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December 18, 2025
NSW Premier Chris Minns says “we need to do everything we can” to stop radical Islamism from spreading in Sydney, amid calls for a religious centre linked to one of the Bondi terrorists to be shut down.
Alleged gunman Naveed Akram, 24, had previously attended the Al Madina Dawah Centre in Bankstown before Sunday’s attack, prompting Liberal Senator James Paterson to demand that what he called a “factory of hate” should be “shut down today”.
Cleric Wissam Haddad, a regular speaker at the Al Madina Dawah Centre, has repeatedly made headlines in recent years over controversial speeches, once saying earlier this year the so-called “Australian Jewish lobby” wants to turn Islam into a “passive religion”.
Mr Haddad has vehemently denied any knowledge of or involvement with Akram and there is no suggestion he had anything to do with Sunday’s attack.
When asked if NSW had a problem with ISIS-inspired Islamic ideology and if he would punish hate preachers, Mr Minns said: “Well, clearly we do, I mean it would be self-evidently crazy to see the circumstances on Sunday and turn a blind eye to that radicalisation”.
“It’s terrible to see, we need to do everything we can to ensure we don’t see it proliferate in our community, but it’s a difficult task,” he said.
“One of the reasons we’ve moved comprehensive changes to hate speech laws in NSW is to go in part and achieve that goal, but, I mean, I want to make it clear I indicated after hearing the events on Sunday night that we need to do things differently and be open to change and that we’ve got a responsibility to pull the community together and not add to the division”.
The Al Madina Dawah Centre said Mr Haddad had no role at the centre other than “occasional invitations as a guest speaker”.
The centre said it was under new management.
Mr Paterson said on Sky he was “completely unsurprised” to learn Akram had been associated with the centre.
“This is an organisation I’ve been concerned about for years and it is long past time it was shut down,” he said.
“It is a factory of hate, it produces nothing but extremists and it shouldn’t be allowed to continue. It shouldn’t be shut down next week, or next month, or next year, it should be shut down today.”
Akram has also been seen in videos from 2019 volunteering for Islamic street preaching group Street Dawah Movement, which is also associated with Mr Haddad.
Meanwhile, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles appeared to struggle to develop a coherent answer when asked on live TV about Muslim clerics in western Sydney, offering up an answer that mentioned Nazi salutes.
Sky News host Peter Stefanovic asked Mr Marles: “Should there be a greater emphasis on hate speech from Muslim clerics in the western part of Sydney?” to which Mr Marles replied: “Oh I think, look, I think, as I said earlier, what we’ve done is criminalise more forms of hate speech, we’ve criminalised the Nazi salute, obviously that’s in its own context, but we need to be looking at all of this”.