Muslim Lawyer Steps Down as Chair of Islamophobia Register Australia
Mariam Veiszadeh has stepped aside from running Islamophobia Register Australia (IRA) after enduring death threats and months of cyber-bullying.
She left a parting shot on her Facebook page at bigots, arguing that raising awareness of anti-Muslim discrimination remained a challenge as it was in 2014.
"Islamophobia was a misunderstood term (and still is but mostly by people who are willfully ignorant),” she said, according to the Daily Mail.
"Little was known about its actual scale and incidents were barely publicized.”
The hijab-wearing Shia Muslim, who is married to New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian's media director Ehssan Veiszadeh, has been replaced by Brice Hamack, a former civil rights co-ordinator with the Council on American Islamic Relations.
As a San Francisco-based activist in March 2015, he accused the FBI of unfairly targeting Muslims by baiting potential terrorists.
"These situations begin with an FBI informant going into mosque Eids and playing the role of the instigators, standing up at community gatherings and saying, ‘Who wants to help me take down America?,’”he said on Facebook.
He has been a grants officer with Legal Aid in Canberra since November last year.
