Blair Cottrell: They will call you racists, bigots, they will put pressure on you, but in order to rise above it you need to not care. You need to put your fists up, be ready to fight, to stand up, defend the history of our great nation. [Applause, cheers]

Christine El-Khoury: A small but growing anti-Islamic movement has taken to the streets in rallies in cities and regional centres across Australia.

Blair Cottrell: You will see our movement grow. You will see us blossom, you will see us advance into the greatest upheaval this country has ever known. The only way to stop us now is to kill us, and good luck. [Applause, cheers]

Christine El-Khoury: The language is aggressive and war-like. It's as if they see Muslims and any sympathisers as an enemy in which there will be a fight to the death. And they don't understand why their views aren't mainstream.

Chris Shortis: Well, it's only controversial to those left-wing fucktards and all the sympathisers of Islam and all the treacherous dogs who are in office in our fucking country.

Christine El-Khoury: A number of new far-right groups have emerged, among them Reclaim Australia and the United Patriots Front. Both have ties to the Australian Defence League, an ultra-right-wing group known for its racist and anti-Islamic hate speech. They may gather under a different banner, but they all have one thing in common; they see Muslims and Islam as an evil ideology that must be overcome. Their supporters cloak themselves in the flag. Some are heavily tattooed, swastikas, angry men, some with criminal histories. It gives every appearance of being threatening and potentially violent. But according to Rise Up Australia president Daniel Nalliah, that image they present is not what he sees.

Daniel Nalliah: They are lovely young men. When I get into their hearts and start talking to them, sit down for a drink with them, have a meal with them, I see a different side to these boys. They are lovely Aussie boys who love their country.

Christine El-Khoury: These lovely Aussie boys are the members of the United Patriots Front, they're one of a number of far nationalist groups who have emerged this year. They want an end to Muslim migration and multiculturalism.

And they're on the police radar.

Neil Gaughan: I wouldn't say we have a profile, but, look, it's fairly clear that there probably is one. Fairly much young men in their mid 20s, appears to be young white men in their mid 20s from various backgrounds, some do come from military backgrounds there's no doubt about that.

Christine El-Khoury: Neil Gaughan is the head of counter-terrorism with the Australian Federal Police.

Neil Gaughan: It's probably men, young men particularly, looking for a purpose in life. It's no different to joining a motorcycle gang, or joining any type of other criminal enterprise. It's people that need some level of direction.

Christine El-Khoury: Hello, I'm Christine El-Khoury. On Background Briefing we're going inside the extremist right in Australia. Why are they flourishing and what threat do they pose?

Anne Aly: Last week the ADL posted on there, 'It's time for an eye for an eye', 'It's time to carry out lone-wolf attacks against mosques and Imams'. And some of the responses were like, yup, I'm ready, I'm ready to go, I'm ready to kill me a Muslim. Then they posted up 'Let's burn down mosques,' and people were posting up pictures of dynamite, yup, I need some more dynamite, I need this, I need that.

Christine El-Khoury: Anne Aly is a counter-terrorism expert with Curtin University. She says online chatter about violence is an early warning sign of things to come.

Since Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister there's been a marked change in the political rhetoric; gone is the 'us and them' of Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull has a new message:

Malcolm Turnbull: But I can say to you that the advice I have consistently from my parliamentary colleagues, from the security services, from the police services is that the Muslim community is our absolutely necessary partner in the battle against violent extremism, and that we have to work and we should work and we will work and we are working with the Muslim community to ensure that we can take on this scourge, which of course is as much a threat if not more so to the Muslim community than it is to the whole Australian community.

Christine El-Khoury: One of the leaders of the United Patriots Front is Chris Shortis. He regularly posts propaganda to his supporters, who he calls patriots. His involvement with Reclaim Australia and the United Patriots Front has brought him to the attention of police.

Chris Shortis: Because I am a gun owner, I have hand guns and rifles. This is the state of play. Because of my involvement with the Reclaim Australia rallies or through the UPF I did receive a snap inspection of my firearms a week ago. The two cops that come were cool. They saw everything, had a bit of a laugh and a good exchange. But the state of play is that licencing, the police commissioner, who is a liar anyway, and the government are keeping an eye on patriots who own guns. So make sure your storage is 100%, you keep your guns according to the Firearms Act. God bless you all.

Christine El-Khoury: The AFP's Neil Gaughan says the police can act to prevent violence.

