Islamophobic Graffiti Discovered in Western Sydney Over Weekend

New South Wales Premier Chris Minns has labelled an incident of Islamophobic graffiti in Sydney’s west as “disgusting”.

The graffiti was discovered on Sunday morning in Hector Street, Sefton, where vandals had written “fuck Islam” on both sides of a railway underpass, as well as “cancel Islam” over an ad in the underpass.

Premier Minns condemned the act, saying that conflict and division from around the world cannot be imported to Sydney streets.

“Vandalism like this that is aimed at particular religions is designed to incite hatred and is completely abhorrent,” he said.

“This racism and Islamophobia is disgusting and corrosive to the very fabric of the successful multicultural state that we have built here in NSW.”

Local MP for Blaxland, Education Minister Jason Clare, said that the vandals were “brain-dead morons” in an interview with the ABC this morning.

The area has one of the state’s largest Muslim populations in NSW, with census figures showing that almost 40 per cent of residents identify as Muslim.

The graffiti has since been painted over and NSW Police are launching an investigation into a potential hate crime.

Spike in Islamophobia across Australia

Spokesperson for the Australian National Imams Council, Bilal Rauf, said that the act was deplorable, and called for “immediate and decisive action” from both state and federal governments.

“Governments at all levels must recognise this escalating crisis and implement robust measures to combat it … to ensure the safety and well-being of all communities in Australia.

“For a long time these types of events have been dealt with as run-of-the-mill type of events, without giving any recognition to the actual hatred component of it.

“We hope that this time there will be that emphasis given and it will be treated with a degree of urgency, importance and seriousness.”

This last month has seen multiple acts of both antisemitism and Islamophobia, with anti-Israeli graffiti in Woolhara, the firebombing of the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne, and an Islamic college school bus set on fire in Adelaide.

The Islamophobia Register has been documenting Islamophobic acts in Australia since 2014, and said that there has been a 600 per cent increase in reported incidents in the last year, though they note that these reports represent only a fraction of actual incidents.

Similarly, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry said they had documented a 316 per cent increase in antisemitic incidents in the same time frame.