On Monday, footage from Sydney’s CBD showed a group of men being dragged and shoved by police while praying. However, the men did not react with rage but with discipline. They continued their prayers even as officers approached. There were no fists raised, no retaliation, and no chaos; instead, there was the quiet continuity of a ritual that once begun could not be abandoned.
For observant Muslims, the moment of prostration – forehead to ground – is symbolically considered the closest proximity to God. It’s a posture of complete vulnerability with the body lowered, ego surrendered, and the world shut out. The ritual prayer is considered to be the foundation of Islam. This made the footage profoundly confronting for many Muslim Australians. Interrupting someone at their most defenceless position isn’t just moving a body; it’s intruding upon an intimate act of surrender.
The events of that day will undoubtedly be debated in terms of law and public order. However, before those arguments begin, it’s worth understanding what many Muslim Australians were watching and why it felt like more than a policing incident.
In a country that insists it protects freedom of religion, the sight of worshippers seized mid-prayer carries symbolic weight.
The NSW police commissioner, Mal Lanyon, confirmed he contacted senior Muslim community leaders and offered an apology for any offence caused by officers disrupting prayers. However, the premier, Chris Minns, declined to issue a public apology, defending the police response as appropriate given the tense and fast-moving situation.
However, when an incident occurs in full public view and has a wider impact than just a small group of representatives, private outreach alone isn’t sufficient. A public incident warrants public acknowledgment.
A public apology is not about politics or humiliation: it’s about recognition.
The images were seen by families at home, young Muslims grappling with their sense of belonging, and a community questioning whether their dignity is protected alongside everyone else’s. Public acknowledgment affirms their equal place in the national narrative.
When the state misjudges what is reasonable, leadership involves owning that mistake. Leadership is also about empathy and restraint, especially during high-tension situations.
Police operate in tense environments and must make rapid decisions. But force is never neutral. For many Muslim Australians, the images from Sydney did not occur in a vacuum. They landed in a community shaped by two decades of securitisation: expanded surveillance, loyalty tests, and a persistent framing of Muslim civic life as a security question. After the horrific terror attack on 14 December at Bondi beach, Muslim Australians again felt the familiar surge of collective suspicion. In that context, the physical handling of men at prayer is not merely an operational detail. It resonates and ricochets.
There is a harder truth beneath this week’s events. Political leaders have sometimes spoken as though solidarity is finite, as though recognising Islamophobia diminishes concern about antisemitism. That logic invites a competition of grief. It fragments the public into rival claimants for empathy and protection under the law.
An apology would not solve everything. But it would interrupt a dangerous narrative spiral.
Resentment is not theatrical outrage; it is a sedimented experience. It accumulates in classrooms when children are asked to explain geopolitics. It accumulates in workplaces where “jokes” about terrorism pass as banter. It accumulates when grief expressed by Muslims is framed as volatility rather than equality and citizenship.
Refusing to apologise may yield short-term political advantage. It signals toughness and being resolute and clear. But toughness without introspection is brittle. Long-term trust depends on demonstrating that state power can be corrected as well as asserted.
A serious response now requires an independent inquiry empowered to examine operational choices, command structures, and proportional use of force. Transparency is the minimum condition of legitimacy and the rebuilding of community trust. It also requires meaningful engagement with Muslim community leaders and grassroots organisers. Not curated photo opportunities or closed-door apologies to a few.
The question should not be how to manage anger. It should be how to address the conditions that produce it. An often recited saying among Muslims, attributed to the prophet Muhammad, is: “The strong person is not the one who overpowers others, but the one who controls himself in anger.”
Finally, there must be a broader reckoning with Islamophobia in Australia. It is too convenient to treat each incident as discrete. Islamophobia operates not only as interpersonal prejudice but as a policy lens, a media reflex, a security grammar that casts Muslim civic presence as conditional. Multiculturalism cannot be sustained as a celebration of cuisine and costume while sidestepping accountability.
Australia prides itself on being a successful multicultural society.
That reputation depends on the consistency of principle and rule of law.