Neil Gaughan: The terrorism laws as they're currently in form in this country, we don't actually need an act to take place, but we need a conspiracy. So we need a conspiracy to take an action and in effect we need some acts in preparation that would lead to that action taking place. Saying you're going to do something isn't a criminal offense, saying you're going to do something and then taking some step to procure a weapon or to do something else certainly is an offense.

Blair Cottrell: Are you a Bendigo local?

Crowd: Yes!

Blair Cottrell: Do you want a mosque in your community?

Crowd: No...bulldoze it!

Blair Cottrell: Do you want a mosque?

Crowd: No!

Christine El-Khoury: That's Blair Cottrell, the blonde haired body builder from Melbourne and the UPF's main man. At this rally in Bendigo in October the UPF had 350 supporters, many of them travelled from Melbourne and interstate to protest the construction of a new place of worship for Bendigo's Muslim community.

Blair Cottrell: With our weak and treasonous government, Islam could pose no threat. But at the end of the day you can either be a Muslim or an Australian. It must be either/or because the two do not co-relate and do not correspond.

Christine El-Khoury: The United Patriots Front or the UPF wouldn't talk to the ABC in Bendigo.

What's brought you to Bendigo today?

Neil Eriksen: To help the Bendigo residents stop the mosque. Because they don't want it here, the majority of them don't.

Man: ABC…

Neil Eriksen: Nah I can't, not ABC.

Man: Nah, you don't talk to ABC...no comment...no comment.

Christine El-Khoury: I just want to know how you're feeling about today.

Man: Oh no comment. I feel another no comment. You and me are going to be good friends with this no comment thing.

Christine El-Khoury: I wanted to ask the UPF's Blair Cottrell why he chose to decapitate a dummy at the front of the council chambers a week before the rally, and what he meant when he said he wanted to give the Muslim community a taste of British culture.

Blair Cottrell: It was a collective decision that we made and it was purely to draw attention to ourselves to increase our rally numbers so that people would come here and hear us speak. This is about all I've got to say thanks, I appreciate your time, thanks.

UPF mock beheading excerpt: We're just going to give you a taste of our own British culture. Carry on brother...

Christine El-Khoury: Chanting 'Allahu Akbar' or 'God is great', five men, some dressed in a male Islamic headdress, take a large knife and cut the head off the dummy. They spill fake blood on the ground and throw the head around before descending into laughter.

Amongst the crowd at the rally is Rod. He's lived in Bendigo for 30 years. He thinks Muslims are a threat to the Australian way of life

Rod: I've just had a gutful. I'm sick of people telling what's good for me when I know what's good for me. It will attract more Muslims and when you get Muslims in numbers you get unrest. Western culture and Muslim culture don't mix, it's oil and water. Bendigo is such a small town, it's a very dangerous social experiment, what the Bendigo council has done, approving this big huge mosque.

Christine El-Khoury: Rod doesn't know much about the UPF. He's worried they might be neo-Nazis but turned up anyway.

And what did you make of the United Patriots Front, they were here last weekend and staged the fake beheading, what did you make of that?

Rod: It doesn't help the cause. I think…I just asked them straight out are they Nazis or are they neo-Nazis or whatever is the term is, and the fellow that I spoke to said no, we're definitely not, no. Look I'll side with anyone who is against Islam just about I think.

Christine El-Khoury: The UPF circulated a leaflet targeting Bendigo Mayor Peter Cox, who supports the mosque development. The red leaflet showed a picture of the Mayor beside a bearded Muslim man holding a gun.

Peter Cox: What concerns me is that the Patriotic Front are using Bendigo as a focal point and then they abuse or defame characters like myself in Bendigo so that they can recruit new members to their way of thinking. Now, that's of real concern. You've only need to look at the Patriotic Front's Facebook website and see the YouTube videos they produce and it's just full of lies, misinformation. So they're not arguing the case on authentic grounds.

Christine El-Khoury: A week before the rally, 15-year-old Muslim school boy Farhad Khalil Mohammad Jabar shot dead NSW police employee Curtis Cheng in Sydney. The police believe Farhad was radicalised by older men who gave him the gun at a mosque.

Mayor Cox knows this is playing on people's minds.

Peter Cox: They're trying to promote fear, and I can understand some people, they already have a bit of fear. They sit on their couches and watch the news every night, and I guess when you see the terrorist acts that are happening overseas it is a bit of worrying time. But I really can't comprehend how people can associate the building of a mosque and having that terrorism in Bendigo in years to come.

