“We’re very proud to stand with them this morning, and it was very well received by our students and our parents and will go a long way in making sure that our young people feel included and being part of this country.”
However, Kadri also condemned the minority of online commenters that had used the opportunity to voice anti-immigration sentiment.
“Let me be very clear. Our children at ICB are Australian. They sing the national anthem, they excel in sports, they study hard, they volunteer in the community. To suggest they don’t belong is un-Australian,” Kadri said in a statement made online on Monday.
“Australia belongs to all of us — not just those who shout the loudest.”
The independent school, which is Queensland’s oldest and largest Islamic school, teaches almost 1700 students from Prep to Year 12, and was opened in 1995.
Kadri told this masthead that while the school’s staff and students came from a range of backgrounds, the school was a lightning rod for anti-Muslim sentiment.
A pig’s head had once been left at the school, he said, adding that it was a regular occurrence for people to drive past at pickup time to hurl Islamophobic abuse.
Kadri said hatred had recently escalated following anti-immigration rallies across major Australian cities, including Brisbane, in late August.
“We can debate migration, but to demonise communities and migrant communities is very unhelpful, and that could lead to violence, and it leads to what has happened,” he said.
He said he was speaking out about the threat on his school to highlight the discrimination faced by Australia’s immigrant and Muslim communities.
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“One of the priests who came from to support us this morning was the priest from Grafton – and Grafton is where the terrorist came from who killed Muslims in Christchurch – and he was here standing in solidarity with us,” Kadri said.
“What I’m hoping is that more of that will come out of this, and we don’t have to wait for people to die before we can come out and realise that this kind of demonisation is not a good thing.”
Premier David Crisafulli said on Monday the threat was unacceptable, and “those kinds of reports, they have to be called out, and they have to be stamped out”.
“We’re having things that are starting to creep into Queensland that I’m not comfortable with, and this one’s right at the top of that order,” Crisafulli said.
“Places of worship are places where people need to be able to go free from bullying, free from harassment. They shouldn’t be looking over their shoulder.”
The Australian National Imams Council (ANIC) said Australia’s current “toxic climate” in politics and anti-immigration sentiment had emboldened extremists.
“Only days ago, neo-Nazi groups and far-right political figures led ‘anti-immigration’ marches nationally, where participants donned Australian flags, shouted racist slogans, and scapegoated migrants for social and economic challenges,” a statement from ANIC read.
ANIC called upon the authorities to support the school as investigations into the email continued.
