It was a nice, comfortable morning; people were in a festive mood for the day of Eid. On that morning, I saw the Australian Prime Minister and the Minister for Home Affairs, two of the most powerful politicians in the country, being heckled inside the most prominent mosque in Australia. Personally, I am still undecided about what to think of this incident, yet I cannot ignore the obvious management failure.
The prayer was scheduled for 7:45 am. On most Eid days, I have had to pray on the street, so this year I was determined and arrived more than an hour early. It was already full of people, but I was able to find a place in the main prayer hall, and it was still slightly dark outside.
On the way to the mosque, I noticed plastic sheets had been laid on parts of Wangee Road, but they covered only half the road’s width. There were no plastic sheets on most of the road up to the roundabout in front of Hampden Park Public School, where cordons were in place to stop traffic. The road was wet from the night’s rain. I knew at that moment that thousands of people would be forced to pray on the wet road, and many of them would not have their own prayer mats.
I couldn’t help but think it would not cost much or take much effort to lay down enough black plastic sheets to cover the entire available area. That would have made the experience much better for many people. However, I had to step inside quickly before the mosque became full, even at that early hour.
At that moment, it reminded me of another experience from the previous evening.
During iftar, I put on the Voice of Islam radio station to break our fast when they announce the Adhan. Their practice is to play Qur’an recitation until it’s time for iftar. On the last day of Ramadan, iftar was at 7:11 pm. The surah they were playing finished at 7:04 pm and, to my astonishment, the announcement for iftar was made and the Adhan started!!
I just sat there, unable to believe my ears, and noticed that one of my children was about to take a date. I told them it wasn’t time yet. After four takbirs and one shahada, they abruptly stopped the Adhan and resumed Qur’an recitation. There was no apology or explanation.
On the way to the mosque on Eid morning, both of these experiences made me think about our weaknesses in management. We simply failed to anticipate what is obvious. In both cases, responsible people didn’t think at all from the consumers’ or users’ perspectives.
Then, I saw what happened inside the mosque after the Eid prayer.
In a crowd of thousands, I was able to spot only three people who were shouting and acting out. It was a warm and welcoming environment, until it was not. Everyone started trying to stop them, but it only made them louder. Someone tried to physically stop one protester. People also stood up to stop them; a crowd gathered, and it obviously became a security threat to the ministers. The security details grabbed the ministers and vanished. It all happened so quickly that nobody was able to control it and regain discipline or calm.
I went back to the same mosque later that day for Juma prayer, and Sheikh Yahya Safi’s khutba/sermon was full of rebuke and scolding towards the people, delivered with his usual wisdom and supported by evidence from the Qur’an and Sunnah. But the damage was done; we couldn’t honour the guests we invited.
Like everyone else, I have this underlying pain mixed with our joy and festivities, where we constantly remember our brothers and sisters in Gaza and everywhere else. We all have this helplessness where we feel we couldn’t do what we should do to support them. We all have this guilty feeling of our own incompetence. We cannot support Australia’s complicity in genocide. Yet this shouting and heckling of Mr Anthony Albanese and Mr Tony Burke is certainly not something we should do, not by a long distance.
Within a short timeframe, I witnessed another management failure. This incident could have been prevented.
However, at the same time, I felt I witnessed the beauty of democracy firsthand. I have lived in several countries, and in none of them could someone shout like this at political leaders, let alone the Prime Minister, to their faces and walk away unpunished. I read Mr Albanese’s post-event comments to the media and couldn’t help but commend his sportsmanship.
I think both of them knew the risk of coming to a Muslim crowd in this political climate, yet they came and faced it without avoidance. I remember reading news about them being booed while attending the Bondi memorial. They got booed in Lakemba mosque, too. It probably shows that they are in the middle ground, exactly where they should be.
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