The group operating Australia's largest mosque has defended hosting Prime Minister Anthony Albanese after he was heckled during Eid prayers, a confrontation he has put down to "outlawing extremist organisations".
Albanese visited the Lakemba mosque in Sydney's south-west for the first time in two and a half years on Friday morning for Eid al-Fitr prayers, marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
He had attended the mosque on multiple occasions prior to 7 October 2023, but hadn't been invited back amid dissatisfaction with the government's stance on Israel's war on Gaza. SBS understands mosque leaders had accepted a request by Albanese to attend, seeing it as an opportunity to discuss policy.
Following several minutes of prayers, a group of men stood up and started shouting at Albanese and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, labelling them "genocide supporters".
"Why is he here? Get him out of here! It's a disgrace," a man can be heard shouting during footage of the prayers streamed by Lakemba mosque.
The heckling began as Gamel Kheir, secretary of the Lebanese Muslim Association (LMA), which runs Lakemba mosque, stood up to deliver an address after prayer and urged calm.
Speaking to SBS News afterwards, Kheir explained the purpose of the visit was to create a platform to express "growing alarm and concern" in the community over the government's response to "atrocities" in the Middle East.
"What people are really hurt by is we've lived now nearly through three years of a genocide taking place in Gaza, and people are at their wits' end," he said,
Kheir said these sentiments have been simmering and boiled over with Israeli action in Lebanon, stating there is "duplicity" in the government's silence, with attacks that are affecting loved ones in the community.
A United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry, which does not speak on behalf of the UN as a whole and has been sharply criticised by Israel, concluded in September that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Israel is separately defending a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which has ordered provisional measures but has yet to issue a final ruling.
Israel has repeatedly denied committing genocide in Gaza, saying it has the right to defend itself.
It "categorically" rejected the commission's findings as "distorted and false", while Netanyahu has described the ICJ case as "outrageous" and said Israel has an "unwavering commitment" to international law.
Following joint strikes on Iran by the United States and Israel, the Iran-backed group Hezbollah launched missiles from Lebanon into Israel, and in turn broke a fragile ceasefire that had been in place since November 2024. It prompted Israel to respond with deadly attacks across Lebanon.
Speaking to reporters in South Australia, Albanese downplayed the heckling, attributing it to a small minority of people opposed to new hate speech laws.
"Some people don’t like the fact that we’ve outlawed extremist organisations like Hizb ut-Tahir and that brought a response from a couple of people," he said on Friday afternoon.
"But if you've got a couple of people heckling in a crowd of 30,000 that should be put in that perspective."
Earlier this month, the government outlawed the Hizb ut-Tahrir Islamic organisation under new hate speech laws in the wake of the Bondi beach terror attack, after a recommendation from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.
Albanese has repeatedly stated the government's position that it supports US and Israeli action against Iran, but has not commented publicly on the conflict between Israel and Lebanon.
Close to one million people have been displaced, more than 800 people killed, and entire homes flattened, according to Lebanon's Disaster Risk Management Unit, prompting the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security to issue a red alert against the US-Israeli aggression.
Kheir said he'd respectfully communicated that the group was not supportive of the government's position, reminding them of their legal obligations under the United Nations charter.
The LMA also discussed the rise of Islamophobia and the far right, urging the government to reconsider religion vilification measures that were dumped last month during hate speech law changes in the wake of the Bondi attack.
"We wanted to express our anger at that that that the loophole is that being Islamophobic is okay because it doesn't target a race, it's a religion," Kheir said.
He said there had been an acknowledgement that the concerns had been "received and respected" and it was now up to Albanese and Burke to respond.
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