Sydney’s Islamist gay-bashings are a symptom of a deep sickness

The belief that Australia is among the world’s most peaceful multicultural societies has taken a series of blows in recent years. Recent news that gay teenagers in Sydney have been violently assaulted by Islamist bigots, who gleefully filmed the attacks, has delivered a knockout punch to this comforting illusion.

The latest investigation by the ABC, Australia’s state broadcaster, lays bare the diseased state of Australian civil society. Young men from western Sydney, supporters of ISIS-backing imams, have filmed themselves violently assaulting young homosexuals. They have carried out these attacks by luring their victims – some as young as 16 – on dating apps such as Wizz and Grindr, before ambushing them in dark, isolated isolated locations. The attacks have been occurring for at least two years.

The videos uncovered by the ABC aren’t for the faint of heart. One of them shows a 16-year-old being forced into a toilet block where he is repeatedly punched on the ground. His attackers verbally abuse him throughout the assault, calling him a ‘faggot’ and a ‘kafir’ – someone who doesn’t believe in Islam. Another video shows a boy lying on the grass, where he is repeatedly stomped and called a ‘gay dog’. ‘You wanna be gay? You wanna be gay?’, attackers goadingly say to a victim in a separate video. It’s harrowing footage.

Part of the reason why these events were concealed for so long – the first attack happened in March 2024 – is because the perpetrators and some of the victims were minors at the time. It isn’t clear how many attacks have taken place, although the ABC reports that five people have been convicted, while its reporting indicates at least three victims.

What is clear, however, is that the attackers were motivated by one of Australia’s burgeoning Islamist sects. Indeed, the five convicted were reportedly linked to a ‘network’ that included Naveed and Sajid Akram – the father and son duo who carried out the anti-Semitic Bondi massacre in December – and another young man who stabbed a Sydney bishop in April 2024. The influence of Wisam Haddad – a vocal supporter of Islamic State, and one of Australia’s most hardline Islamic leaders — is notable in each of these cases. Haddad, a long-time preacher at Sydney’s Al Medinah Dawah Centre, was found last year to have breached racial-hatred laws over a series of anti-Semitic sermons titled the ‘Jews of Al Madina’, in which he described Jews as ‘vile’ and ‘treacherous’. He has also said that homosexuality should be ‘punishable by death’ in an Islamic society. The Al Medinah Dawah Centre was closed in December after it was revealed that Naveed Akram worshipped there.

Australia now finds itself in a very bleak situation. Sydney is a city where gays and Jews have been hunted down by men united under the banner of Islamism – a force that arrived late to Australia compared to the UK and Europe, but which is now making its presence known. The starkest example of this was the anti-Semitic massacre on Bondi, in which 14 Jews – including a young girl and a Holocaust survivor – were killed at a Hanukkah celebration.

Hovering at the periphery of this story is that most inexplicable of movements: Queers for Palestine. Despite the intense hatred Hamas harbours towards homosexuals, many of Australia’s ‘queer’ activists – reflecting a pattern across the West – tacitly supported the Islamic militants in their war against Israel. This cognitive dissonance only deepens in light of the fact that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that supports, indeed celebrates, the rights of gays and lesbians.

Yet Sydney’s significant queer community has been more or less silent on the recent attacks. They appear to be unable to grapple with the fact that young men supporting ISIS – an ideology that bares striking parallels with Hamas, notably in its hatred of gays – could carry out such savage beatings. Their hatred of Israel has blinded them to the real nature of their supposed ‘allies’.

Like many Western countries, Australia appears to be a different place altogether since the 7 October attacks. Sydney is the epicentre of this degeneration. A country whose biggest city isn’t safe for Jews and homosexuals is in a very dark place indeed.

Hugo Timms is a staff writer at spiked.