discrimination due to political activism, they should work on a principle of equity and ensure those they defend come to them with clean hands. The incidents, given how contentious the space is, will need to be listed, not just included in summary statistics. Most importantly, it can’t come at the expense of addressing Islamophobia.