Judge orders Islamic preacher’s lecture removed from social media

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The Federal Court has found an Islamic preacher vilified Jewish people and breached the racial discrimination act in speeches he delivered at a Sydney prayer centre. A peak Jewish body launched the case after the series of 2023 lectures were uploaded to social media.

Transcript

00:00Hussam Haddad gave this series of speeches including three lectures, a sermon and an interview

00:07at Bankstown's Al Medina Dawah Centre back in November 2023 before they were then uploaded

00:13to social media. Now the Executive Council of Australian Jury took him to court alleging

00:18material in those speeches breached the Racial Discrimination Act because they included negative

00:24imputations or meanings about Jewish people including that they were wicked, scheming,

00:29vile and mischievous. But Mr Haddad's lawyers argued in defence that the speeches were derived

00:35from religious texts including the Koran, that they were delivered in private to a Muslim audience

00:41and they were not referring to Jewish people in Australia. Today Justice Angus Stewart has ruled

00:47that material in these speeches did fall foul of the Racial Discrimination Act. He said they contained

00:52age-old tropes against Jewish people that are fundamentally racist and anti-Semitic.

00:58But he's also found that passages in the interview and the sermon contained critical things about the

01:04Israel defence forces in Gaza and about Zionism. The judge said the ordinary listener of that material

01:11would not understand those things to be about Jewish people in general and therefore that material would

01:17not breach the Racial Discrimination Act. Outside court today we heard from Peter Wertheim from the ECAJ

01:23and he said this finding represents vindication for their case.

01:26This case was not about freedom of expression or freedom of religion. It was about anti-Semitism

01:33and the abuse of those freedoms to promote anti-Semitism. People are free to engage in robust debate

01:42about international conflicts, whether their beliefs are true or false, informed or ignorant.

01:48But that does not include the freedom to mobilise racism as a polemical tool to promote one's views,

01:55to dehumanise and vilify entire communities or individuals on the basis of their racial, ethnic or ethno-religious identity.

02:04As part of this judgement Mr Haddad has been ordered to remove the material from social media and to pay costs.

02:11His lawyer Elias Tabchuri told us outside court that he never intended to insult anyone based on their ethnic origin.

02:18The words he spoke were those from the scripture and he maintains that he has the right to quote religious scripture

02:26as all parties do. The court has found he has that right. Further to that the court has found that simply criticising

02:35what the Israeli nation has done in Gaza is not anti-Semitic. And that position has been affirmed by the court.

02:42Mr Tabchuri also told us that his client maintains that all of these speeches were based on scriptural references.

02:48Mr Haddad made no comment as he left court.

02:51Mr Haddad made no comment as he left court.

Category

Transcript

Recommended