Attorney-General George Brandis addresses the AHRC’s Religious Freedom Roundtable

Key Muslim-Australian organisations who weren’t invited to yesterday’s Australian Human Rights Commission round table discussion on freedom of religion, convened by Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson, have criticised the process, saying “it was not a sincere consultation”, and that inclusion of Muslims in such a process should be a “no-brainer”.

Although the United Muslim Women Association was listed as being one of the participants, its head, Maha Abdo, was at the Federation of Ethnic Communities National Conference in Sydney yesterday. AHRC spokesperson Dominic O’Grady said Abdo had been a late apology yesterday morning but that a representative at the office of the Grand Mufti of Australia had attended.

The Religious Freedom Roundtable convened to discuss advancing religious freedom in Australia effectively, and addressed issues such as the preservation of religious freedom. Participants were also asked to consider strategies to support religious inclusion and social cohesion.

The 20 or so participants at the event, which was closed to the public, included representatives from the Anglican Church, the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, two rabbinical peak bodies, Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, Sikhs, Buddhists and other faiths, as well as a representative of the atheist association and a representative of the Church of Scientology.

Crikey contacted some of the leading Muslim organisations to see if they had received an invitation. The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (Muslims Australia), the Islamic Research and Educational Association, the Lebanese Muslims Association, the High Islamic Council of Australia (Darulfatwa) and the Islamic Council of Victoria all said they were not aware of, or invited to, the event.

Muslims Australia spokesperson Wasim Raza said the group would have liked to have been invited: “Being a religious organisation, if there is somewhere to have a say in the religion and give our opinion and listen to other’s opinions especially.”

In response to Crikey‘s queries as to why Muslim groups were not invited, O’Grady said that the invitations had been based on census numbers for each faith.

Yet most recent 2011 ABS data on religion showed Muslims in Australia number about 476,000, putting them far ahead of groups such as the Seventh Day Adventists — with most recent data from 2006 putting them at 55,000 — and of the Jewish faith (at 97,000), which had two representatives. The AHRC would not confirm which groups had been invited, and which had petitioned to be included.

Islamic Council of Victoria secretary Kuranda Seyfi Seyit said that he did not believe the round table was “a sincere consultation”. He said the organisation had been aware of the event, but was not invited to attend — and did not ask to.

“My personal feeling is that this … will have no impact on the current situation facing Australian Muslims who are being vilified on a daily basis while the government and the commission do very little to alleviate the problem.”

Seyit slammed the decision not to invite the group. “As the peak body for Islam in Victoria with 47 member organisations and the fact that we are doing work in this area, it’s a no-brainer, however, lack of sincerity is the key problem. I can’t see how we can come up with solutions if there is no genuine dialogue to tackle the problem together.”

The Muslim Lebanese Association said the first it had heard of the event was when members read about it online on Wednesday and were “disappointed at the lack of engagement with wider Australian Muslim groups … It is imperative a discussion is had on the reinforcement of religious freedoms in this country, and we implore the commissioner to seek more accurate Muslim representation for discussions on such an important topic.”

The IREA, an apolitical organisation mostly involved in interfaith activities and proselytisation, also noted its members were not invited and further condemned the absence of anyone representing Aboriginal spirituality.

“We also find it disturbing that no Aboriginal spiritual representation was invited, at a time when their religious freedom is under threat. In 2012, OM Mining destroyed a site sacred to the Warramunga people, a rock formation of the Dreamtime spirits Bilgara and Kaladaku. So why Christian organisations and Scientologists are given priority at a round table on religious freedom, to talk about same-sex marriage, over Muslims and Aboriginals, is beyond us.”

Despite being closed to the public so as to maximise freedom, reports of the event have leaked out — in particular, a bizarre outburst by Attorney-General and ex-arts minister George Brandis, who reportedly said that former prime minister Tony Abbott had been subjected to bigotry from “pseudo-intellectuals” due to his religious beliefs and that “members of Christian faiths, in particularly Catholic faith, are routinely the subject of mockery and insult by prominent writers and commentators”.

There was no clarification from Brandis, who attested last year that “people had the right to be bigots”, as to why mockery and insult represented a challenge to religious freedom.

The AHRC will have two more discussion days on religious freedom in 2016, as part of that process, one featuring non-faith groups, and the last focusing on LGBTIQ community representatives. Muslim groups will get no further opportunity to make their views directly known in the process, before it concludes in 2016.