Statement by Family First National Director Lyle Shelton
We need to face the fact that Islam in Australia is not a religion of peace. Here's the proof.
Since October 7, 2023, Family First issued more than 27 public statements detailing Australian Muslim, Labor, Green, Teal and media support for, or justification of, Islamic terrorism.
No one who reads the media releases and blogs below could possibly be surprised that 15 innocent people, mainly Jews, were slaughtered at Bondi last Sunday.
This unspeakable atrocity did not occur in a vacuum. Petrol was poured on the flames of antisemitism.
Support for Islamic murder and rape began in Australia while the bodies of slaughtered Jews in Israel were still warm and months before any Israeli military response.
Deeply worried, Family First was quick to join calls for Muslim leaders to break their silence over the mass rally of Muslims on the steps of the Opera House on October 10 yelling "gas the Jews" and "f…the Jews". That silence was never broken and it spoke volumes and the consequences have been devastating.
In the aftermath of October 7, Channel 9 screened an interview of a Muslim spokeswoman, Assala Sayara, saying Hamas had been "framed" as a terrorist organisation. Seriously?
No one in the Muslim community corrected this dangerous nonsense.
No Muslim leader condemned Sheikh Ibrahim Dadoun, a former Director of Public Relations at the Australian National Imams Council, who declared on October 8 that he was "smiling" and "elated" while declaring a "day of victory".
A crowd of western Sydney Muslims around him yelled "Allahu Akbar".
Hate preacher after hate preacher rose to rostrums in mosques and Islamic centres and called for violence against Jews or called them vile names.
Much of this is detailed in the largely ignored media statements and blogs below that we published over the past two years.
In November 2023 we recorded the public comments of Wissam Haddad (aka Abu Ousayd) of the Al Madina Dawah Centre in Bankstown.
It turns out that centre was frequented by Bondi Jihadist mass murderer Naveed Akram.
We called out other Australian Muslim hate preachers such as Sheikh Ahmed Zoud, head of the Muslim Votes organisation Sheikh Wesam Charkawi and others for backing Hamas.
Zoud later apologised but that didn't stop Dadoun and Charkawi from holding a "glory to the martyrs" rally last October 7 in Paul Keating Park celebrating the achievements of Hamas.
Family First also called for terrorist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir to be banned in Australia.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who spoke up during the days of the first Holocaust, famously said "silence in the face of evil is evil itself, not to speak is to speak, not to act is to act."
As protestors chanted weekly for two years "from the river to the sea", a call for a second Holocaust, Australia's religion of peace was silent as was the Labor Government.
Australian Islam has proven itself to be an enemy of peace, not a religion of peace.
Silence in the face of, and complicity with evil, created the environment for Islamic terrorism to visit Australia last Sunday.
Guns are not the problem. Islam is.
Below are some of the warnings Family First sounded since October 10, 2023.
October 10, 2023
Australia no place for terror-supporters
The Family First Party is shocked and horrified by the outbreak of Islamist terrorism in Israel and outraged by support for it on the streets of Sydney last night.
