Shady Alsuleiman

Shady Alsuleiman is one of Australia's most senior Islamic clerics, president of the Australian National Imams Council. In a 2013 sermon he described homosexuality as spreading disease, calling it 'evil actions [that] bring upon evil outcomes to our society' - a comment that resurfaced in 2016 after he was invited to a Kirribilli House Iftar hosted by then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who said he regretted the invitation once he learned of it. In June 2017 he sued the publishers of the Daily Telegraph and the Courier Mail for defamation over articles published in June 2016. Federal Court Justice Geoffrey Flick ordered the articles removed from News Corp websites and criticised how News Corp had conducted the case; the matter was settled on confidential terms in June 2018 (SBS, AMUST). In other sermons, he has praised the late Yusuf al-Qaradawi as a formative influence, told a Sydney audience that 'every single Muslim must believe in the implementation of the sharia' - including in Western countries once Muslims hold power - and, in a Palestine-focused sermon, said 54 Muslim-majority countries had 'been bought... by the Zionists.' In December 2012 he was part of an Australian delegation that travelled to Gaza and met Hamas leadership, including Ismail Haniyeh. He was also named alongside Qaradawi on an ISIS hit list targeting clerics who opposed the group, and has publicly condemned ISIS as 'a deviant cult... they do not represent mainstream Islam' - At the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion in August 2026 he conceded that Imam Ibrahim Dadoun's sermon the day after the 7 October attack, which called it 'a day of victory', was 'inappropriate' and 'a mistake', but defended keeping Dadoun within ANIC: 'guiding [imams] through those mistakes and keeping them within the fold of ANIC is a lot more healthy and helpful for the organisation, for the individual and for the community' (ABC, Australian Jewish News). He was not directly asked to condemn Hamas as an organisation at that hearing, and did not volunteer to do so; no public condemnation of Hamas by Alsuleiman has been found anywhere else either.

In November 2023 he was appointed the Islamic representative on the NSW Government's new Faith Affairs Council, which advises the Multiculturalism Minister on policy affecting faith groups and on community harmony and security. The minister, Steve Kamper, said members "have said things I don't agree with"; the appointment came while Alsuleiman and ANIC had not responded to questions about Dadoun's 8 October sermon (The Australian, 15 Nov 2023). He was temporarily barred from entering Denmark in 2018 and New Zealand in 2019; the New Zealand ban was overturned after a complaint from the Australian government (The Australian, 16 Sep 2024).