Faith, men, and the terrorist misogyny that won't be named

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus confirmed on Friday that the Albanese government is confident that religious anti-discrimination legislation will be introduced within months, after constructive talks on the still secret proposal with the opposition's Michaelia Cash.

Why, you might well ask? Where is the broad community clamour for exempting faiths from anti-discrimination laws designed to protect citizens? No such clamour existed when Scott Morrison tried to foist religious privilege on the nation and it is not there now.

Rather, developments here and abroad suggest that overall, we might benefit from less religious obsequiousness in our society, not more. Stronger protections "from" religion perhaps?

Like much of the world, Australia was already on tenterhooks over the reckless carnage of civilians in Gaza, the unfathomable return of a Bible-spruiking vulgarian in the White House, and deepening socioeconomic and environmental problems at home.

Then came a murderous rampage targeting women at Bondi Junction in Sydney's inner-east and just two nights later, a brutal live-streamed stabbing of a bigoted priest in western Sydney's suburb of Wakeley.

Ratcheting up the pressure on Friday, the right-wing government of the Jewish state of Israel launched a second missile attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran, inviting a further escalation in the dangerous proto-war both religiously dominated states seem intent on.

While there are many different circumstances here, all of these violent episodes, either in their motivations or in their interpretation, expose the divisive, explosive power of religious supremacy and hatred.

At a time of declining trust and resurgent cultism, the world is becoming more ungovernable, more violent, and less liberal. This is no coincidence.

Thanks to credulous politicians, faith remains an uninterrogated social good. Yet its intensification under this special dispensation, threatens to unpick the shining achievement of Westphalian sovereignty in which nation states are self-contained, their populations owing allegiance to no external religious authority or dogma.

This brings us to the difficult questions raised by the starkly different facts - and reporting - of the two knife attacks in Sydney.

First to the obvious talking point about Sydney's traumatic week. The deadly Bondi attack in which women were specifically targeted, was not designated as a terrorist incident whereas the non-deadly Wakeley assault was.

The latter was allegedly undertaken by a radicalised 16-year old Muslim boy who has since been charged under terror laws which carry harsher penalties and provide police with stronger powers. His violence is said to have been religiously, and therefore, politically motivated thus constituting and act of terrorism.

An angry crowd gathered outside the Wakeley church immediately after the assault, terrorising paramedics and police officers with actual violence and vandalism. These dangerous assaults in which 50 police officers were injured - purportedly by Assyrian Christian supporters of the stricken clergyman - were not deemed to be terrorism.

News reporting on the motivations of this mob on Monday night and through Tuesday remained so cautious as to be almost protective. It was not clear to the average reader if the mob had been pro-attacker (Muslim) or pro-clergy (Christian).

This bizarre vacuum told you they were had not been Muslims thronging outside, but Assyrian Christians. As did the opposition's more measured response.

The proposition that an act of terrorism had been perpetrated by a person of Muslim faith however, was far easier to discern.

Two days before, the stabbing murder of five anonymous women - and one man who had tried to intervene, security guard, Faraz Tahir - was declared not to be terrorism because it was not ideologically motivated.

Really? This was an attack against women for being women. As far as we know, none was known to the attacker, whose volcanic misogyny was so severe he even stabbed a female infant.

This therefore is the killing of a class of person to make a statement - in this case women - just as it could have been about race or religion. But what? Because it was hatred of women, it was not an extreme manifestation of ideology?

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Women around the country certainly felt the terror. They read the message here - give over, or give up. Yield or die. In a country that tolerates appalling levels of male-on-female violence and an unconscionable death rate from these attacks, the slaughter of random women simply for being sovereign was as political as it gets.

The perpetrator of these heinous acts, Joel Cauchi was frustrated out of his mind at not having a girlfriend his distraught father explained. There is a whole online movement of men expressing this extreme sentiment known as Incels - or involuntary celibates.

For authorities to decide this was not an ideologically driven massacre when the unknown victims were chosen exclusively on gender, seems premature and contradictory.

Or as outspoken feminist Mona Eltahawy wrote after the attack, "if terrorism means politically-motivated violence intended to scare its target into changing the way they behave, then surely targeting women because they are women and because women refuse to date you is terrorism."

With Cauchi, the issue of mental illness is also a factor, but ask yourself, did that maniacally grinning kid pinned down inside the church strike you as particularly normal or balanced? Yet he was treated immediately as a terrorist.