Religious tests a red line we shouldn’t cross

Scott Morrison is right to ask hard questions about political Islam. After all, Australian Muslims are facing their own post-Bondi moment.

So the former prime minister’s intervention should not be dismissed as opportunistic or caricatured as Islamophobic.

In a liberal democracy, no religious or ideological tradition is entitled to immunity from criticism — particularly where it intersects with politics, power and violence.

But being right in principle is not the same as being realistic in policy. This is where Morrison’s proposals, however well-intentioned, run into difficulty.

In his speech to a major antisemitism conference in Israel, Morrison called for nationally consistent standards for imams’ conduct, a country-wide register for preachers, and a self-sufficient Islamic peak body with authority to discipline radicals.

The impulse is understandable. If extremism is propagated within religious spaces, religious leadership must be part of the solution. The challenge is that Australia’s religious settlement is not built that way.

Christian churches in Australia do not operate under a nationally-mandated preacher register. Clergy accreditation is denominational, not statutory. Discipline is internal, uneven and often imperfect; but it is not enforced by the state.

To impose a different institutional model on Islam alone would immediately raise questions of equal treatment under the law and would almost certainly collapse under constitutional and political pressure.

Nor is the idea of a single, authoritative Islamic peak body realistic. Islam in Australia is not a hierarchical religion. It is doctrinally diverse, ethnically fragmented and institutionally decentralised.

Anybody strong enough to ‘intervene and discipline’ would struggle for legitimacy across religious and cultural lines.

Worse, it would risk becoming a political proxy — either captured by factional interests or distrusted as a creature of government.

Morrison’s critics will say that raising concerns about political Islam is just bigotry. His supporters should not assume structural fixes can be conjured by political will alone.

Australia’s liberal framework limits what governments can mandate – and for good reason.

There is also a deeper political irony here. Morrison speaks with authority about moral courage and institutional resolve, yet when he was Prime Minister he twice attempted to legislate protections against religious discrimination.

But both efforts failed as political will evaporated. Those defeats matter because they reveal the fragility of Australia’s commitment to religious freedom.

If parliament can’t protect religious freedom in general, how likely is it that could develop a framework for one faith alone? What Australia needs is not a registry of imams, but clarity about non-negotiables.

Advocacy of violence, religious justification of antisemitism, rejection of democratic law and importing overseas ideological conflicts into Australian society are not matters of ‘community sensitivity’.

They are red lines which must be enforced through existing criminal law, education standards, visa controls and funding transparency — applied consistently, without fear or favour.

At the same time, Muslim leaders themselves face a moment of responsibility. Post-Bondi cannot mean retreat, silence or grievance politics.

It must mean moral leadership: naming extremism when it appears, rejecting ideological antisemitism, and affirming that religious faith in Australia is lived within a shared civic framework. But that work cannot be legislated into existence.

Scott Morrison deserves credit for refusing to look away, and for insisting that accusations of Islamophobia must not shut down necessary debate.

But if this conversation is to lead anywhere constructive, it must move beyond symbolic architecture and confront a harder truth.

Liberal societies depend not on registries and peak bodies, but on moral courage, institutional integrity, and the willingness to enforce common standards equally.

Post-Bondi presents a challenge for of us. The question now is whether Australia has the confidence — and the honesty — to meet it.

Peter Kurti is Director of the Culture, Prosperity & Civil Society program at the Centre for Independent Studies