The Australian Muslim Advocacy Network (AMAN) has called for terrorism laws to be changed, arguing that a dangerous and toxic psycho-social environment has been created by the governments of Australia, UK, Canada and New Zealand through officially conflating Islam and terrorism in their law.
In a submission to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, AMAN laid out the health implications for Australian Muslims.
A study published last year showed that efforts to educate the broader community about Islam and Muslims were completely eroded by terrorism news coverage.
AMAN has argued that over time, Islam can be decoupled from public terrorism discourse by amending the terrorist act definition to remove the motive element, which provides that a terrorist act is intended to advance a political, ideological, or religious cause. A range of legal experts have also recommended this change.
“There needs to be an urgent reflection on the relationship between laws, definitions, public discourse and understanding, and social phenomena,” said AMAN. They argued the label of ‘religiously motivated terrorism’ fueled both ISIS and racist nationalist narratives and helped their recruiters.
The submission also raised concerns about dehumanising material online.
“Dehumanisation is a common feature of far-right movements. We are concerned about the role of various foreign ethno-nationalist movements in inciting hatred against Muslims online and perpetuating narratives based on dehumanising tropes, such as ‘love jihad’ or “all Muslims are terrorists.”
“The Australian Government should regulate social media companies in a way that treats online hate campaigns as public harm, not as a private complaint. Standards that prohibit systematic or serial publication of dehumanising material about groups on the basis of protected attributes must be enforced,” said AMAN.
AMAN continues to refine its working definition of dehumanising material.
AMAN is dedicated to securing the psychological and physical wellbeing of Australian Muslims. We focus on preventing harm towards the Muslim community through contributions to policy development, law reform, and using complaints, parliamentary processes, and strategic litigation.
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