Muslim scholar Aftab Malik appointed as anti-Islamophobia envoy after lengthy search
The Federal Government has appointed a scholar on Muslim affairs as its special envoy to combat Islamophobia.
The appointment of Aftab Malik comes almost three months after the government made lawyer and business executive Jillian Segal a special envoy to combat anti-Semitism.
The roles are intended to work with the Muslim and Jewish communities in Australia and promote social cohesion amid heightened tensions around the conflict in the Middle East, but the appointment of an anti-Islamophobia envoy was delayed.
Mr Aftab will start the job on October 14 and report directly to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke.
The British-born scholar has worked with the NSW-based Lebanese Muslim Association, the British Council and the UN Alliance of Civilisations, and has been a critic of violence carried out in the name of Islam including by terror groups.
Mr Aftab said promoting social cohesion and fighting against hate in Australia was now more important than ever.
He flagged that he intended to work with Ms Segal to share insights into how to bring their communities together on common ground.
“Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are not mutually exclusive: where there is one, you most likely will find the other, lurking,” he said.
“I don’t intend to use this role to advocate that one form of hatred is more important than another: both antisemitism and Islamophobia are unacceptable.
“Each of us can play a part in making sure that violence and hatred have no place in our communities. We can do this by valuing and strengthening the bonds between us and by calling out discrimination and being allies to those who experience it.”
The envoy appointments have been controversial in some quarters.
The Australian Palestine Advocacy Network criticised the Government for creating a “hierarchy of racism” by singling out anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, with president Nasser Mashni saying the appointments risked inflaming community tensions, not calming them.
Mr Burke said that bigotry was always wrong and people should be able to live safely and freely in Australia regardless of who they were or what they believed.
Mr Albanese told cabinet colleagues on Monday pro-Palestine protests over the weekend where some people carried Hezbollah flags were “worrying signs”.
“We do not want people to bring radical ideologies and conflict here. Our multiculturalism and social cohesion cannot be taken for granted, and it’s important that we continue to stress that that is the case as we go forward as well,” he told the Cabinet meeting in Canberra.
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