Islamophobia in Australia - II (2016-2017)

This report offers a multi-faceted analysis of verified incidents reported to the Islamophobia Register Australia by victims, proxies and witnesses in the two-year period of 2016-2017. It is a continuation of the first Islamophobia in Australia Report, published in 2017, which was widely cited and formed a consensus that Islamophobia is an uncontested phenomenon in Australia (see the impact of the first report in Appendix II). While there are multiple definitions of Islamophobia, this report adopted the definition that refined the scope of Islamophobia to instances such as the perpetration of verbal and physical anti-Muslim abuse together with denigration of Muslim identity. Salman Sayyid’s definition of Islamophobia helped to classify physical (offline) cases such as “violence, violations, discrimination and subordination” in the physical world (Sayyid 2014). Zempi and Awan’s definition was used to assess online modes of anti-Muslim hostility and intolerance such as “harassment, stalking abuse, incitement, threatening behaviour, bullying and intimidation” in the cyber world (Zempi and Awan 2016, p.6). All verified authentic incidents that ft these definitions were qualified for inclusion in the present report’s analysis.

Of the 551 incidents reported to the Islamophobia Register Australia for the two-year period, 349 incidents were verified and included in the report. The large chunk of discarded incidents included deliberate fake reporting by some Islamophobes, who aimed to undermine the Register’s authentic data. Some cases were also omitted because verification was not possible. After the data was cleaned and coded, SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) descriptive analysis was employed to quantify the findings. In addition, datamining techniques were used to discover some meaningful patterns and predict future possibilities.