Lakemba sermon ‘a mistake’, ANIC chief concedes

Two senior Muslim community leaders have been questioned at the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion over their organisations’ responses to sensitive events, in the inquiry’s hearing block examining the drivers of radicalisation.

The president of the Australian National Imams Council (ANIC), Sheikh Shadi Alsuleiman, conceded last Friday that a sermon delivered by Imam Ibrahim Dadoun at Lakemba the day after the October 7, 2023, attacks was “inappropriate” and “a mistake”.

In the speech, Dadoun said: “I’m smiling and I’m happy. I’m elated … It’s a day of pride. It’s a day of victory. This is the day we’ve been waiting for.”

Asked by Counsel Assisting Richard Lancaster whether the comments could be understood as expressing pride in the attack on Israeli citizens, Alsuleiman replied: “On the face of it, without explanation, yes.”

He said ANIC had no forewarning of the speech, that it did not represent the council’s position, and that Dadoun had been counselled rather than disciplined. The council’s philosophy, he said, was that guiding imams “through those mistakes and keeping them within the fold of ANIC is a lot more healthier and helpful”.

Under cross-examination by Nicholas Bender SC, appearing for Jewish communal bodies, Alsuleiman was pressed on why ANIC’s only public statement on the speech had not described it as inappropriate, instead calling it “regrettable that certain media outlets and politicians took the words of an imam entirely out of context”. Alsuleiman rejected the suggestion the council had publicly defended the speech while privately treating it as a mistake.

“I don’t read the statement this way,” he said.

He told the commission ANIC had reached out to the Jewish community after the Bondi attack, with representatives visiting synagogues and meeting Jewish leaders. “While this is a targeted attack on the Jewish community, it is an attack on all communities,” he said.

On Monday, the head of the Shia Muslim Council of Australia, Dr Ali Alsamail, was questioned over mourning ceremonies held in Australian Shia mosques for the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He said the ceremonies were religious, not political, honouring “a religious leader, a leader in jurisprudence and theology”.

Commissioner Virginia Bell put to Alsamail that Khamenei had been supreme leader of a country with which Australia severed relations after finding the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps directed the arson of a Sydney synagogue and a Jewish business. Alsamail said those responsible were “certain criminal elements”, not community members, and that he believed “the Ayatollah would never have any direct involvement in anything like that”.

Alsamail, a Sydney GP and Islamic scholar, said the council had condemned the Bondi attack and sent condolences to the Jewish community. He described an educational program, Wisdom and Good Counsel, for people who had engaged in or were at risk of hate crimes, and said in-person interfaith contact was the antidote to the online echo chamber.

“You can meet someone in person and it completely changes what you thought about them.”