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BRISBANE: School officials have described it as “hate crime” after a bag adorned with a swastika and containing a pig’s head was dumped at the front gate of one of Queensland’s largest Islamic schools.
Staff at the Islamic College of Brisbane discovered the bag and rotting meat early Wednesday morning, hours before more than 1,000 students were to pass through the school’s entrance.
Police responded after being notified, and school authorities provided CCTV footage of the incident, which allegedly showed two men in a Subaru WRX vehicle dropping the items. The car’s number plate was also captured in the video footage.
Acting college chairman Ali Kadri said it was the type of “hate crime” that sprang from the “demonization of [Islamic] schools”.
“Not talking about it just doesn’t help. It’s important to show that there is so much extremism out there that people will get up at six in the morning to do these kind of things,” said Kadri, who is also a spokesman for the Islamic Council of Queensland.
“It’s the normalization, the demonization of the schools that leads to these kind of problems. It’s people who demonize Islamic schools without knowing what goes on there.”
The Islamic College of Brisbane is among those schools owned by the Sydney-based Australian Federation of Islamic Councils.
“Queensland police’s response to this hate crime is phenomenal and we don’t believe there is any threat to safety of staff and kids,” Kadri posted on Facebook.
A Queensland Police spokesman, meanwhile said: “Investigations are underway into incident at an educational facility in Brisbane this morning.”
“Police were called to an Acacia Road, Karawatha address shortly before 9am following reports of a bag containing decaying meat being discovered by members of the facility inside the grounds. There is no further information and police are continuing their investigation.’’
A recent study, Islamophobia in Australia, have found a high incidence of Islamophobia in Queensland despite the relative small population of Muslims in that state.
The paper’s authors contextualized Islamophobia as a special form of racism that reveals “indiscriminate negative attitudes or emotions directed at Islam and Muslims.” An Islamophobic incident is any act comprising of abusive hatred, vilification and violence inflicted on Muslims going about their daily lives.