Faraz Tahir, Bondi Junction and what religious persecution really is

Since the horrors at Bondi Junction, much attention has rightly been paid to the courage of French construction worker Damien Guerot, who confronted the attacker with a bollard, preventing him from climbing to another floor, and police officer Amy Scott, who shot dead the attacker .

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced that Guerot will resolve his visa issues and said he can “stay as long as he wants.”

New South Wales Premier Chris Minns said Scott had “without a doubt saved many, many lives” when she “ran into danger”.

Less attention has been paid to Faraz Tahir, who was killed that day during his first day’s shift as a security guard at the mall, and his surviving colleague Muhammad Taha. It took a piece of it The Australian to point out the double standards that resulted in an intervention in Guerot’s situation and the relative indifference towards that of Taha.

Taha, who like Tahir is from Pakistan, was stabbed while trying to help his colleague and has since been granted a permanent visa. The Albanians, who had not mentioned Taha at the press conference praising Guerot, recognized Taha late on Friday.

Just as individuals who liked to throw around unnecessary and offensive comparisons between protests and mass killings have suddenly become mute when confronted with the real thing, there has been a notable silence from another class of culture warriors in the aftermath of Bondi Junction.

Tahir was an Ahmadiyya Muslim who came to Australia in 2022 after fleeing religious persecution in his home country and eventually received a refugee visa. Ahmadis are a small Islamic sect with approximately 10 to 20 million followers worldwide, the majority of whom live in South Asia. The primary belief that sets Ahmadis apart from other Muslims (put very simply) is that they believe that there has been a prophet of God since Muhammad. That’s why in Pakistan they face violence, desecrated religious sites and a constitution that has been amended to ban them from calling themselves Muslims.

It’s worth remembering the next time someone rants about religious freedoms and the “persecution of Christians” in Australia, the absolute silence with which they greeted the violent death of someone represented what real religious persecution looks like.