Key Points
- The number of reported incidents of discrimination at workplaces and schools have increased in the past two years
- There have been fewer reports of Islamophobic incidents in public areas.
- That drop has been attributed to pandemic lockdown restrictions.
A Muslim man was reading a foreign policy book at work, when his supervisor came over and asked him what the book was about.
“I told him that it was a book about foreign policy and relations between the US and Pakistan and their involvement in Afghanistan,” the employee recalled.
The supervisor’s response, the man says, was so “inappropriate” it left him in tears when he was later recalling the incident to a friend.
“He said, ‘Don’t read books, such that you may end up blowing yourself up in Australia’,” the employee remembered his supervisor saying.
“Right after that he said, ‘Do you read the Quran, have you read the Quran?”
Muslim student 'humiliated' by teacher
The incident is one of a number of workplace complaints of discrimination reported by Muslims to the Islamophobia Register of Australia.
In itsreleased on Tuesday, the Register says the number of reports it’s received of discrimination at workplaces and school settings had increased in the past two years.
The research was conducted by Dr Derya Iner from Charles Sturt University and covers the period of 2020-21.
In another incident, a 12-year-old Palestinian student was carrying a Palestinian flag when he was asked by a teacher why he was, “holding a terrorist’s flag”.
The child reported feeling “mentally disturbed and … humiliated in front of his classmates,” the report said.
A third case involved a woman being offered a job before she even submitted her resume. After she included a picture of herself in the Islamic headscarf in the application, the job offer was rescinded.
“The next day she [the business owner] called me and started questioning if I knew what she sold and was only ‘thinking’ about it because I was a Muslim and she wasn’t sure how I would feel selling the goods her company sold,” the woman recalled.
“She went on to tell me she didn’t know how her clients would react to ‘dealing with someone like me’ and doesn’t think they would take it too well. She went on to mention she is only asking this as she works in the fashion industry and doesn’t think it will be a good look.”
Why abuse has shifted away from Muslims to Asian-Australians
When the Register first began its work in 2014, most of the reports came from victims who did not know their perpetrator, largely in public spaces such as shopping centres and public transport. But incidents where there was an existing relationship between people grew from 21 per cent in 2018-19 to 24 per cent in 2020-21, it said.
The Register’s executive director Sharara Attai said the increase could be not just because there were more incidents occurring in workplaces, but also because more people were reporting due to greater legal support being available to victims.
While overall, the number of reported incidents of Islamophobia dropped in the reporting period – from 248 complaints in 2018-19 to 90 in 2020-21, the decrease was attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions limiting the “opportunity” for perpetrators hindered by social distancing and lockdowns.
Instead, there was “a temporary shift of focus away” from Muslims to Asian-Australians.
“The significant increase in anti-Asian racism during the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to have contributed to a temporary reduction reported anti-Muslim hate and racism,” the report said.
Ms Attai is concerned overall that there is a "massive" under-reporting happening, and bystanders are increasingly not intervening to help victims.
“There is sometimes a sense of ‘what is the point of reporting’ and people not being able to see the (benefits),” she said.
“Our message is that we do have victim support services; we can support them.”
