Islamic College of Brisbane asks police to investigate ‘hate crime’ after backpack with swastika on it found containing pig’s head

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

One of Queensland’s largest Islamic schools has referred what it described as a hate crime to police after a backpack emblazoned with a swastika and containing a pig’s head was left at the front gate.

Shocked staff at the Islamic College of Brisbane discovered the bag and rotting meat at 6.30am on Wednesday, hours before more than 1,000 students, some as young as five, were due to pass through the school entrance.

Police attended and were given CCTV footage that allegedly showed the items were left by two men who arrived half an hour earlier in a Subaru WRX.

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A police spokesman said investigations were under way after officers were called to the school at Karawatha where “a bag containing decaying meat was discovered by staff inside the grounds”.

Ali Kadri, a spokesman for the Islamic council of Queensland, said it was the type of “hate crime” that sprang from the “demonisation of [Islamic] schools”.

“Not talking about it just doesn’t help. It’s important to show that there is so much extremism out there that people will get up at six in the morning to do these kind of things,” he said.

“It’s the normalisation, the demonisation of the schools that leads to these kind of problems. It’s people who demonise Islamic schools without knowing what goes on there.”

Yassmin Abdel-Magied, a former student of the school, posted a series of tweets expressing her disgust for the action.

Yassmin Abdel-Magied (@yassmin_a) I'm just so sorry. I'm so so sorry we have to live in a world where kids can't go to school in Australia without being shamed and threatened

Yassmin Abdel-Magied (@yassmin_a) I was there a few weeks ago celebrating Eid! I caught up with the OG school principle who was my principal for years. pic.twitter.com/tn7Iu7TLrh

A mosque in Toowoomba, west of Brisbane, was twice targeted in arson attacks in 2015.

The Islamic college of Brisbane is among those schools owned by the Sydney-based Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, which has come under scrutiny in some news outlets over financial governance and government funding arrangements in recent years.