Attorney general says Muslims are sometimes the victims of suspicion directed against them by those seeking to blame terrorist violence on Koranic teaching

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Devout Australians, particularly Catholics, are the victims of an “alarming emergence of intolerance of religious faith”, the federal attorney general George Brandis has told a roundtable of faith leaders in Sydney.

Muslims feel inadequately protected by the Racial Discrimination Act – report Read more

He cited “incessant, smearing ridicule” of Tony Abbott’s faith as an example of “bigotry at its most shameless”.

“[It was] made worse, if possible, by the added hypocrisy of the fact that many of those who engaged in that sneering were the very same people who like to pose as the enemies of bigotry,” Brandis said on Thursday.

Speaking at the Human Rights Commission’s inaugural roundtable on religious freedom, the senator raised intolerance towards Muslim Australians as proof of the country’s “somewhat inconsistent attitudes” towards religious tolerance.

“Members of the Islamic community are sometimes the victims of suspicion and hostility directed against them by those ignorantly seeking to blame terrorist violence upon Koranic teaching,” he said.



Members of Christian faiths, especially Catholics, were “routinely the subject of mockery and insult by prominent writers and commentators”.



George Brandis: 'People have the right to be bigots' Read more

Brandis said sneering towards Catholics had prompted former high court justice Dyson Heydon to observe anti-Catholicism in Australia now might be called “the racism of the intellectuals”.

“Or perhaps he should have said the pseudo-intellectuals,” Brandis said.

The senator challenged the gathering – which included representatives of the Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Catholic, Anglican, Baha’i, Russian Orthodox and Buddhist faiths, as well as atheists and Scientologists – to develop strategies to counter this budding intolerance and promote mutual respect.

Australian human rights commissioner Tim Wilson told delegates submissions had shown significant and clashing concerns over religious freedom.

Some devout Australians “felt increasingly unable to express their opinions or faith in the public square”, or the law increasingly did not square with their conscience.

Tim Wilson: 'My views are pretty similar to those of South Park' Read more

But some LBGTI Australians and their allies worried they were “exposed to predominantly negative consequences from people exercising their religious freedom”.

Wilson cited disputes over mosques, such as in Bendigo and Penrith; public funding for school chaplains; and the recent case of a West Australian girl at a Christian school who was told she was not welcome because her father was in a relationship with a man.

Wilson said the object of the roundtable was to start a conversation and begin forging “a new settlement for religious freedom” that balances the rights of believing and non-believing Australians.

A roundtable comprising representatives of atheist, secularist, rationalist and humanist groups, and another focused on LBGTI issues, would be convened in February next year, he said.