Christine El-Khoury: Other than a small prayer room at the local university, Bendigo's 300 Muslim residents don't have a place to pray. Many of Bendigo's Muslim community are health workers, who have moved to the regional town to address a shortage of medical staff.

Peter Cox: 15 or so years ago we had a shortage of doctors, and about 25 Muslim doctors have come to live in Bendigo to provide their professional services, and I guess what some of the objectors are saying is that we welcome those people, but they can leave their religion, their culture, back in their own countries. Well, that's not what the Australian constitution says. It says they can practice their belief systems.

Christine El-Khoury: But for some at today's rally, there's only room for one religion in Australia: Christianity.

Matthew Grant: Yeah, I'm a bit of a bible thumper. Effectively I'm a really fervent Christian man.

Christine El-Khoury: That's 19-year-old Matthew Grant or Father Grant to his friends. He finished school last year, is working as a security guard and lives with his grandparents. He travelled eight hours to speak at the Bendigo rally. The UPF were so impressed with a speech Matthew gave at a Reclaim Australia event in his home town of Canberra they invited him to Bendigo. Amongst the shaved heads, tattoos and men in black, Matthew stands out from the crowd. He's wearing a brown jacket, shirt and red tie that gives him a maturity beyond his teenage years. Matthew wants the crowd gathered before him to take him seriously.

Matthew Grant: In the way I dress, it's because I'm a cultural traditionalist. I don't agree with the kind of decadent, morally depraved clothing a lot of people wear these days. Effectively, when I am wearing something that looks a bit more traditional or professional, I'm giving across more of a message that I've thought things through. I'm not just there angry at the muzzies taking over the streets or anything like that. I've got a background in philosophy and things of that nature, and that's what the UPF asked me to do. They wanted a more intellectual viewpoint and that's why they brought me down because that's what I could provide.

Christine El-Khoury: Matthew is a white nationalist, a philosophy he stumbled upon when he was 17 and spending a lot of time at the National Library. It's where he learnt about his political heroes—Arthur Calwell and Charles H Pearson—both fierce advocates of the White Australia Policy. He believes the threat of terrorism is helping Australians see things his way.

Matthew Grant: The Islamic problem what you might call it, has infuriated so many just everyday Australians, just average Australians, and they start questioning, 'Why would we invite Muslims into the country if that slightly, even slightly increases the risk of terrorism, why take that risk?' Then when they start thinking about immigration, it really opens their eyes to the reality that our country is being quite thoroughly overwhelmed with non-European immigrants. Whether they're good immigrants or bad immigrants is not of any consequence, it's the fact that our communities are being diluted and destroyed by this action of mass immigration.

Christine El-Khoury: Matthew is a proud racist. In his mind, multiculturalism just doesn't work and he's not afraid to say it.

Matthew Grant: There's this great disease out there. They call it political correctness. Because if you're going to go out there and say you're a nationalist and you oppose all mass immigration from non-European countries, that's extremely racist quite evidently, which is socially frowned upon at this current day, which means it takes courage to say it. If you're a racist, there's a horde of communists out there that will track down your employer and try and make you lose your job.

Christine El-Khoury: The anti-Islam movement has seen thousands spill onto the streets since April this year across the country. It was sparked by the Lindt Cafe Siege in Sydney's Martin Place last December. Over 16 hours, self-styled sheik Man Haron Monis held 17 people hostage. By the end of the siege, two were dead and so was Monis. It gave rise to TV commentary such as this from Channel 7's Mike Amor:

Mike Amor: Sadly, it's a wake-up call to Australians that they are now as much under threat as anybody in the world, that this is now happening in the centre of Sydney, just like it happened on the streets of New York and other cities around the world.

Andy Fleming: If you look at the kinds of statements that are being made by people who are associated with or involved in Reclaim Australia, the Lindt Café siege is a key moment. Many people are responding to that event. They understand it to be an indication that Islam is a poisonous ideology and a murderous one, and a stand needs to be taken against it.

Christine El-Khoury: That's Andy Fleming…well, sort of. It's a pseudonym to protect his real identity. For ten years, Andy Fleming, who is an activist, has been disrupting far-right groups through his blog and by organising counter-rallies. They've tried to hunt him down and he fears for his safety. He says these groups like the violent street movement the Australian Defence League, have been mobilising for several years without success, until now.

Andy Fleming: What's remarkable about Reclaim is, especially on the April 4 demonstrations, is that they attracted thousands that were part of an online network of concern, and what's happened is that online network is now beginning to shift into a movement that takes to the streets.

