Islamophobic incidents – including physical attacks, verbal harassment, people being spat on and rape threats – have more than doubled in the past two years, with girls and women bearing the brunt of hatred towards Muslims in Australia, new research shows.
The fifth Islamophobia in Australia report details 309 in-person incidents between January 2023 and December 2024 – a more than 2.5-fold increase from the previous reporting period. Verified online incidents more than tripled to 366.
Girls and women accounted for three quarters of all incidents and were a third more likely to be physically attacked than boys and men.
“It’s really become a gendered Islamophobia,” said Dr Nora Amath, the executive director of the Islamophobia Register. “The majority of victims are Muslim women and the majority of perpetrators are male. It’s very obvious and really concerning.”
The research by the Islamophobia Register and Deakin and Monash universities, released on Thursday, represented the largest rise in Islamophobic incidents since the report began as a Facebook post in 2014. It’s released every two years.
Children were present in a number of cases and were witness to their mothers being “choked, bashed, punched or called some awful names”, Amath said.
One mother was allegedly set upon while sitting at a food court in a shopping centre with her five children, the report states.
“An unknown lady yelled out ‘fuck Muslims’ and punched me in the head, knocking me out in front of my kids. I was admitted to hospital where a CT scan showed my nose was broken,” she told researchers.
“Me and my kids are seeing a psychologist for the trauma. We don’t leave the house unless it’s necessary as we have a fear that it will happen again.”
Another woman recounted: “When walking to get into train station, a man said to me, ‘I’ll rip that scarf off your head and smash your head and rape you’.”
In one incident, a man entered a mosque and desecrated it with faeces, the report states.
Almost half of the in-person incidents were in New South Wales, home to Australia’s largest Muslim population.
More than a quarter took place on streets or while parking or driving, while the second most common setting was workplaces, alongside schools, shopping centres, universities and public transport.
Women reported more than three times the number of Islamophobic incidents at workplaces than men – a finding the authors said was “even more significant” given Muslim women were under-employed compared to Muslim men in Australia.
School was the only location where more cases were reported against Muslim boys than girls, with boys making up 63% of incidents in schools, according to the report.
There was a spike in incidents in the three weeks after the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023 and during the subsequent war in Gaza. There was a 1,300% increase in reports to the register during that period compared to the same time the previous year, the report states.
The register defines Islamophobia as targeting Muslims and perceived Muslims. A number of the victims were not Muslim, Amath said.
She said much of the abuse was “dehumanising” and more research was needed on the long-term impact of Islamophobia, but data suggested victims suffered from trauma, anxiety, self-exclusion and fear of being in public.
“People are scared. For Muslim women, the most dangerous space to her is the public space,” Amath said.
“The impact is that women are then afraid to leave their homes, some quit their jobs and are in debt because they can’t work. For those in workplaces, it means they can’t bring their whole self to work, they can’t be seen to be in solidarity with Palestine.”
The report’s authors believe the figures were an underestimation of the true extent of Islamophobia in Australia because of under-reporting.
There has also been a steep rise in the number of antisemitic incidents in Australia during the ongoing wars in the Middle East.
In its 2024 report, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry detailed 2,062 incidents of antisemitism, including physical attacks, such as rock throwing, vandalism of synagogues, Hitler salutes, and abusive graffiti and chants.
