Sheikh Charkawi plots electoral carnage for federal ALP at next election

The Australian Labor Party (ALP) have a major problem on their hands. Specifically, an Islamic problem come the next federal election. The reason being that those federal electorates with the highest proportion of muslim voters are held by the ALP. Why is this a problem, you may be wondering? Well, there is a groundswell of Islamic political activism which is calling into question the depth and degree of support by the ALP for the Palestinian “side” of the current Hamas conflict with Israel in Gaza.

To put it simply, there is a growing lobby of Islamic political activists who are effectively advocating that the ALP are simply not doing enough to promote and foster Islamic sympathy and legitimacy in federal Parliament. Islamic clerics shouting the loudest in this regard are predominantly in southwestern Sydney and their communities in mosques and muslim schools throughout the region are taking note.

The vast majority of the Australian Jewish Community believe that the Albanese Labor Government (in particular Foreign Minister Penny Wong) have been nothing short of shameful in their failure to call out (i) the huge rise in antisemitic incidents across Australia without mentioning islamophobia in the same sentence, (ii) that Hamas are the root cause of the conflict, and (iii) the need for Hamas to immediately release all the Israeli hostages as a precondition to any ceasefire proposal.

However, according to powerful Islamic lobby groups like Muslim Votes Matter, Albanese and his Labor chronises are not doing anywhere near enough to criticise Israel and ostracise Jewish interests across the country. Let’s call this for what it is. Muslim Votes Matter are rousing their communities to demand much more extreme policies, statements of condemnation, financial aid and legitimisation of Hamas.

Who are Muslim Votes Matter and what are the potential implications of their advocacy agenda?

The driving force behind Muslim Votes Matter is Sheikh Wesam Charkawi. Predictably, the ABC have provided significant air time to help build his profile and standing: “Sheikh Wesam Charkawi was born and raised in Australia. From an early age, he sought the path of knowledge in the traditional Islamic sciences. Having studied for the past 12 years in various parts of the world including Syria and Lebanon, Sheikh Wesam is currently undertaking his masters in Sacred Islamic Law. In 2003, he founded the Abuhanifa Institute which teaches the essential sciences of Islam to young Muslims. Its ultimate focus is generational change. Sheikh Wesam continues to work and participate with organisations and events that strive for social cohesion and is a keen advocate of reaching out to the wider Australian community.”

The Abu Hanifa Institute provide some additional background to this charismatic, emerging Islamic cleric, stating that “Charkawi commenced his studies in Damascus Syria. From the outset, he studied specific books from the Fatih Institute in Damascus with traditional scholars in a one-on-one format. Wesam believes that institutions and education-driven organisations will only flourish on the back of morals and ethics, as they were revealed by God through Prophets. These are taught to students as essential life-skills and what it means to be a perfect and complete human being.”

According to his Instagram account, Sheikh Charkawi has studied Islam Sacred Law and is currently a PhD Candidate in social psychology. As an example of his commentary, Charkawi said on Instagram that “it is insulting that the Labor Party would play games when it comes to genocide. Voting against a motion to suspend standing orders to vote for a Palestinian State is the same thing as voting against a Palestinian state.”

Make no mistake. Sheikh Charkawi is no moderate Muslim. He does not seek moderation, partnership or conciliation with the Jewish people whatsoever. To demonstrate this, the Family First Party’s website reported last month that Charkawi fronted a media conference and called for the sacking of ASIO boss Mike Burgess for warning in February that “Sunni violent extremism poses the greatest religiously motivated violent extremist threat in Australia.”

Family First also call out that despite two radicalised Muslim youth allegedly implicated in religiously motivated stabbings, Sheikh Charkawi said it was “unacceptable for senior government officials, including law enforcement, to make inflammatory comments that further stigmatise and marginalise the Muslim community.”

The Australian newspaper reported that “community leader Sheikh Wesam Charkawi is mobilising the Muslim vote across key southwest Sydney federal seats to topple Labor at the next election as prominent figures warned the ALP of electoral abandonment. Sheikh Charkawi, a Western Sydney University PhD candidate, is the brains and organiser behind the Muslim Vote campaign.” Muslim Votes Matter is “one among many websites to emerge recently targeting Muslim Australians to support pro-Palestine candidates or oust sitting members who are not, including some Labor ministers, and rates them on their voting record and stance on Israel.”

