On behalf of the Muslim community, we would like to say thank you.Your messages of solidarity, the memorials and the emotional tributes that have been pouring in, have done so much to console us in this time of grief.Thank you to the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern for your sincere empathy. Thank you, Will Connolly, also known as egg boy for taking a stance. Thank you to the countless New Zealanders who have come out in support of the Muslim Community. And thank you to the non-Muslims around the world pouring into Mosques to express your sympathy. Thank you.But there are a few people who however don’t deserve our thanks, despite their messages of condolence. To Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who proposed in 2011 to politicise anti-Muslim sentiment to bolster his party’s support.To Pauline Hanson, who claimed Islam was a disease that we needed to vaccinate ourselves from.To Peter Dutton, who argued accepting Lebanese Muslim migrants was a mistake.To Donald Trump, who famously claimed: “Islam hates us”.To Rupert Murdoch, who argued every Muslim was responsible for extremist terrorism.To those Australian Newspapers who published almost 3000 articles tarnishing Islam and Muslims in a single year.And to all those who have weaponized Islamophobia for political or financial gain, and are now coming out with words of support… Thanks, but no thanks. We don’t want your sympathy, we want your accountability.We want you to take account for emboldening the Islamophobic views of the Christchurch terrorist. We want you to take account for normalising the anti-Muslim sentiments he thrived off of and listed in his manifesto. We are in no way saying you are responsible for what happened, but you are most definitely complicit in fuelling this atmosphere of hate. Own up to your actions.We want you to stop the Islamophobia and hate you’ve helped foster for years on end. Until then, please do us a favour and spare us your thoughts and prayers.
