Court rules Islamic preacher was ‘fundamentally racist’ in speeches

A series of hate speeches delivered by a Sydney-based Islamic preacher must be removed from social media after the Federal Court today ruled they contained "fundamentally racist and antisemitic" material.

Wissam Haddad was found to have contravened Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act during speeches he delivered at Bankstown's Al Madina Dawah Centre in November 2023 – recordings of which were subsequently posted online.

In a summary of his decision, Justice Angus Stewart said the accusations made by Haddad were "devastatingly offensive and insulting" to the Jewish community.

"They make perverse generalisations against Jewish people as a group. Jewish people in Australia in November 2023 and thereafter would experience them to be harassing and intimidating," Stewart said.

"That is all the more so because they were made at the time of heightened vulnerability and fragility experienced by Jews in Australia, but they would also have been harassing and intimidating had they been made prior to 7 October 2023. That is because of their profound offensiveness and the long history of persecution of Jews associated with the use of such rhetoric."

The case was brought to court by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), after it lodged a complaint with the Australian Human Rights Council (AHRC) in March 2024, which then proceeded to failed conciliation with Haddad and the Al Madina Dawah Centre.