One Nation leader Pauline Hanson made headlines last week following an interview with Sky News in which she suggested there are no “good” Muslims.

The comment was outrageous by any measure, but the response relatively muted, reflecting a broader shift in political discourse.

Hanson’s comments have been reported to police – whether anything comes of this remains to be seen. But this broader shift allows for sweeping generalisations about an entire faith community to be voiced without triggering the same level of backlash or the invocation of hate speech laws that similar remarks about other minorities would likely provoke.

For Australian Muslims, the political atmosphere in the wake of the Bondi terrorist attack is febrile. Mosques are receiving threats during Ramadan. Muslim men performing their prayers, during a protest, are being roughly handled by NSW police in public without serious consequences.

Islamophobic incidents routinely spike in response to events thousands of kilometres away.

The question is no longer whether Islamophobia exists in Australia. The question is whether it has become normalised, tolerated in ways other forms of discrimination are not, and what this means for the country’s commitment to multiculturalism and liberal democracy.

From rhetoric to reality

The anti-Muslim rhetoric present within political discourse does not exist in a vacuum.

In the past month alone, close to or during the holy........

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