Christine El-Khoury: The online world is where it's at for extremist groups. Once upon a time, the far-right would have been printing leaflets and scrambling to get enough people together for a rally. But the rise of social media has enabled them to narrowcast their views and reach thousands of like-minded individuals in Australia and overseas. The internet has given extremists a platform in which to build a sense of community outside of the real world, where hate can flourish with little risk of reprisal.

Andre Oboler: We've seen, for example, a number of cases where an individual from the Muslim community has their photograph put up on one of these hate groups. They have their name, their address, other details published, and a vague comment, 'Someone should do something about this person.' Sometimes it makes a suggestion, saying, 'This person supports ISIS,' or something to that effect.

 And it's this environment where online vigilantes can try and first identify a person, what we call doxing them, putting their information out there publicly. If enough people see it and decide this person should be targeted, the worst could happen. Now, the people they're targeting are just random members of society usually, there's no real reason for targeting that individual other than that they found a Muslim person, they found their details and they said, 'Let's target them.' We've seen that happening.

We've also seen when women engage in trying to counter this, we've seen threats of rape. We've seen one case where someone threatened to come and slit someone's throat and the throats of their children. It gets really, really nasty.

Christine El-Khoury: Dr Andre Oboler is the CEO of the Online Hate Prevention Institute, a charity that tracks, reports and tries to take down hate speech found online. For the last two years the charity has run a campaign targeting Muslim hate because he says it's been growing.

Andre Oboler: When we were looking at it at the end of 2013, we had groups like Petition to Ban Halal Products in Australia that had 1,200 people, Petition to Ban the Burqa had 1,500. We had other groups where they were getting up to the 2,000s, 4,000s. That's the range. The largest groups which were not Australian were in the order of 30,000 or so. But those groups would be considered small compared to what we're seeing online today. A lot of the Australian groups are already up to the 8,000, 10,000, 20,000 size. We've seen an online presence where people have joined and gathered towards, and part of that is because they've heard of these groups through the mainstream media as well.

Christine El-Khoury: Dr Oboler also consults for a range of Jewish groups to monitor anti-Semitism online. He says many of those who espouse anti-Semitic hate have now turned on Muslims.

Andre Oboler: A lot of the groups and people that are attacking the Muslim community now have previously attacked the Jewish community, so there's certainly a link there. But also a lot of the messages we're seeing are very similar to what we've seen with the anti-Semitic messages, the dehumanisation messages we're seeing, the idea that people don't fit it, that they're a threat. That's the sort of thing which we've got decades worth of experience against the Jewish community. And it's all there, you can match them side by side and see where this comes and where it's going. It's quite concerning to see.

Christine El-Khoury: But in the real world where fascism is still frowned upon, far-right groups are disguising their neo-Nazi beliefs beneath a cloak of Australian patriotism, often wrapped in the national flag.

Andy Fleming again:

Andy Fleming: Post Second World War there's been a series of iterations of Nazi politics. None of them have won any particular success. It was only I think with the emergence of a group like the Australian Nationalist Movement in the 1980s in Perth and National Action in Sydney and Melbourne and Adelaide also in the 1980s that there's been a kind of shift away from the waving the Swastika flag to waving the Eureka flag or the Australian flag. There's been a kind of accommodation to the political reality in Australia which is that anyone who is viewed as or understood as espousing Nazi politics is marginalised. So for example if you look at Reclaim Australia and the UPF, there has been neo-Nazi involvement in those groups and those events, but generally speaking there is an understanding also that those Nazi politics can't be presented fully to the public.

Christine El-Khoury: ASIO and the Australian Federal Police are monitoring all forms of extremism, according to the Neil Gaughan, including members of protest groups, it's just not as obvious as the large-scale counter-terror raids that occurred in Sydney and Brisbane in September last year where footage was released to the media.

Neil Gaughan: It's very simple to see that there's action taken in relation to Islamic extremism because of the fact that there has been a series of counterterrorism raids in this country over the last 14 months. It's not as easy for me to explain the fact that we're keeping an eye on groups on right and left wing of the terrorism spectrum unless I actually show some level of overt action. I've spoken a lot about this to the Islamic community, about the fact that we keep an eye on it. You know, my guys have been tasked to look quite heavily at some of the language that's been used by some of these groups, to the extent that we're sought advice from the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions about whether they've reached the criminal threshold. They haven't, but we'll continue to do that.

