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The head of Victoria’s peak Muslim body is expected to meet the state’s police commissioner next week to discuss community concerns that the force is not doing enough to investigate potentially Islamophobic attacks.
The Islamic Council of Victoria wrote to Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Mike Bush this week querying police investigations and training, after the town of Kilmore was hit by two suspicious fires in two days including at a proposed mosque site.
While police do not believe either of those fires are hate-related or linked, they come after a string of reported Islamophobic incidents, including a man storming a Muslim community event in Ballarat and a bomb scare at the Islamic Council’s mosque in Melbourne.
In his letter to Bush, Islamic Council president Mohamed Mohideen warned reports of Islamophobia are surging in the wake of the Bondi terror attack and asked why more has not been done to investigate possible hate crimes in the regions.
He called for the expansion of specialist training his council already runs for metropolitan police to officers outside the city, telling this masthead some still appear reluctant to enforce new hate speech laws as it is seen as more paperwork.
Victoria Police did not comment on the letter, but confirmed its top brass had agreed to meet the council in the coming weeks. Following community criticism claiming police had been slow to investigate recent incidents, the force has moved to reassure Muslim groups they are taking the matters seriously as investigations continue.
Asked at a press conference on Friday if the Muslim community’s concerns were valid, Bush said: “They’ve absolutely got concerns.”
He said he was keen to meet with the council, “either myself or one of my deputies”, noting he had met with them before. He stressed the force was “very keen to allay those concerns and to give them that reassurance that we’re absolutely here for them and … they are safe”.
In Kilmore tensions are running high after a suspicious blaze gutted part of an old church on Tuesday. The bluestone church has stood in the town, about 75 kilometres north of Melbourne, for nearly 170 years. But in recent months, a group of local Muslim families have been fundraising to renovate the abandoned site into a mosque and community centre so they have a place to pray.
A neighbour said they saw three white men running from the building on Tuesday before a fire tore through its back rooms, although it spared the heritage-listed bluestone church facade.
Muslim groups fear the blaze was an act of Islamophobia, after the plans to restore the site as a mosque attracted a steady stream of racist abuse in online community groups, seen by this masthead.
“I’m devastated,” said Ekrem Fuldagim, the lead organiser of the project. “Kilmore is a beautiful community. My wife and I have never had any problems here, never even a sideways look.
“I was born here [in Australia], but I’m worried now, for the first time.”
A police spokesman said the derelict church was “often frequented by trespassers”. At this stage of the investigation, detectives did not believe the blaze, while suspicious, was targeted or linked to other fires, he said.
A police source who could not be identified said young people were seen and heard around the church building before the fire.
The night before, a popular ice-cream parlour and barber owned by an Iraqi refugee was firebombed nearby on Kilmore’s main street. CCTV footage released by owner Alaa Javr shows two white men inside appearing to pour accelerant through the shop and racing out of view before a fireball erupts.
Javr, who opened his shop less than a year ago, said he did not understand who would target it given how fast he had been embraced by locals, many of whom had since offered him support.
The police spokesman said the two fires were not believed to be related.
They also weren’t linked, he said, to an incident in Ballarat earlier this month when a man claiming to be far right stormed a Muslim community dinner, allegedly assaulting people and hurling racist abuse. The man was arrested but released without charge, though police say investigations are continuing.
“We’re getting more and more reports of this, graffiti on mosques, abuse in the street,” Mohideen said. “It doesn’t happen in a vacuum. When Islamophobic [rhetoric] is normalised, including by some politicians, this stuff goes up.”
The Islamic Council itself had a bomb scare two weeks ago outside its mosque on Spencer Street in Melbourne, when an ominous voicemail announced the arrival of a strange package, which turned out to be full of Islamophobic material. It is being investigated by police.
“We had hundreds coming into the mosque that day to break their fast for Ramadan, and homeless people coming for a meal,” Mohideen said. “That’s when we spotted the package. Police had to evacuate everyone.”
Imam Shadi Alsuleiman, of the Australian National Imams Council, said Australian mosques had reported a wave of violent threats since Bondi, including in Sydney. Some of those “explicitly violent messages” spoke of a “Christchurch 2.0”, he said, referring to the 2019 shooting massacre at two New Zealand mosques by an Australian white supremacist.
“There is a growing concern within the Muslim community that such matters are not being treated with the same seriousness or urgency” as others, Alsuleiman said.
In Kilmore, Fuldagim and other locals pointed to a separate incident in recent months when a man confronted teachers at the town’s Maarif international school, angry they were flying a Turkish flag alongside the Australian one in the schoolyard.
“You’ve got a mosque here now, so you’ve obviously got big plans for the Islamification of Kilmore,” said the man in footage obtained by this masthead, in which he refused repeated requests by the school for him to leave.
On Tuesday, some celebrated online the fire gutting the mosque site, even as others offered their help.
“And I can’t help but think all those people in orange T-shirts are partly to blame,” said Fuldagim. “When One Nation say things like ‘there are no good Muslims’.”
The fire has put plans for a mosque back to square one, at a site long haunted by failed development projects. “We don’t have insurance, so we’ll have to start fundraising again,” Fuldagim said.
“This is Kilmore’s history they’re destroying, this church. But we’ll keep going. We even plan to name it the Jesus Son of Mary mosque, after the original. A sign of respect.
“Thank God the main roof didn’t go up, or all the community would have left is a gutted bluestone shell to remind us how ugly parts of Australia still are.”
On Saturday, a coalition of concerned groups will rally in Ballarat against racism.
With Chris Vedelago and Lachlan Abbott
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Sherryn Groch is a journalist at The Age covering crime. Email her at s.groch@nine.com.au or contact her securely on Signal @SherrynG.70Connect via X or email.From our partners
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