Campus Review Vol 29. Issue 6 June 2019 | Seite 15

policy & reform
campusreview.com.au
Tribute outside the Al
Noor Mosque. Photo:
William West/AFP
We were warned
Normalised Islamophobic
language stoked right‑wing
fascism, academic says.
By Dalal Oubani
N
otwithstanding the news coverage of the Christchurch
terrorist attacks in New Zealand, where more than 50
innocent victims died as a result of the carnage on 15 March
2019, the elephant in the room remains.
While the mainstream media desperately tried to employ the
lone-wolf narrative to describe and sanitise the character of the
white Australian accused of the shootings, using nostalgic references
to his childhood as an “angelic boy” (Daily Mirror) with “curly hair”
(The Sunday Mail), a clear uncomfortable truth became apparent.
Brenton Tarrant, 28, from Grafton, NSW, was in many ways just an
average Aussie.
There were no real predisposing risk factors for his behaviour,
regardless of how vigorously one searched his past, and no hints for
the Australian or New Zealand authorities that he could potentially
commit such a heinous massacre. Indeed, Tarrant’s description of
himself as a “regular white man, from a regular family” who was
born in Australia to a “working class, low-income family” does not
contradict the views of those who knew him well, including his
former employer, gym manager Tracey Gray, who told the ABC that
Tarrant was a “model fitness instructor” who liked to help people.
The fact that Tarrant was so easily and extremely radicalised
therefore begs the questions of why and how. Why did a model
Australian citizen suddenly become an infamous international
terrorist, and how could his life experiences have led him to believe
that his actions were both justifiable and morally sound?
To answer these complex questions, we need to first address the
unflagging elephant in the room. For decades, Australian politicians
and the media have normalised dehumanising discourse when
referring to Australian Muslims, who despite contrary belief are far
from being a homogenous group. From border safety to security
and migration, all crucial national issues have been reduced to
Islamophobic and anti-Arab racialised discourse.
In fact, the attacks became so offensively common and rampant
that they required the director-general of ASIO, Duncan Lewis, to
contact Coalition politicians in 2015 to warn them that their political
language risked compromising national security. Lewis’s predecessor,
David Irvine, had also warned against marginalising Australian
Muslims, who he said were Australia’s greatest defence against
violent extremism.
However, it is clear that while national public discourse has focused
on holding this very community solely accountable – a community
that has played a pivotal role in helping authorities to circumvent
terrorist attacks in Australia – little has been done to mitigate the
risk of terrorist attacks by right-wing extremists and the rise of white
supremacy in the communities most susceptible to their influence.
In fact, political and media discourse in Australia has encouraged
it and emboldened extremists by lending legitimacy to their voices in
both critical spheres.
The impact this has on social cohesion and violence was raised
as a key concern almost four years ago in September 2015, during
a Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) community meeting in
Bexley, NSW. Research conducted following the infamous 2005
Cronulla riots was also cited. It found that Australia’s education
system had compromised the country’s social cohesion due to the
dehumanisation of the Australian Muslim identity, through its lack of
inclusion in the curriculum.
Ironically, the then NSW deputy police commissioner, Nick Kaldas,
and Multicultural NSW senior community relations adviser, Malcolm
Haddon, who were at the meeting, had no real answer to how the
combined effects of Australia’s political and educational systems and
media institutions were inciting right-wing fascism and violence.
To put it simply, Australia’s Islamophobic political and media
discourse, combined with its lack of an inclusive educational
curriculum, has made the country a ripe breeding ground for right-
wing extremists and terrorists.
The authors of the research into the social effects of Australia’s
educational curriculum, Oubani and Oubani (2014), in fact predicted
five years ago that unless our educational system became more
inclusive due to the burden imposed on it by Australian politicians
and media institutions, we could anticipate more race riots, social
instability and violence.
This lack of inclusion has repercussions for Australia’s social
cohesion: it risks turning Australia’s arguably most precious asset and
investment – multiculturalism – into a liability.
A lack of accountability and responsibility in our systems and
institutions has meant that our law enforcement services have
become burdened with the task of erratically following ambiguous
trails of evidence in the hope of keeping us all safe. And as the case
of Tarrant has proven, some of the deadliest terrorists are almost
impossible to detect.
As terrorist acts often feed off each other, as evidenced by the
man who rammed his car into a Brisbane mosque less than 24 hours
after the Christchurch attacks and then vowed afterwards to “cull”
the Australian Muslim population, it is paramount that we address the
growth of right-wing extremism in Australia.
It’s time all Australians take some responsibility for the rise in
all types of extremism in our communities, as it is clear from the
comments of the director-general of ASIO that the Australian Muslim
population has more than contributed its fair share to help keep
extremism at bay.
To achieve this crucial national objective though, we must first
confront the relentless elephant in the room.  ■
Dalal Oubani is an academic literacy teacher and director of
Accelerate Australia, a not-for-profit organisation that assesses
the impact of the Australian Curriculum on Australian Society.
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