Islamic preacher loses charity status after Four Corners investigation

A month after losing a Racial Discrimination case brought against him by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), it has been revealed that Islamic preacher Wissam Haddad has had charity status revoked from one of his organisations.

The Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) stripped Haddad’s Dawah Van Incorporated of its charity registration in June, according to the ABC, after a Four Corners investigation revealed the organisation was radicalising young Australians while receiving tax breaks from the government.

News of the charity revocation comes just weeks after Federal Court Justice Angus Stewart found that Haddad contravened section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act by delivering a series of lectures that were “reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate and intimidate Jews in Australia”.

ECAJ co-CEO Peter Wertheim and deputy president Robert Goot brought the racial discrimination case against Haddad and the Al Madina Dawah Centre after his three lectures titled “The Jews of Al Medina” were video recorded and uploaded to social media platforms including Rumble and Facebook in November 2023.

Justice Stewart ruled that the lectures conveyed “disparaging imputations about Jewish people” that included “age-old tropes against Jewish people that are fundamentally racist and antisemitic”. The judge found that Haddad made “perverse generalisations against Jewish people as a group” that would be experienced as “harassing and intimidating” by Jews in Australia.