ECAJ statement on legal proceedings under Part IIA of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 against Wissam Haddad (aka Abu Ousayd) and Al Madina Dawah Centre Incorporated.

The Exec­u­tive Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Jew­ry (ECAJ), the peak body rep­re­sent­ing the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty nation­al­ly, today announced that pro­ceed­ings have been com­menced in the Fed­er­al Court of Aus­tralia against a self-described Islam­ic preach­er, Wis­sam Had­dad (aka Abu Ousayd), and a reli­gious cen­tre, Al Mad­i­na Dawah Cen­tre Incor­po­rat­ed, locat­ed in west­ern Syd­ney, over speech­es that were alleged­ly made at the cen­tre late last year, record­ings of which have been uploaded online.

The pro­ceed­ings have been brought by the ECAJ’s co-CEO, Peter Wertheim AM, and Deputy Pres­i­dent, Robert Goot AO SC (the appli­cants), under the pro­vi­sions of Part IIA of the Racial Dis­crim­i­na­tion Act 1975, which pro­hib­it offen­sive behav­iour based on racial hatred.

The doc­u­ments filed with the court allege that the speech­es includ­ed deroga­to­ry gen­er­al­i­sa­tions about Jew­ish peo­ple, such as descrip­tions of them as a “vile peo­ple”, a “treach­er­ous peo­ple”, and claims that “their hands are in every­where – in busi­ness­es … in the media”.

The appli­cants are seek­ing, among oth­er things, dec­la­ra­tions that the respon­dents con­tra­vened sec­tion 18C of the Racial Dis­crim­i­na­tion Act; injunc­tions requir­ing the speech­es to be removed from the inter­net and restrain­ing the respon­dents from pub­lish­ing sim­i­lar con­tent in the future; an order requir­ing pub­li­ca­tion of a cor­rec­tive notice on the social media pages of Al Mad­i­na Dawah Cen­tre Incor­po­rat­ed; and an order for costs. No order for dam­ages or mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion is sought.

ECAJ co-CEO, Peter Wertheim said:

As is required by law, we attempt­ed in good faith to resolve this mat­ter by con­cil­i­a­tion through the Aus­tralian Human Rights Com­mis­sion, but a con­cil­i­at­ed res­o­lu­tion could not be achieved.

Accord­ing­ly, we have com­menced pro­ceed­ings in the Fed­er­al Court to defend the hon­our of our com­mu­ni­ty, and as a warn­ing to deter oth­ers seek­ing to mobilise racism in order to pro­mote their polit­i­cal views.

Aus­tralia has long enjoyed a rep­u­ta­tion as a mul­ti­cul­tur­al suc­cess sto­ry where peo­ple of many dif­fer­ent faiths and eth­nic back­grounds have for the most part lived in har­mo­ny and mutu­al respect. We are all free to observe our faith and tra­di­tions with­in the bounds of Aus­tralian law, and that should mean we do not bring the hatreds, prej­u­dices and big­otry of over­seas con­flicts and soci­eties into Aus­tralia.

Main­tain­ing and strength­en­ing social cohe­sion is the role of gov­ern­ments and gov­ern­ment agen­cies, but late­ly they have failed us. It should not fall on our com­mu­ni­ty, or any oth­er com­mu­ni­ty, to take pri­vate legal action to rem­e­dy a pub­lic wrong, and to stand up to those who sow hatred in our midst. How­ev­er, in the cir­cum­stances we feel we have no alter­na­tive.