ECAJ welcomes court ruling banning antisemitic sermons

A Federal Court judge has ordered the removal of a Muslim preacher’s speeches containing “fundamentally racist and antisemitic” statements from social media, in a ruling celebrated by Jewish leaders as a significant step in confronting hate speech in Australia.

The case centred on lectures delivered by Wissam Haddad (born William), also known as Abu Ousayd, at the Al Madina Dawah Centre in Sydney’s Bankstown in November 2023. The speeches, which were shared on platforms including Facebook and Rumble, described Jewish people as “wicked,” “scheming,” “vile,” “mischievous,” and “descendants of apes and pigs,” according to court documents.

The speeches were made soon after the horrific Hamas attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023, which perversely fuelled an unprecedented surge in antisemitism worldwide, including in Australia.

 

Justice Angus Stewart found the lectures breached the Racial Discrimination Act, rejecting Haddad’s defence that his remarks were based on religious texts and directed only at a private Muslim audience. The judge ruled the speeches conveyed “disparaging imputations” likely to “offend, insult, humiliate and intimidate” Jewish people in Australia, reviving “age-old tropes” that are “fundamentally racist and antisemitic.”

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), which launched the legal action, welcomed the ruling. Co-chief executive Peter Wertheim described the speeches as “grossly antisemitic” and warned that unchecked hate speech poses a direct threat to social cohesion.

“When it became evident that the responsible authorities could not or would not act to protect vulnerable members of our community from hate-mongering, threats and violence, we had no alternative but to act ourselves to defend the safety and honour of our community,” Wertheim said.

“That decision has been vindicated by today’s judgment,” he added. “The days when Jewish communities and the Jewish people can be vilified and targeted with impunity are a thing of the past.”

Wertheim rejected suggestions the case was about limiting free speech or religious freedom. “This case was not about freedom of expression or religious freedom. It was about antisemitism and the abuse of those freedoms to promote hatred,” he said.

ECAJ deputy president Robert Goot echoed those concerns, warning that if such vilification were tolerated, it would threaten Australia’s peace and multicultural fabric.

“People are free to engage in robust debate about international conflicts, whether their beliefs are true or false, informed or ignorant,” Goot said. “But that does not include the freedom to mobilize racism as a tool to dehumanize and vilify entire communities on the basis of their racial, ethnic, or ethno-religious identity.”

“Especially since October 7, the Jewish community has been vilified by many people, including that preacher of antisemitic hate, Mr. Haddad,” Goot said. “We brought this action to protect the safety of the Jewish community and to uphold its honour and dignity.”

“We have been vindicated by the court today,” Goot added. “Mr. Haddad’s speeches were, as we submitted, unlawful.”

Goot stressed that no community in Australia should be subjected to the kind of dehumanisation Haddad’s speeches promoted. “Freedom of expression must not be abused by the promotion of hateful antisemitism,” he said. “And those that wish to do so should know that that conduct will not be tolerated by us.”

Wertheim also emphasized the broader consequences of allowing racial hatred to go unchecked. “If the 300 ancestry groups and 100 faith communities living in Australia today were all free to vilify one another in the way Mr. Haddad vilified the Jewish people, the door would be wide open to chronic racial and sectarian strife,” he said.

“Common decency should dictate that free speech and freedom of religion do not include the right to racially vilify other people,” Wertheim said. “But when common decency is lacking, as we have seen far too often over the past 21 months, then the law will draw that line for us, as today’s judgment has demonstrated with crystal clarity.”

During cross-examination, Haddad admitted he knew the speeches would be published online but denied intending to provoke controversy through racism, insisting his remarks referred to “Jews of faith, not of ethnicity” and repudiating that he had set out to attract attention by giving controversial and disparaging speeches about Jews.

Haddad’s legal team argued the speeches included religious references and political commentary on the Gaza conflict, contending that any prohibition would infringe constitutional protections for religious expression. Justice Stewart dismissed those arguments.

Even while the court was deliberating its ruling last week, Haddad further inflamed tensions by delivering a new speech accusing the “Jewish lobby” of attempting to undermine Islam.

The court ordered Haddad and the Al Madina Dawah Centre to remove the offending lectures from social media and barred Haddad from publicly making similar disparaging remarks. The court also ordered Haddad to pay the legal expenses of Peter Wertheim and Robert Goot, who represent the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.

Independent MP for Wentworth, Allegra Spender, has welcomed the Federal Court’s decision but says the matter should never have been left to civil proceedings alone.

“This ruling is an important step in holding people accountable for hate speech, and I commend the Executive Council of Australian Jewry for taking this action,” Spender wrote on social media. “But it should not fall to community groups to pursue lengthy and costly civil cases to challenge clear-cut examples of vilification. We need to see stronger enforcement of existing criminal laws to deal with this behaviour, which causes real harm and fear in our society.”