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The Albanese Government has now been presented with the ‘National Response to Islamophobia’ report, authored by Aftab Malik, the Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia. The 60-page document is pitched as a comprehensive strategy to make Australia ‘safer’ and more inclusive of Muslims.

Scratch beneath the surface, however, and it reads less like a plan for social harmony and more like a political blueprint for embedding ‘grievance politics’ into the machinery of government. This report is coming after the infamous Hate Crimes bill that was passed earlier this year. What more legislation do we supposedly need to combat ‘hatred’ or racism against particular people groups?

The report is being heralded as a breakthrough moment, identifying a supposed “unprecedented crisis” of anti-Muslim hatred and demanding sweeping reform across law, education, and national security. Yet its recommendations are so expansive, so intrusive, and so one-sided that one is left wondering whether its ultimate aim is to tackle bigotry—or to smuggle through a form of soft cultural capture under the guise of “inclusion”.

Mar Mari, a Christian Assyrian bishop, was stabbed in Sydney last year by an Islamic terrorist. Pro-Palestinians, who are overwhelmingly Islamic, assembled on the Sydney Harbour Bridge on the 3rd of August, which attracted some 90,000 civilians, some of whom burned the Australian flag and incited ‘intifada’ — a term encouraging violent uprisings. Charlie Kirk, a Christian political commentator, was tragically shot in Utah recently — but the issue for the Albanese government is apparently ‘Islamophobia?’

Most academics in the counterterrorism space are overwhelmingly concerned by Quranic radicalisation or terror attacks conducted by Muslim extremists in particular. Yet, the government is pouring our tax money into combating ‘Islamophobia’ when the real issue of concern evidently appears to be Christian or right-wing persecution. Where is the envoy into ‘Christianophobia’ or ‘violence against rightwing conservatives’?

Threats to Our Counterterrorism Frameworks

At its heart, the report paints Muslims in Australia as a uniquely persecuted class. We are told that Islamophobia is ‘systemic,’ that Muslim people are ‘disproportionately targeted,’ and that institutions from schools to workplaces are unsafe for them. There is no denying that individual acts of abuse exist — just as they do for every identifiable group in a pluralistic society — but the report reads as though Australia is a hostile wasteland where Muslims live in constant fear, even when the Quran at Sura 3:151 indicates the following:

“We will cast terror into the hearts of the disbelievers for associating ‘false gods’ with Allah…”

In light of the problematic instructions in the Quran that invite Muslims to attack people, the recommendations in Malik’s report regarding counter-terrorism seem very unusual and ironic.

The recommendations directly target Australia’s counter-terrorism framework at a time when Islamic terrorist incidents are increasing rapidly. The report calls for a review of existing laws to ensure Muslims are not “disproportionately” affected. In other words: weaken the very legal tools that have kept Australians safe for decades, because they make one community uncomfortable…

Let us be clear. Australia’s counter-terrorism legislation was not designed in a vacuum. It was forged in the aftermath of Bali, 9/11, and subsequent plots — overwhelmingly linked to Islamist extremism. To suggest these laws are merely instruments of ‘Islamophobia’ is to deny history and common sense. Without them, there would almost certainly have been more bloodshed on our soil.

Mandatory ‘Training’ for Parliamentarians

To re-engineer these protections in the name of “inclusion” is frankly, reckless. It risks creating blind spots in intelligence work and discouraging surveillance of radical networks. The irony is rich: in the name of combating Islamophobia, the report may well make Australia more vulnerable to the very ideology that birthed terrorism in the first place.

The report brims with proposals for embedding Islamophobia “awareness” across the public service and political class. Mandatory training for MPs and officials is recommended — are some of Australia’s most legally and criminally aware people in the nation about to be schooled on Islamic ideology? Do Jihad Dib and Fatima Payman have to go through ‘classes’ — why can’t they tell their colleagues what the issues are, and save our taxpayer money for crime fighting instead?

Our representative democracy was built to prevent politicians from having to be trained to sympathise with certain people groups — if the sympathy is genuinely there, the politicians would reflect this by being elected in, to bring these issues up in parliament themselves. There’s no need to ‘train them’ with tax money and show them how to think.

In fact, if Australia wanted to be told how to think about certain people groups and lectured about how to supposedly treat them under Constitutional mandates, then why did it vote ‘No’ to the Voice referendum? All people groups are equal under the law already.

There is no systemic ‘Islamophobia’ that warrants extra legal scrutiny over terrorism laws, because crime legislation is completely separate to legislation regarding discrimination. If someone ‘terrorises’ an individual, the objective definition of ‘terrorism’ will be taken from the correct legal Acts, and not from the‘victim’s subjective view about what constitutes an act of ‘terror’. Hence, there is zero need to amend the law to accommodate ‘islamophobia’ in an incident.

One-Sided Bias Undermines Equality Under the Law

And what of accountability? Who decides what counts as “Islamophobia”? Criticism of Islamist ideology? Objections to Sharia’s illiberal tenets? Campaigning against excessive foreign influence on the streets? Under the report’s logic, all could easily be re-branded as bigotry. The chilling effect on free expression is obvious.

Australians are asked to accept a one-way critique: Muslims are victims, and everyone else is the problem, yet the statistics on terrorism convictions, security operations, and intelligence assessments are clear — Islamist extremism has been the dominant domestic threat for decades. To ignore that reality is not only intellectually dishonest but potentially dangerous.

The Islamophobia report is not just about protecting Muslims from abuse (a goal most Australians would support). It is about reshaping Australian law and culture in ways that entrench identity politics, dilute national security, and inhibit honest discussion about Islam and modernity from civic life.

None of this is to say that anti-Muslim prejudice should be tolerated. It should not. Any Australian attacked, vilified, or threatened deserves protection. But the remedy must be equal under the law, not the creation of special categories that erode hard-won security safeguards — we do not need another ‘Voice’ referendum.

Australia is already nearing 1 trillion dollars in debt. Do we need more money pouring into things like reports on ‘Islamophobia’ with 54 recommendations in them? Arguably, Australia does not even have the headspace, funds or manpower to even implement half the recommendations being thrown around from various reports.

Roadmap to Disaster

Instead of rewriting counter-terrorism laws to appease one community, the government should reaffirm them. Instead of embedding new bureaucracies of ‘Islamophobia awareness,’ we should strengthen universal civic education about free speech, citizenship, and shared values. Instead of pandering to grievance narratives, we should encourage integration, shared responsibility, and loyalty to the nation and to the Judeo-Christian values that made this nation desirable for Muslims to migrate to, to begin with.

The Islamophobia report is being sold as a roadmap to a more harmonious Australia when in reality, it seems like a Trojan horse: a vast catalogue of demands that, if accepted, would privilege one group’s sensitivities, weaken our defences against extremism, and embed grievance politics into the heart of government.

The Prime Minister will now have to decide whether to embrace this agenda or to recoil. The choice is stark. Either Australia doubles down on equal treatment, robust security, and national cohesion — or it slides into the dangerous experiment of elevating a single community’s grievances above the nation’s overall safety and democratic longevity.

For those who value free speech, national security, and the principle of equality before the law, the answer should be obvious.

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