On Saturday night, I was walking alongside the beautiful Brisbane River with my 19-year-old daughter, enjoying the views and an increasingly rare moment of time catching up with her. I casually tweeted a couple of photos of this lovely scene. A short time later an anonymous Twitter user responded:

Although rattled, I initially chose to dismiss and ignore this comment, as I have chosen to disregard most racist and xenophobic messages that have been sent my way over the years, whether verbally or via social media (particularly since I entered parliament).



But it ate at me as I travelled home to Sydney. There was something so toxic in that message, something so needlessly mean and personal. This level of hatred was new and different.

I decided to post the exchange to my public Facebook page, and said that I believed new and emerging movements like Reclaim Australia legitimise such racist sentiments. In a follow-up news piece I said that Reclaim was stoking the fire of underlying racism in Australia, and the risk needs to be taken seriously.

I’ve since endured an endless stream of racist and offensive communications. I’ve been told that white Australia is the real victim here, not a whinging Muslim. People have called my office to harass my staff and demand to know how many Anzac Day dawn service ceremonies I have attended.

My face has been photoshopped onto a flag-waving Islamic State militant and spread around online, and one person has even created an online petition calling for evidence that I have renounced my Pakistani citizenship.

Through all this, I’ve been told repeatedly that my criticism of Reclaim as racist is misguided for the basic fact that Islam is not a race. That’s quite right, and indeed there is nothing wrong with valid criticism of any religion. But Reclaim has never been about critiquing Islam.

When you piece together evidence such as the Australian flag capes, the ridiculous Halal certification hysteria, and the ubiquitous references to our “Judeo-Christian foundations” (I never thought there were Christian societies in pre-invasion Aboriginal Australia!), the real agenda emerges: marginalising Australians who fall outside a very narrow conception of what it is to be ‘one of us’.

Moreover, what really ends up transpiring is not simply fear of Muslims, but racialised Islamophobia. The discourse and perception of Islam and Muslims in politics, the media, and public life is deeply rife with racist stereotypes. And really, there is no way to describe what I and others have experienced other than ‘racial abuse’.

Friends, Greens members, and complete strangers have contacted me with support and solidarity, but the question that keeps coming back is simple: how do we put an end to this?

Some people on the left – usually those with enough privilege that they will never be the subject of structural oppression – dismiss the online troll army for being as inevitable as it is ineffective.

“Let it go,” they say. “The trolls represent no one and all they want is for you to take the bait.”

But in accepting this we find ourselves forgetting that there are real people typing these vile messages behind computer screens – thousands of them, in fact, across the country – and there are real people receiving them.

We can’t really describe Reclaim Australia as a just a fringe group when government MP George Christensen spoke at their rally without admonishment from his party, just as we can’t dismiss disgusting comments about my husband being a bomber as the ramblings of a lone extremist when there are countless other people who defend the abuser’s actions.

Commentators such as Van Badham and Jason Wilson have recently argued that we can’t ignore what is going on, which would only validate and embolden the racists. I couldn’t agree more. We cannot get complacent and we need to continue to stand up to the agenda of bigotry and racism. We need to link arms on the streets and keep calling out racism in public debate.

More broadly, the political establishment urgently needs to speak up and do the right thing. Sadly, though, we all know it is unlikely the prime minister will do so. Tony Abbott knows that there is a small but powerful minority of Liberal voters who respond to Christensen’s brand of dog-whistling and can be kept with the Coalition via Christensen’s sentiments.

I went “public” on the tweet despite the predictable consequences, not because I want to garner sympathy but because people need to know that this is the reality for Muslims in Australia, and it is not all okay. I will not stand by while our public debate gets ever more repulsive and malicious.