As an example of how this ostracisation process occurs on their website, Muslim Votes Matter have rated the ALP Federal Minister for Employment and the Arts, Tony Burke, the member for Watson (NSW) where 31.7% of voters are muslim, as follows:

• In Parliament, Tony Burke HAS NOT called for an immediate and sustained ceasefire.
• In Parliament, Tony Burke DID NOT call for the immediate restoration of Australia’s funding to UNRWA, a United Nations agency and the largest humanitarian organisation in Gaza.
• In Parliament, Tony Burke HAS NOT called on Israel to allow unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid into the occupied Gaza Strip.
• In Parliament, Tony Burke HAS NOT condemned war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza by name, as documented by Amnesty International and other reputable human rights organisations.
• In Parliament, Tony Burke HAS NOT called on Israel to comply with the provisional orders of the International Court of Justice, the top court of the United Nations, acknowledging there is a plausible risk of genocide being committed by Israel.
• In Parliament, Tony Burke HAS NOT called for a comprehensive arms embargo on all parties involved in the conflict, including an immediate halt on Australian defence goods being exported to Israel and Australian defence contacts with Israeli companies.
• In Parliament, Tony Burke HAS NOT called for a lift to the 16-year illegal blockade on Gaza.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), 29 of the 151 federal electorates have 5 per cent or more people of Islamic faith – 27 of those 29 seats are held by Labor. Of those 29, 16 are held by Labor on margins of 10 per cent or more, and at the previous election it suffered primary vote swings against it of up to 18.5 per cent.

A voting bloc is a group of voters that are strongly motivated by a specific common concern or group of concerns to the point that such specific concerns tend to dominate their voting patterns, causing them to vote together in elections. If Sheikh Charkawi is able to mobilise the Islamic community to get on board with his campaign to vote as a unified, religious political bloc at the next federal election, this could spell disaster for Albanese and federal Labor, aka electoral carnage. Frighteningly, this could deliver many seats across the nation to the Australian Greens and unleash immeasurable power to Adam Bandt and his Marxist agenda.

I maintain the view that the Australian Greens are the single greatest existential threat to the Australian Jewish Community in my lifetime. The Greens, under the consistent propaganda of their leader Adam Bandt, work tirelessly to discredit Jewish interests, absolve Hamas of their sins, and rouse a scarily large cross-section of Australians to rise up against the very existence of the State of Israel. Therefore, what Sheikh Charkawi is striving towards poses a huge problem. Make no mistake, Adam Bandt is bad news for Jews and Sheikh Charkawi could deliver him the political power he has been seeking on a silver platter.

In an opinion piece by Francis Galbally in today’s Australian newspaper, “there appears to be alarming similarities between Adam Bandt’s Greens and Hitler’s National Socialist Workers’ Party of the 1920s and 1930s. Both leaders are ideologues and demagogues. They are anti-Semitic in their rhetoric and this encourages in many a belief that the Jews are the cause of things wrong with society.”

Galbally rightfully says that “Bandt encourages the chant ‘from the river to the sea’. What does that mean other than the annihilation of the Jewish state and its people? But not just that, he seems through his rhetoric to want more. He encourages and attends pro-Palestinian demonstrations that are anti-Semitic and aimed at intimidating Australia’s Jews as they at least try to go about their ordinary lives whether as university students, workers or business people.”

It’s important to remember that Sheikh Charkawi, if successful, will deliver significant power to Bandt – someone who conveniently never makes any mention as to Hamas causing the war in Gaza in the first place. From what I have seen and read, Bandt has absolutely no sympathy for those Israeli citizens who were abducted on October 7th last year, or any emotion regarding the rape and murder of Israeli women and children whatsoever. It’s all Israel’s fault. Do we want someone like this holding the balance of power in Australian politics in both the lower and upper houses of Australian Parliament?

Bandt twists the truth to support his political goals and objectives. He is the single most dangerous politician in Australia right now when it comes to threatening the safety, security and stability of our Jewish community. Bandt incites hatred against Jews through his regular genocidal chants as he whips protesters into a Jew hating frenzy at rallies across Australia. I’ll say it again – Bandt makes no mention of Hamas being responsible for any of this mess. He never will. He believes their actions are justified. This is a globally recognised terrorist organisation, just to be clear.

Like many others, I will be watching the increasing sway that Muslim Votes Matter keep building in the lead up to the next federal election. Sheikh Charkawi is charming, highly educated, influential and respected from within the Australian Muslim Community.

If I was a betting man, I would be putting my hard earned on ALP senior ministers like Jason Clare, Tony Burke, Chris Bowen and Andrew Giles becoming a lot more vocal with their anti-Israel rhetoric. With such large proportions of their electorates being muslim voters, their political futures will depend on it.