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)