If there was one place where Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese deserved to feel right at home, it was surely Australia’s biggest mosque. After all, Albanese and his Labor Party have spent the best part of three years cultivating the support of Australia’s Muslim community through both relentlessly criticising Israel and offering blind support for a Palestinian state – despite the fact that Gaza remains occupied by Hamas, an Islamist terror group. But his efforts have all been in vain: Albanese and his home affairs minister, Tony Burke, were rushed out of the Lakemba Mosque in Western Sydney on Friday morning after the pair were showered with abuse during celebrations to mark the end of Ramadan.
‘Putrid dog’, ‘genocide supporter’ and ‘Alba-tizi’ – the last being an Arabic slur referencing ass cheeks – were some of the insults directed at the prime minister and his sidekick. ‘He’s responsible for the deaths of one million people, one million of our brothers and sisters’, one man shouted. ‘Why is he in here? Get him out of here!’, another yelled. One man was wrestled to the ground with a hand pressed over his mouth to prevent him from shouting. It didn’t take long for the prime minister’s security detail to decide that the Lakemba Mosque wasn’t a safe place for Albanese and Burke. Forming what looked like a rugby scrum around the two politicians, they were led out of the building via the back exit to avoid the increasingly hostile crowd. However, the denunciations continued on the street, and Albanese and Burke were forced to endure a humiliating walk of shame until they reached their cars and were driven off.
Albanese immediately sought to downplay the event, palming it off as the work of a few disgruntled worshippers. ‘If you got a couple of people heckling in a crowd of 30,000, that should be put in that perspective’, he said. He even described his reception, wishfully, as ‘incredibly positive’. But anyone who has seen the footage of the encounter would be forced to reach a very different conclusion. It looked to be a deeply hostile environment and it seemed the situation could have easily degenerated into something more serious. The glum expression on Albanese’s face, and his reluctance to push back against the torrent of opprobrium, is proof that he was far from comfortable, and that it was no ordinary heckling he was experiencing.
In many ways, Albanese only has himself to blame for his menacing reception. Ever since Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, he has sought to placate, rather than stand up to, Australia’s growing Islamist movement and the violent anti-Semitism it promotes. Regular calls for the Jewish nation’s erasure have been met with a timid response. So strong are his instincts of appeasement that he did nothing even when his own electorate office – a short distance from the Lakemba Mosque – was barricaded by anti-Israel protesters for close to two years.
Motivating all of this has been a cold, cynical political calculation. By appeasing Islamists and hardline sectarians, he hopes to prevent Australia’s growing Muslim population, largely hostile to Israel, from switching their allegiance from the Labor Party to the Australian Greens.
Winston Churchill once described an appeaser as someone who feeds a crocodile in the hope it will eat him last. On Friday in Lakemba, Albanese found himself chewed up and spat out.
His treatment ought to be a wake-up call to Australia’s political class. There are clearly deep problems within what was once rather wishfully described as the most harmonious multicultural society in the world. Of particular concern is the Western Sydney region, where the bulk if Australia’s Muslim population resides. In the space of a few months, its mosques have inspired Islamist gay-bashings, produced two terrorists allegedly responsible for an unspeakable slaughter of Jews and have become no-go zones for the prime minister. An encounter like last week’s would once have been unheard of in Australian politics. Something isn’t right.
Australian politicians have long dismissed the crisis of integration as being a Western European problem. But even if they finally recognise that this is no longer the case, it will take a far stronger and more principled leader than Anthony Albanese to confront it. Until then, Islamic sectarianism will continue to flourish on Australian soil.
Hugo Timms is a staff writer at spiked.
