A new political party aimed at giving Australian Muslims a political voice was to be launched on Tuesday, but Coalition frontbencher Christopher Pyne has called into question its electoral chances.
The Australian Muslim party hopes to put forward federal candidates in all states and territories, as well as contesting some state elections.
Its founder, western Sydney businessman Diaa Mohamed, said the party had yet to register with the Australian Electoral Commission.
“The magic number is 500 [members] that we need to get to, so hopefully it’s not too far out till we get there,” he told ABC radio on Tuesday.
But Pyne told reporters the party was unlikely to do well electorally.
“Whether it’s a Muslim party or a Christian party is really of no consequence to me,” he said. “I don’t think a religious-based party will be very successful.”
The Muslim party aims to counter some of the mistrust of Islam in wider Australian society.
“There’s been four or five anti-Islamic parties being created,” Mohamed said. “We thought we need to do something to address that.”
Muslims had been criticised for not speaking out over domestic and international terrorist attacks, and the party would give the community a chance to speak up, Mohamed said.
It would also campaign against military intervention in Muslim countries, and independence for the Palestinian territories.
“I don’t think Islam is at war with the west, but Islamic countries have been at war for many, many years,” Mohamed told Fairfax media. “Let’s look at how well [military intervention] has worked in the past. We invaded Afghanistan. That didn’t work out so well. We invaded Iraq and we’re in the mess we’re in there.
“Would I support something that has never worked in the past? No. It’s just never worked. Not for the Soviets in Afghanistan, not for the United States in Iraq. There’s a solution and it’s not invading someone else’s land,” he said.
A number of anti-Islamic parties will also contest the next federal election, due in 2016, including a group modelling itself on a political party started by the Dutch far-right wing politician Geert Wilders.
Last month Wilders launched the Australian Liberty Alliance, which has a platform of stopping migration from Muslim nations and banning Islamic face coverings such as the burqa and niqab.
The Love Australia Or Leave party also launched recently, calling, among other things, for a revision of immigration policies and for a halt to the “Islamisation” of Australia.
The new Muslim party was to be announced just days after deadly coordinated terrorist attacks perpetrated by Isis supporters killed at least 129 people in Paris.
On Tuesday the immigration minister, Peter Dutton, called on the grand mufti of Australia to clarify comments about the Paris attacks.
Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohammed said racism and islamophobia were among the “causative factors” in terrorism.
“The opportunity is there today for the grand mufti to ... make it very clear that he condemns these acts of terrorism, these murderous acts, without reservation, as other leaders have done,” Dutton said.
He repeated the criticism on Fairfax talkback radio in Perth, where the first Syrian family accepted as part of the extra 12,000 refugee intake arrived on Tuesday morning.
“Can you imagine if the leader of the Catholic church, an archbishop in this country, had made qualified comments condemning somebody who had been convicted or had committed an offence against a child, a sexual offence against a child?” Dutton said.
“If a priest came out, an archbishop came out, and said, well, it’s terrible but we need to consider the fact that this priest was abused himself during his childhood, or he had a difficult upbringing, or he was bullied, or he had been the subject of racist rants, or whatever, and somehow that would... qualify the condemnation of those acts, people would be outraged.”
The defence minister, Marise Payne, would not be drawn on the comments directly.
“I don’t have a particular view on the statements of the grand mufti. The actions of those in Paris must be, should be, condemned with the utmost rigour,” she told reporters on Tuesday. “That is the position I take and the government takes.”
But Pyne warned against making the incident a domestic political issue.
“This is far too serious a matter to reduce to around whether people are satisfied or not with the comments of a particular person in the Muslim community,” he said.
The justice minister, Michael Keenan, told reporters Muslim leaders took the terror threat very seriously.
“I’ve had long conversations with the leadership of the Muslim community in Australia and of course they are deeply concerned about this and it’s their young people who are being radicalised and going down this dark path,” he said.
“They are working side by side with the government to counter this threat and that’s going to remain a very important relationship. We work on it and that’s certainly been reciprocated by the vast majority of the Muslim leadership.”
A wide-ranging report into Australia’s racial discrimination laws found that discrimination against Muslims had increased since December’s Lindt cafe siege in Sydney.
According to the 2011 census, just 2.2% of the Australian population identify as Muslim.
