Among the angry crowd was a man dressed in a long white robe and an embroidered white cap. He was tall, wore glasses, and had a neatly clipped beard, greying at the edges.

I approached him after the rally to ask him why he had attended. He was willing to talk and introduced himself as Sheik Haron.

"We just want to voice against injustice, and we want to express our feelings that this not a war against terrorism, it is a war against Muslims," he told me.

But Haron was more interested in talking about his letter-writing campaign. Aside from writing to the families of Australian Defence Force personnel killed in Afghanistan, Haron told me had been writing to politicians, the Australian Federal Police and the ombudsman about terrorist activities by non-Muslims.

"In the last few years I have been sending letters to politicians and I have criticised them [because] within Australia there is terrorist acts, yet they don't do anything about that, because they are not Muslims."