Australians stand up to bigotry in #illridewithyou campaign

As Sydney's cafe siege unfolded on Monday, passengers on a train in a city further north were following events on their phones. One woman, Rachael Jacobs, looked up to see another woman taking off her hijab. "I ran after her at the train station. I said 'put it back on. I'll walk with [you.]' She started to cry and hugged me for a minute - then walked off alone," Jacobs wrote on her Facebook page. A friend shared her status, Sydney twitter user @sirtessa saw it and invited those on her bus route who wore religious attire and felt unsafe alone to contact her. "Maybe start a hashtag? What's in #illridewithyou?" she tweeted, followed by "Nothing, probably because it looks like 'ill'."

It seems there was plenty in #illridewithyou. Commuters across the country shared their public transport routes and travel schedules. It was an easy way in the middle of an uncertain situation for people to feel they could help prevent the all-too-familiar cycle of hate. Especially with right-wing elements of the mainstream media doing their best to stoke the flames of disenfranchisement - Sydney's highest selling Murdoch tabloid, the Daily Telegraph, printed a 2pm edition before the motives and identity of the hostage-taker were known, or even how many hostages there were, with a front page photo of two hostages holding the shahada (the Muslim confession of faith) flag to the cafe window, a headline screaming "Death Cult CBD attack” and a back page decrying "The instant we changed forever" (though what that instant was is unclear).

When information is disseminated poorly or incorrectly and a public has already been put on edge by those seeking to make political gains by demonising a minority ("death cult" is Prime Minister Tony Abbott's preferred moniker for ISIL), the potential for hate-filled reprisals with serious consequences is very real. Following the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing in the US, the media seized on reports two Arab men had been seen nearby, while comparing the method of the attack to Middle Eastern terrorist groups. In a report on hate crimes against Arabs and Muslims after September 11, Amardeep Singh noted that the morning after the Oklahoma City bombing, a Muslim woman who was seven months pregnant was so traumatised after a brick was thrown through her window that she suffered a miscarriage; a Muslim childcare centre in Texas was targeted with a "bomb" - what was actually a bag of drink cans; and in New York City, Arabs were threatened with having their businesses bombed and their families attacked. The Oklahoma City bomber turned out to be white man - Timothy McVeigh.

Following September's large-scale and over-hyped "terror raids" in Australian cities, in which 800 police "swooped" on houses at dawn, the media had a field day, and while ultimately just one person was charged, there were instances where Muslims were verbally and physically assaulted - most often women who chose to cover.

In Australia's current political climate, many Muslims and concerned observers, not just in Australia but the world over, held their breath awaiting a backlash from those who could only see the flag bearing the “shahada” as what Abbott referred to the day after the siege as "[a symbol] of the ISIL death cult".

So it was with great relief and equally great surprise when a show of solidarity with Australia's Muslims took the place of the pigeon-holing of a diverse religious community. Even after two people were killed in the siege - barrister Katrina Dawson was trying to protect a pregnant friend, while cafe manager, Tori Johnson was attempting to disarm hostage-taker Man Haron Monis - the campaign to stop some people taking out understandable grief, or just plain fear and anger, on Muslims continued apace.

Rather than the usual viral campaigns that are all talk and little-to-no action, #illridewithyou is a way to show support should people decide to be more than keyboard warriors. Regular Australians have been spurred to stand up to public attacks of bigotry. A commuter in Melbourne, who is a government employee and asked not to be named, witnessed a man verbally abusing a Muslim woman. Rather than sit by and let him continue, the commuter said a group of people in the train carriage turned on him in support of the woman.

Why the almost pointless September police raids caused some to lash out violently, while the same reaction has not yet been seen following the Sydney siege, is hard to pinpoint. Alex Mills is a Melbourne social worker and a finalist for the recently announced Australian Human Rights Award. He believes there has been a shift in awareness that Muslims in Australia are facing higher levels of persecution and marginalisation. "I think there's also been an increased understanding of how the government and mainstream media feed this narrative - which I think is why #illridewithyou took off so quickly," Mills said.

"There also seemed to be a deeper recognition that the Sydney siege had nothing to do with the values and beliefs of Australian Muslims; that Haron does not represent Islam in Australia in any way. With the visibility of Islamaphobic attacks over the past year, I think many Australians are beginning to appreciate how incidents like this impact every day, innocent Australians. People feel empowered to take the narrative out of the hands of the mainstream media, and reclaim solidarity on their own terms via social media."

Of course the reaction was not all positive: "#illridewithyou when you stop being a Muslim" was the crux of most comments turning the sentiment on its head. Elements of intolerance in Australian society cannot be so quickly or easily changed. But whichever way it was employed, so many people in Australia and abroad were engaging with the concept that the hashtag trended worldwide.

And it has drawn criticism for being Islamophobic. "To white Australia," writes Nazry Bahrawi, "#illridewithyou may be its golden moment. To the rest of the coloured world, nothing has changed." The suggestion here being, one can only assume, that it is better for "white people" to do nothing - this overlooks the fact Rachael Jacobs is the daughter of Indian immigrants. 

At such a time as this, it seems morally questionable to discuss social media. But the sentiment behind #illridewithyou is about the most compassionate thing to come from this tragedy. It shows respect for people as individuals rather than followers of a religion. The deaths of two people, and the ongoing suffering of their families and of the survivors of the siege, should not be trivialised or reduced to a discussion about a hashtag. The tragedy of what happened should not be divorced from reality by the virality of a string of letters. But it gives some hope that the expressions of solidarity and humanity have - so far - been the predominant emotions, rather than hate.

- Fiona Brom is a freelance journalist. She previously reported on legal, political and multicultural issues for Australian newspapers.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Photo Credit: Hostages were seen fleeing the cafe in a central area of Sydney (Twitter/@JFXM)