Christine El-Khoury: Since the attacks in Paris, there's been no change to Australia's National Terrorism Public Alert Level which shifted from medium to high days before the counter-terror raids. The Director-General of ASIO told ABC's 7.30 last week, he cannot guarantee that Australia will not experience terrorist attacks on home soil in the future.

The AFP's Neil Gaughan says the public and the media need to be realistic about terrorism.

Neil Gaughan: We've got to be realistic when we talk about terrorism threat in this country. The same week that we did those raids in Sydney or one series of raids in Sydney there were three domestic homicides here in the ACT. So three women lost their lives and no one in the particular raids was killed. We've got to get the proportion right. Now understand, the randomness of terrorism is what makes people fear it. There's more chance of people being eaten by a shark than there is of being a victim of a terrorism attack, and the statistics say that.

Christine El-Khoury: But fear of Muslims runs deep and has prompted the launch of a new political party inspired by the anti-Islamic Dutch MP Geert Wilders. The secretive anti-Islam lobby group, the Q Society, has just launched the Australian Liberty Alliance.

Intro to Debbie Robinson: And it is with the greatest of pleasures that I introduce you now to the senate candidate for Western Australia, the president of the Australian Liberty Alliance, Mrs Debbie 'Braveheart' Robinson!

Debbie Robinson: I would just like to thank…my stiletto is stuck in the stage…that's better [laughs]…

Christine El-Khoury: Debbie Robinson is vying for a Senate seat in Western Australia. The ALA attracted headlines by bringing Geert Wilders to Australia.

Debbie Robinson: I would just like to thank Geert for coming here, you're an inspiration. You inspired me to get out there, and…

Christine El-Khoury: Geert Wilders was a special guest at the launch. He came to Australia two years ago but no venue would host him.

Debbie Robinson: Since that last time you were coming and you couldn't speak, I've been so mad about that, so mad. And when someone tries to stop me doing something, I will fight. So we'll never stop, don't you worry, this party will forge ahead.

Christine El-Khoury: Background Briefing was refused permission to attend the launch, as were many other journalists. But later the ALA released an edited version of his speech.

Geert Wilders: And as you know, some have tried to discourage us. They protested against my presence here, should they grant me a visa or not. They made it hard for you to find a venue for this event. But they have not succeeded. The people are saying enough is enough, let us reclaim our country. Stop the mass immigration from Islamic countries. No more. We say no more to the governments and to the Islamisation process.

Christine El-Khoury: Geert Wilders was an inspiration for Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Breivik who cited him 30 times in the manifesto he released hours before going on a shooting rampage. The right-wing extremist set off a bomb in Oslo killing eight people, before gunning down 69 others at a left-wing youth camp.

Anne Aly worries about the influence Wilders might have on public debate in Australia.

Anne Aly: I think it was a little bit disappointing that he was allowed into the country, particularly given his influence on Anders Breivik who committed Norway's largest terrorist attack, who had a very, very strong anti-Islamic agenda and who was very much inspired by Geert Wilders, among others.

So we'll come out and have a knee-jerk reaction and say Chris Brown isn't allowed into the country because of his stance on domestic violence, but we'll allow Geert Wilders to come to Australia, and all very good and well under freedom of speech, but we should also be warned that his freedom of speech did, in fact, inspire one of the world's worst terrorist attacks.

Christine El-Khoury: Anne Aly says the rise in right-wing extremism has escalated since 9/11.

Anne Aly: Well, I think if you look at the way that the discourse on national security and terrorism has evolved since 9/11, you know, after the Bali bombings, John Howard said, 'Why do they do this? They do this because they hate us. Not because of anything that we've done, but because of who we are. Because they hate us.' Several years later, Tony Abbott repeated that mantra and he said, 'They hate us, that's why they do this. They hate us. It's not because of what we do, it's because of who we are. They hate us. They hate us because we're good.'

Christine El-Khoury: She says this has divided the Australian community into two camps; us and them.

Anne Aly: That kind of rhetoric, that kind of framing terrorism and national security as this battle of good and evil immediately creates sides. The way that this discourse developed was the 'them', the 'other' was inevitably going to be Muslim communities in Australia and anyone who is different in Australia, anyone who doesn't agree, because if you don't agree with us, then you must be one of them.

Christine El-Khoury: And this creates fear.

