ECAJ statement on racial hatred complaint re Ahmed Zod.

The ECAJ has wel­comed the res­o­lu­tion of a com­plaint against Ahmed Zod before the Aus­tralian Human Rights Com­mis­sion fol­low­ing Mr Zod’s unre­served apol­o­gy to ECAJ co-CEO Peter Wertheim, Deputy Pres­i­dent Robert Goot, and “the Aus­tralian Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty”.

The com­plaint was made by Mr Wertheim and Mr Goot in March 2024 under the pro­vi­sions of Part IIA of the Racial Dis­crim­i­na­tion Act 1975 (Cth), which pro­hib­it “Offen­sive behav­iour based on racial hatred”.

The com­plaint alleged that in a ser­mon enti­tled “The truth of the Jews and their char­ac­ter­is­tics”, which was deliv­ered in the Ara­bic lan­guage in Decem­ber 2023 at the Masjid As-Sun­nah, a Mosque in Lakem­ba NSW, Ahmed Zod made a series of deroga­to­ry gen­er­al­i­sa­tions about the Jew­ish peo­ple and used dehu­man­is­ing lan­guage, in con­tra­ven­tion of the Act.

Ahmed Zod has now apol­o­gised “unre­served­ly and uncon­di­tion­al­ly” for his state­ments. His writ­ten apol­o­gy also says:

I deeply regret the way I framed my com­ments and under­stand how they could be inter­pret­ed as tar­get­ing Jew­ish peo­ple as a whole. I did not intend to make such a sweep­ing gen­er­al­i­sa­tion. I did not seek to harm Jew­ish peo­ple based on their race or reli­gion. This is not an excuse but an expla­na­tion to hope­ful­ly assure you that I will not repeat these com­ments.

The terms on which the com­plaint has been resolved include an under­tak­ing by Ahmed Zod not to repeat these or sim­i­lar state­ments in the future.

Mr Wertheim said:

This is a wel­come admis­sion of wrong-doing by Ahmed Zod and we hope that it will serve as an exam­ple for the future about the lim­its of free­dom of expres­sion.

In Aus­tralia, that free­dom does not extend to the pub­lic vil­i­fi­ca­tion of peo­ple who come from a dif­fer­ent eth­nic back­ground or choose to fol­low a dif­fer­ent faith, or no faith.

The same lim­i­ta­tions apply to expres­sions of polit­i­cal opin­ion, includ­ing com­men­tary about over­seas con­flicts.

Among our cit­i­zens, we have peo­ple from dozens of dif­fer­ent eth­nic and reli­gious back­grounds, many of whose fam­i­lies migrat­ed to Aus­tralia to escape per­se­cu­tion based sole­ly on that iden­ti­ty.

We hope that the res­o­lu­tion of this com­plaint will serve as a reaf­fir­ma­tion of the prin­ci­ple that Aus­tralia is a safe place for peo­ple of all back­grounds, and no place for the kind of immod­er­ate and at times anti­se­mit­ic rhetoric that we have wit­nessed in recent times.

See also

• Writ­ten apol­o­gy to the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty signed by Sheikh Zod: PDF (600KB)
• Ver­bal apol­o­gy by Sheikh Ahmed Zod: PDF (358KB)
• Writ­ten apol­o­gy to the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty signed by Sun­nah Foun­da­tion: PDF (401KB)