Premier Minns’ incessant, unhinged, public vilification of the Australian Muslim community, even in his own electorate of Kogarah, in the St George area and across NSW – in the eyes of many and not only in the Muslim community – constitutes hate speech and is fast becoming the driving force of Islamophobia in NSW.
The Australian Labor Party was quick to condemn Senator Pauline Hanson for her reprehensible comments about the Muslim community, but Premier Minns is not being held to account for his own equally awful comments, seen by many as hateful.
Premier Minns has no authority to criticise the local Muslim community and their faith in mourning the death of their revered Spiritual Leader. His attack does not serve the NSW Labor government, nor does it serve the NSW Labor Party. It only serves him and those to whom Minns is answerable.
On Tuesday 3 March on Seven News Sydney, the Premier stated – in relation to Muslims commemorating the death of the late Spiritual Leader of Iran the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – “He was an evil man, and I think it is atrocious to use an opportunity to commemorate or memorialise an evil person. So, anybody that’s holding these commemorations needs to be very careful that they are not breaching hate speech or terrorism laws in the state because they can expect to be investigated.”
Minns’ ignorant but more so politically charged comments are intimidatory, threatening actually, to people who simply wanted to mourn the death of a religious leader – a scholar of Islam.
Their effect, in actual fact is to fuel further Islamophobic attacks on the Australian Muslim community. Without a doubt. By attacking Islamic religious observance, his comments not only constitute interference in religious freedom by escalated an already Media heightened anti Muslim sentiment.
The Mosque in Lakemba is constantly being threatened with bombings and now the Premier’s comments will only widen the threats across NSW.
His comments also suggest that the commemorations somehow lend support to terrorist groups. This has the effect of labeling the entire Australian Muslim community as terrorism supporters and therefore open to Police probe.
It also emboldens Islamophobes to attack the community as we now see more and more on social media platforms. Even Zionist -genocide supporting organisations in Australia – are now emboldened enough to call for prosecution of mourners in the Muslim community.
Chris Minns, an unabashed public supporter of Israel, has said nothing about the extremist views of some Zionist groups in NSW. By persisting with his own attacks and his dehumanisation of the Muslim community, Minns is actively working against the federal government’s policy of Social Cohesion.
He has shown no shame in his attacks on the Muslim community and no respect for the community harmony platform of the Australian Labor party he is supposed to represent and more so to the people of NSW and the Muslim community that has always supported him and Labor.
His willful attacks on the Muslim community and his blind, unquestioning support of Zionist organisations seen by many as appalling. It is repugnant to see Labor parliamentary colleagues gagged and threatened and Labor Party leaders and Union leaders sit silently by in the face of his persistent Islamophobic behaviour.
The Australian Labor Party and the Union movement must speak up and end this abuse of authority.
The Muslim community is tired of this biased and hateful behaviour and rejects his ongoing “fetish with attacking the Muslim community” and it demands action. Community representatives and members of the Party in the Muslim community demand that the Labor Party act to immediately stop this rot and stop the Premier’s attack on the Islamic community.
The Premier and Labor are losing whatever credibility they may have held within the Australian Muslim community in NSW.
In a press release by the Shia Muslim Council of Australia, SMCA, entitled: SMCA Objects to Premier Minns Comments, the SMCA notes that “for millions of Muslims, including the Shia community in Australia, these gatherings are sacred acts of remembrance, reflection, and faith. Characterising them in such (adverse) terms is deeply disrespectful and undermines the fundamental right to religious expression.”
In support of this position, the president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, AFIC, Dr Rateb Jneid, notes in AFIC’s press release dated Wed 04/03/26, that: “The Muslim Community in New South Wales will not forget how it has been treated. With the next election approaching, the government should not underestimate the depth of feeling that now exists across the community.”
Echoing AFIC’s sentiment, His Eminence, Sheikh Nabha, Imam of Kingsgrove Mosque, is reported to have said in the Australian 06/March/2026, that Minns has abandoned the Muslim community.
Sheikh Nabha recalls inviting people to vote for the Labor Party, but he says: “today we simply say to them: when you change, we will change. When you alter your positions, we will alter ours. When you do not support the issues of Muslims and Arabs and what matters to us, then we will vote for someone else.”
Premier Minns had called for respect when hosting President Isaac Hertzog of Israel. He wanted the Australian people to show respect for a man accused of inciting war crimes in Gaza.
Yet, argues SMCA, “when the Muslim community peacefully grieves a spiritual and religious leader in accordance with long standing tradition, he describes it as ‘atrocious’. “Such inconsistency” argues SMCA “further entrenches the selective outrage and unequal treatment many have observed over the past two years. “
Such Minns inconsistency can also be seen with reference to the 2022 parliamentary debate on banning the Nazi swastika. Though he was Opposition leader at the time, he showed understanding for the Hindu and Buddhist communities in their religious use of the Swastika as banned by the 2022 Crimes Amendment Prohibition on display of Nazi Symbols) Bill 2022.
This Bill passed both houses with unanimous support. The legislation included explicit exception to the religious use of the swastika in connection with Buddhism, Hinduism or Jainism as display of the Swastika would not be treated as a Nazi Symbol. Opposition leader Minns showed understanding and respect to such religious beliefs.
Today Premier Minns has extended no such understanding or respect to Australian Muslims mourning the death of a religious scholar, venerated by millions of Muslims around the world – and by Australian Muslims – who broke no Australian law in practicing their faith, yet are attacked and cast as terror supporters.
If Chris Minns wants to support Israel and oppose Iran that is his prerogative. But for him as Premier of the state, to imply somehow that by Muslims holding memorial service for a spiritual leader is “atrocious”, is an unacceptable stigmatisation of an entire religious community.
The Premier’s hypocrisy is there for all to see. Premier Minns has caused irrevocable damage with his remarks to the Australian Muslim community.
His continued demonisation of the Australian Muslim community will not only harm the Australian Labor Party but the social cohesion we are all eager to sustain.
Comments