William Haddad: Muslim hate preacher faces huge legal bill
Two Jewish community leaders successfully sued a Muslim preacher from Sydney who compared Jews to rats and said it was in their financial interest to prolong war in the Middle East, a ruling that may deter other Muslim leaders from using inflammatory language against their historical foes.
William (formerly Wisam) Haddad breached Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, a little-used law that prohibits insults on the basis of race, colour, nationality or ethnic group, Federal Court judge Angus Stewart ruled on Tuesday.
Mr Haddad, the Australian-born son of Lebanese parents, made 25 insults against Jewish people in speeches in November, 2023, the judge found, including that they are shifty cowards descendant from apes and pigs who manipulate people through the media.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.“Taken together, the established imputations in Mr Haddad’s lectures are fundamentally racist and antisemitic and devastatingly offensive and insulting,” he said in the judgement.
“Jewish people in Australia in November 2023 and thereafter would experience them to be harassing and intimidating. That is all the more so because they were made at the time of heightened vulnerability and fragility experienced by Jews in Australia, but they would also have been harassing and intimidating had they been made prior to 7 October 2023” when Hamas invaded Israel.
The speeches were made at a Muslim religious centre in Bankstown co-founded by Mr Haddad in 2021 called the Al Madina Dawah Centre.
Penalties
For the moment, all Mr Haddad has to do is remove videos of the sermons from the internet. But Justice Stewart said Mr Haddad would have to cover the legal bill for the case, which his opponents said would be hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The men who sued, Peter Wertheim and Robert Goot of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, can now ask the Federal Court to order Mr Haddad to pay them compensation. Also, if Mr Haddad makes similar comments in the future, he could he declared in contempt of court, a serious breach that can lead to imprisonment.
Mr Haddad, who arrived late for the judgment, did not speak afterwards. Outside the court his lawyer, Elias Tabchouri, said Mr Haddad believed he did not intend to insult anyone on the basis of their ethnic identity.
“The words he spoke were those from the scripture,” Mr Tabchouri said. “And he maintains that he has a right to quote religious scripture as all parties do.”
Inaction
Mr Wertheim said he was forced to sue because the “responsible authorities would not or could not” protect the Jewish community in Australia. Mr Haddad was initially reported to the Federal Police, which decided not to charge him.
“This case was not about freedom of expression or religious freedom,” Mr Wertheim said in a written statement. “It was about antisemitism and the abuse of those freedoms in order to promote antisemitism.”
The decision is a victory for the Jewish community, which believes it has been under siege since the war in Gaza began.
A campaign against pro-Palestinian broadcaster Antoinette Lattouf backfired last week when the Federal Court ruled Ms Lattouf was fired from a short-term contract at the ABC because of her political views.
