The chief of the Australian defence force personally raised concerns over tweets by the navy’s most senior Muslim officer before the @navyislamic account was closed in December, internal defence emails reveal.



Capt Mona Shindy received a number of emails from the public which she described as “defaming”, and for which she sought help and legal advice after becoming a public face of the defence force’s diversity push.

The revelations, contained in emails obtained under freedom of information, underscore the sensitivities the defence force is navigating to reshape its culture and attract more female and ethnically diverse recruits.



A decorated officer, Shindy joined the navy in 1989 and was appointed its chief adviser on Islamic affairs in 2013, with the job of “increas[ing] the appeal of the navy as an employer of choice among the Australian Muslim community”.

She tweeted from an official navy account, @navyislamic, courting controversy last September for posts perceived to be critical of the former prime minister, Tony Abbott.

On 22 October she responded to the launch of the far-right Australian Liberty Alliance (ALA) by calling the party an “extreme, ill-informed fringe group”.

Internal emails show that Shindy was the subject of a barrage of critical emails sent to senior defence officials accusing her of being disloyal to Australia and “clearly a security threat”.

One email noted that on 25 November Shindy had retweeted a post by mufti Musa Ismail Menk, a cleric who had described LGBTI people as filthy and “worse than animals”.

The tweet read: “The noise around us often makes it hard to know what’s really going on. So speak less & listen more. The quieter you are, the more you hear.”

The chief of defence, Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin, who was among those copied in on the email, wrote to V-Adm Tim Barrett, the chief of navy: “Did she really re-tweet this?”

The next day Barrett told Shindy to “not engage with any more comment to this individual”.

Shindy replied that she had no idea what Menk “had been tweeting in the totality of the history of his Twitter feed”.

“I certainly do not agree with the quoted tweet on homosexuals nor would I ever knowingly endorse such views as those detailed below,” she said.

Within a week of the exchange, around 8 December, Barrett ordered that the @navyislamic account be closed, telling Binskin: “There are now better [forums] for navy (and defence) to get the diversity message across without challenging the boundaries.”

Shindy had tried to stem the critical emails, asking senior navy staff why such “ill-informed, misguided and offensive ranting” had not been blocked and requesting support to deal with the “inevitable vitriol” she was facing.

“I would also like to understand my legal rights [with regards to] the very personal attacks that have been launched on me (via various media avenues, internet blogs, Facebook, Twitter etc.) since there has been an increased media interest in my story,” she wrote.

“I am determined not to let a loud, ugly and vocal minority of haters who twist words, deny academic research and distort context to silence or threaten me.”

Other Shindy tweets were raised later in December in a letter to Binskin by Debbie Robinson, the president of the ALA, including those calling the rightwing Dutch politician Geert Wilders “a bully and a bigot”.



Binskin asked for extra context about the tweets, saying they walked “a fine line”.

He later wrote to Robinson “acknowledg[ing] the concerns you have raised and recognis[ing] that you found the comments unacceptable”.



Defence media initially told Guardian Australia on 23 December that the account had been closed as part of an effort to consolidate the navy’s social media platforms.

It backtracked a fortnight later, explaining the account had “attracted a growing number of contentious comments”.

“In administering the account Capt Shindy was inundated with these comments and endeavoured to ensure a balance between policy and other comment. On 8 December 2015, the chief of navy counselled Capt Shindy on these issues.”