Overview

• Justice Stewart ruled that three 2023 lectures by Wissam Haddad at the Al Madina Dawah Centre in Bankstown vilified Jewish people with age-old antisemitic tropes and breached section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.
• The court ordered the removal of the offending lectures from social media and issued an injunction banning Haddad from repeating similar discriminatory statements.
• Haddad must cover the plaintiffs’ legal costs after his attempt to invoke a religious exemption under section 18D was rejected as unreasonable and not in good faith.
• A separate interview and one sermon were found lawful because their criticisms were directed at Israeli forces and Zionists rather than Jews generally.
• The decision sets a legal benchmark for limiting hateful religious discourse in Australia and underscores the boundaries between free speech and racial discrimination.