• A 31-year-old Australian woman has been charged with assaulting two Muslim women at a Melbourne shopping centre, allegedly targeting them due to their hijabs.
• The Islamophobia register reported a shocking 600% increase in incidents in Australia since last year, highlighting the growing threat to Muslims’ safety.
Australian police have charged a 31-year-old woman for assaulting two Muslim women at a shopping centre in Melbourne last week. The woman, from the suburb of Pascoe Vale, is scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday, where it will be alleged that she targeted the victims on 13 February due to their hijabs, according to local media reports.
The woman is accused of grabbing and choking a 30-year-old pregnant woman by her hijab at Epping Shopping Centre, before pushing and slapping a separate 26-year-old woman in another assault just 10 minutes later.
The first woman, identified as Kawthar Ali, told ABC News that she was attacked from behind and choked with her hijab. Ms Ali, who is 26 weeks pregnant, said she was about to have lunch with her friend and four-year-old daughter as a woman approached her.
"She said [the attacker] came from behind and choked her with her hijab and wouldn't let go," the woman told 9News.
The second victim, a mother-of-two, said she was grocery shopping when she was slapped and shoved to the ground by the alleged offender. She suffered bruising across her body and said she is now too scared to leave her home.
"This lady, like out of nowhere, just came and like it was a punch, smack, something like that, right across my left side," she told 9News. "I'm an Australian citizen, I was born here. Getting attacked in your own country is a bit wild."
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemned the assault as “reprehensible” and rejected claims that his government was not taking Islamophobic attacks as seriously. “I take all attacks on people based on their faith seriously, and they should all face the full force of the law”, he told reporters.
Melbourne police are also investigating reports of online threats made against one of the victims. Both women sustained non-life-threatening injuries.
Aftab Malik, Australia’s anti-Islamophobia envoy, stated on Tuesday that “All forms of hate need to stop” and urged the country’s leaders to denounce the Melbourne incident. Earlier in the week, Rateb Jneid, president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, expressed concern over the rise in attacks on Muslims in the country and criticised the government’s response as “grossly insufficient”.
Australia’s government has described the new laws, passed in early February, as ‘the toughest laws Australia has ever had against hate crimes’. It specifies reforms include mandatory jail terms ranging from one to six years for the use of hate symbols, such as the Nazi salute. However, nothing as specific regarding Islamophobic incidents.
The Islamophobia register, which has tracked incidents of anti-Muslim sentiment across Australia since 2014, reported receiving daily accounts of discrimination, verbal abuse, physical assaults, and online hate. Alarmingly, they recorded a staggering 600% increase in reported Islamophobic incidents over the past year, underscoring the escalating threat to the safety of Muslims. Furthermore, the register criticised Liberal Senator Dave Sharma’s recent claim that Islamophobia was “fictitious,” asserting that “lived experiences” of Muslims demonstrate the undeniable and growing presence of Islamophobia in Australian society.
In December last year, New South Wales police launched an investigation into a hate crime after Islamophobic graffiti was discovered on a busy underpass in Sydney’s west.
