The resignation of Australia’s first hijab-wearing Senator Fatima Payman from the ruling Labor Party has laid bare the country’s deep-seated Islamophobia, as the young politician faced a torrent of intimidation and bullying from her own colleagues over her principled vote to recognise Palestinian statehood.
Payman’s defiant stance against her party’s official position put her on a collision course with the Labor government, which does not recognise Palestinian sovereignty but supports a two-state solution.
Amid growing domestic anger over Canberra’s approach to the Gaza crisis, the Afghan-born senator – whose family fled Afghanistan after the Taliban took over in 1996 – had spoken out in support of the Palestinian cause, even publishing an opinion piece in Al Jazeera before the fateful vote.
The backlash was swift and severe. Payman claims she was exiled by her Labor peers, who reportedly “leaked” to the national broadcaster that she had sought “God’s guidance” on the issue – a thinly-veiled attempt to portray her as an extremist.
Right-wing politicians, meanwhile, renewed warnings that Payman’s actions could foster a new “Muslim political party” and threaten Australia’s “social cohesion”.
Her decision to vote with the Greens to support a motion on Palestinian statehood late last month resulted in her suspension from the Labor caucus. She resigned from the party last week and is now an independent senator in parliament.
Observers say her resignation has now exposed the ugly underbelly of Australian politics, where principled stances on sensitive foreign policy issues can result in a politician’s career being unceremoniously derailed.
Media Watch, a media criticism programme from national broadcaster ABC, denounced Payman’s former colleagues’ remarks as blatant “dog whistling” to anti-Muslim sentiment.
The Islamophobia Register of Australia, meanwhile, expressed deep concern that the “current tone of political commentary and public discussion” could “inflame” further discrimination against the Muslim community. The organisation’s executive director Nora Amath in a statement blasted “the scornful and alarmist tone” of the comments referencing God, which she said “can be seen as mocking an Australian Muslim woman’s faith and seem particularly pointed at her Islamic religion, given parliament begins each day of sitting with the Lord’s Prayer”.
Muslim journalists, speaking anonymously to local publication Crikey, slammed the mainstream media’s tone-deaf handling of Islamic religious terminology like “Inshallah” – a common phrase meaning “if God wills it” – which Payman had invoked. Some dismissed the furore as a “beat-up” online, while the senator herself decried being singled out as “a visibly Muslim woman” and said she felt offended and insulted that she would be asked to justify her use of “God”.
“When I told my colleagues that I would be praying and seeking guidance from God, that was in confidence and I did not expect that they would go around telling people almost in a condescending, ridiculing way,” Payman told ABC last week.
This was not the first time Payman had faced such targeted abuse. Earlier this year, she was subject to cries of “terrorist” in parliament over her vocal support for the Palestinian cause and use of the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” – deemed by some as antisemitic and sympathetic to extremism.
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Online hate stokes fear among Muslims as Indian elections loom
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By contrast, politicians elsewhere across the Asia-Pacific have taken a more unequivocal stance on the Palestinian crisis.
Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has emerged as a leading regional voice opposing Israel’s actions in Gaza, while Indonesia’s outgoing President Joko Widodo has vocally condemned the attacks.
Closer to home, the Australian government has sought to address the growing bigotry, appointing a new special envoy to combat antisemitism on Tuesday and pledging an envoy to tackle Islamophobia “shortly” as well.
However, the opposition has struck a more ominous tone. Opposition leader Peter Dutton speculated last week that having “Muslim candidates” in a future Labor government would be “a disaster”, while his colleagues have expressed alarm about a perceived “Muslim voices movement” in Australia.
The Islamophobia Register’s Amath noted the glaring double standard, observing that other faith-based political groups like the Australian Christian Party faced no such vilification. These attitudes, she said, suggested “only Muslim political movements were a problem.”
Analysts note that the opposition’s concerns were not that a “faith-based” party could emerge per se, but one that specifically has a Muslim political identity.
“Australia’s multiculturalism worries over the place of Muslims in Australian society. The country calls itself secular, but retains a Christian identity in culturally ambiguous but nonetheless tangible ways,” said Australian National University Professor of History Frank Bongiorno in an analysis in The Conversation this week.
“Muslims are commended when they conform to the role of model minority in such a society. Explicit support for ‘Australian values’ is regularly demanded of them in a way no Christian migrant group experiences.”
When asked why the media-political class in Australia could not overcome its Islamophobia, Greg Noble, a professor at the Western Sydney University’s Institute for Culture and Society, said Australia has resorted to “reducing a complex world into simple answers”, similar to countries like the United States.
“‘Islam has long been code in the West for violence, terrorism, despotism, and so on. So rather than try to disentangle complex situations, they opt for scare figures,” Noble told This Week in Asia.
“The Labor party have effectively backed Payman into a corner by depriving her of the ability to speak publicly about an issue which is of central importance not only to those of Muslim background but to many whose families come from the Middle East.”
