In elections gone by, Az Fahmi volunteered for Labor’s home affairs minister, Tony Burke, in her electorate of Watson in Sydney’s south-west. Now she wants change.
“Enough is enough. We’re sick of being taken for granted. We’re sick of being ignored,” says the campaign volunteer, who works in communications.
“For the first time in a very long time, you’re seeing our community really become invested in the electoral process, and starting to believe that there is hope for change.”
Sara, 39, who asked for her real name to be withheld, agrees. The clinical researcher who lives in Caroline Springs, in the Victorian electorate of Gorton, says this election feels different.
“I think this is the first election that I’m going to be walking into with a really keen understanding of how the government will be supporting the Muslim community with the challenges that they’re facing,” she says.
They are two Australian Muslims who are mobilising as a result of a war fought thousands of kilometres away. Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, triggered by the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023, has galvanised a political shift among some of Australia’s 650,000-odd voting-age Muslims who do not feel represented in Canberra.
“There is no question that the Palestine issue is way bigger than politicians realise,” says Nasser Mashni, the president of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (Apan), which is leading the Vote with Palestine campaign.
But the conflict is far from the only issue affecting the diverse community. Healthcare, housing and cost of living are all flashpoints – when Fahmi travels to other parts of Sydney, Watson’s inequalities sharpen, she says.
“Gaza was the catalyst, but the sentiment was always there: we had been marginalised and silenced politically on major issues,” says Ghaith Krayem, the national spokesperson for the Melbourne-founded advocacy group Muslim Votes Matter (MVM), which has hundreds of volunteers working on the campaign and thousands signed up to staff polling booths across 10 electorates on 3 May. “None of that existed 18 months ago and it wouldn’t have worked if there wasn’t, within the community itself, a need that wasn’t being fulfilled.”
More than a quarter of Watson’s population was Muslim, according to 2021 ABS data – the seat has had a drastic redistribution since the 2022 federal election, but without radically altering its population mix or its notional Labor majority of just over 15%. The same applies to neighbouring Blaxland, 31.7% Muslim on the 2022 boundaries and safely held by Labor’s education minister, Jason Clare, now with a notional 13% margin.
Calwell, in Victoria, has a Muslim population of 23.8%, with the ALP’s Kuwait-born Basem Abdo hoping to succeed the retiring incumbent, Maria Vamvakinou. Its boundaries have changed only slightly, and Labor’s estimated margin remains similarly comfortable on 12.4%.
Those three seats are respectively being contested by Muslim independents Ziad Basyouny, Ahmed Ouf and Samim Moslih, who are endorsed by both MVM and the unconnected grassroots group The Muslim Vote.
Sheikh Wesam Charkawi credits that national collective – which he helped set up in Sydney – as sparking the broader groundswell, which Fahmi says is community-led and has women as its centre.
Breaking loyalty bonds
Pro-Palestinian sentiment, which has had a noticeable impact on elections in the UK and the US in the past year, is likely to be concentrated in some of the country’s largest Muslim populations, but Mashni and Krayem both believe it extends well beyond those postcodes.
“Palestine has never had a greater constituency,” Mashni says. “And increasingly, the constituency … is not Arab or Muslim. It is Australian. Palestine is a vote winner. Australians understand the concept of the underdog and will always side with an underdog.”
Muslim Votes Matter aims to upset the status quo in Bruce, Wills (both Victoria), Sturt (South Australia), Cowan (Western Australia), Moreton (Queensland), Banks and Werriwa (New South Wales), as well as Blaxland, Watson and Calwell, with an operation led by polling booth-level data from the past two elections, Krayem says.
In Watson and Blaxland, reports of defaced corflutes on both sides of the contest and threats of violence have marred a campaign that has largely been conducted online. But underpinning disparate and sometimes unaligned groups – some of whom have radical views – is a uniting sentiment: “It’s very clear that Muslims do not feel represented,” says Amin Abbas, a Palestinian organiser and executive board member of Apan.
On the ballot, this translates to what he calls a “more considered” choice as voters try to understand party positions and align them with their own. He predicts a shift from the major parties towards independents and minor parties, but does not expect Muslim votes to go to the Liberal party via preferences, given its pro-Israel stance.
Jamal Rifi, a Lebanese Australian general practitioner in Belmore, wrote in The Australian earlier this month that he “knows” candidates backed by what he called “the Muslim Votes political party” were “helping the Liberal party” and did not represent the broader Muslim community. Both Clare and Burke were more locally engaged than the newcomers, he suggested.
But Krayem says MVM does not support any particular party, with both Labor and Liberal-held seats in its sights, and that it is “highly unlikely” its advocacy would lead to an increase in Liberal votes.
Instead, the group hopes to break the “unquestioning loyalty” some sections of the Muslim community have to certain political parties. The process is as much about building a political advocacy group as it is about raising awareness, he says.
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“We’re providing that platform for community to have its voice heard in a way that it chooses to have its voice heard,” he says. “It’s a message to the parties themselves, but it’s also a message to individual members of parliament: you represent your constituents and, if you have ignored a key concern for 18 months, don’t expect that they’re going to support you.”
Whether that message sways results in a meaningful way at this election is not his main focus.
“For us, really, the work will start after the election. We’re not going away. The political establishment has to get used to the fact that we are here and we are going to be loud around the needs of our community.”
‘This is just the beginning’
One of those “needs” is to tackle rising rates of Islamophobia. Nora Amath, the chief executive of Islamophobia Register Australia, says she has tried to draw attention to skyrocketing rates of Muslim-targeted hate without any consistent support from the government.
“This silence is not just disappointing, but really dangerous,” Amath says, referring to the health, social and economic impacts of racism.
“The election is a test. Will our leaders finally treat Islamophobia as the critical issue that it is, or will they continue to look away?”
The community’s secret weapon might be its age. The median age of the Muslim population in Australia is just 28, according to the 2021 census, a full 10 years younger than the general population. Fahmi says it is time for the old guard to step aside.
Amath says she sees young Muslims looking at individual candidates’ values rather than to traditional party allegiances. For the first time, she says, “the Muslim community has been energised to really understand where their votes go, to understand that it has people power”.
Ouf and Basyouny are both drawing from that energy.
“There is no other primary outcome, we are going to win,” Ouf says. “If not, we would have done something that’s never been done, which is marginalise the seat for the first time in its history. This will not be the end for us.”
Basyouny has much the same message. Winning is his priority, achieving a substantial swing a “secondary measure of success”. But he says even if he doesn’t win his team’s efforts will have been worthwhile.
“There’s been more investment in the community the last five weeks than there has been in the last 20 years. This is the first wave of political activation – this is far from over, this is just the beginning.”
Clare, the “kid from western Sydney”, remains determined. “I work my guts out for my community every day and I don’t take anyone’s vote for granted,” he says. “I never have and I never will.”
Burke was contacted for comment.
No matter how votes fall on the day, the fact that Australian Muslims are recognising themselves as a political force is “a big change in and of itself”, says Mashni, who in the past has criticised his community’s lack of political engagement.
“I’m absolutely a believer that my constituency should be engaged in the democratic process,” he says. “And if the Labor party looks like them, they should join it, make it better. If the Greens look like them, join and make it better. If the Liberals look like them, join and make it better. And if they want to run as an independent or support an independent, fantastic: do that.”
