One of the pages reported to FightAgainstHate.com was a racist public Facebook group called “Waleed Aly is an Islamic Turd ” (ID #97352561933890) The page has 462 members.
OHPI reported the page and has been monitoring it for some time and we are pleased to say that Facebook has now removed it.
In this briefing we will show why this particular page promoted religious vilification, with a series of examples from the page. The page contained hate speech against the Muslim community and targeted the well-known Muslim TV personality Waleed Aly, who hosts Channel Ten Network’s news program The Project.
In its About section, the page stated: “Waleed Aly is the most prominent Muslim on Australian televeision, yet has no idea how much the average Australian viewer loathes him. We don’t want a Muslim apologist lecturing Australians on how to view Islam. Thanks to IS, we’re now fully aware of what Islam is all about…….”
This page didn’t stand against Waleed Aly as a person. It stook against Waleed Aly as an Australian Muslim, and it stood against the Muslim community as a whole.
Below we share three examples to illustrate how the page promotes negative stereotypes and generalisations about the Muslim community in Australia, and call for their marginalisation and isolation. The posts also opened up space for people to make hateful comments against the community.
Example 1:
The above Facebook post makes a big generalisation about the Muslim community. Domestic violence is not a problem limited to the Muslim community of Australia, it is a cross-community problem.
Example 2:
The above Facebook post presented the Muslim community as inherently violent by using isolated memes and images presented without context. There are over a billion Muslims across the planet. What a specific set of Mulims stands for in one corner of the world cannot be representative of all Muslims.
Example 3:
The above post calls for the banning of all mosques in Australia. However, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognises freedom to religion and belief as a fundamental human right. So, in calling for the banning of all mosques, the page promoted denying Muslims this fundamental right.
If you encounter any form of Anti-Muslim hate on social media, first report it to the platform provider then also report it to OHPI’s online hate reporting tool FightAgainstHate.com.
You can view all of our publications on the issue of online Anti-Muslim hate here.
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