Anne Aly: If somebody hates you, what can you possibly do about it? If somebody hates you, not because of anything you do, but because of who you are, what can you possibly do about it? There is nothing you can do about it. And if there's nothing you can do about it, the only thing that you can do is really fear their reprisal, fear their violence.

Christine El-Khoury: Someone who knows how extremism works is 32-year-old father of two, James Fry. In the 1990s as a troubled and vulnerable 13-year-old, James was lured into a neo-Nazi group.

James Fry: I guess violence is probably an undercurrent that runs through it. Just through the terms of the language of the ideology, in the fact that it's framed in a very confrontational and war-like manner, it's very much an 'us versus them', 'good versus evil', and a sense of urgency kind of permeates through it all. With that constant belief that you're under threat, the violence I guess can come out in the language itself to begin with, although when it starts with the language, it then becomes very easy to justify physical violence.

Christine El-Khoury: During this time in his life, a period in which Sydney was experiencing an influx of Asian migration, James says he did things he still regrets.

James Fry: Yeah absolutely. I remember one occasion, I was walking through a railway station underpass and it was probably about 6 o'clock at night and I'd been drinking all afternoon and people were getting off the train. Looking back, it would have been two young men of an Asian background walking through that underpass, and one of them brushed up against me as I walked past. I was sure at the time that they did that deliberately and I just started beating into them. And because I was so caught up in this ideology that they were wrong and I was right, I had become the one who was actually the threat to society, and I had become really an animal in many ways.

Christine El-Khoury: In hindsight, James believes the situation could have been much worse.

James Fry: I'm incredibly grateful that those incidents were quite isolated because really, had I had access to firearms, had I perhaps lived in an area where more violence was encouraged or the ideology I'd aligned myself with had access to more means of violence, there's nothing to say that it wouldn't have just been two gentlemen in a railway station. It could have been a group of people. It could have involved murder, even.

Christine El-Khoury: Mariam Veiszadeh is a Muslim community advocate based in Sydney. Since the counter-terror raids in September last year, she's been tracking Islamophobia in the community.

Mariam Veiszadeh: What we're finding now, looking back on almost 12 months' worth of data, is that there is a correlation (from what we can see from preliminary findings) between what's playing out in the media and government rhetoric in the incidents that then come through in terms of how that then translates to people out on the streets who happen to be Muslim, or look Muslim for that matter, and how they're treated, and some of the reports that have come through since then.

Christine El-Khoury: Mariam has experienced first-hand how violence in the online world can become a frightening reality. She's received death threats and been under police guard, had her work details published online and received verbal abuse so bad the police have pressed charges. Some of the abuse has been linked to the Australian Defence League and supporters of Reclaim Australia.

Mariam Veiszadeh: The first time you get a death threat, you really freak out, and then after a while, you're just like, 'Oh dear, okay, all right, well, I know what to do.' I think the main thing is the rational version of me was like, okay, well, hopefully these guys are keyboard warriors.

Christine El-Khoury: Then it got real.

Mariam Veiszadeh: When some of the physical things happen, when someone actually bothered to send me bacon in the mail, then you start to realise, okay, maybe they are not just keyboard warriors. Clearly they have way too much time on their hands and they're willing to send a message by doing something like that, and having your accounts hacked and things like that, you then start to realise, okay, these guys mean business. So you just step up your security and take necessary precautions. To this day, I still do that.

Christine El-Khoury: And it's taken a big toll on her personally. She suffers from severe anxiety.

Mariam Veiszadeh: I have grown up in this beautiful country and I have been given wonderful opportunities that I know that I couldn't dream of if my parents made the difficult decision of not fleeing Afghanistan when they did. So I am eternally grateful for everything that I have been given, and the opportunities that I have been afforded, but when things like this happen and they just seem to be constant, and you're constantly weathering the storm and you just think when is this going to stop, it just makes it hard because some days you really don't want to get out of bed.

Christine El-Khoury: Mariam believes the level of anti-Islamic sentiment in the community is worse than ever.

Mariam Veiszadeh: Ultimately that's the impact that it's having, that you feel that your very identity is constantly being criticised, ridiculed and challenged. It's really exhausting, and for Muslim women in particular like myself who are visible, it feels almost worse than post 9/11, just sometimes the pressure that you feel when you are out in public.

Christine El-Khoury: Islamophobia has reached new heights across the western world, according to Kevin Dunn from Western Sydney University.

Kevin Dunn: I know there were people critical of Tony Abbott and that he may have…some people talk about dog whistle politics around Islamophobia and there may have been some of that but nothing compared to what we've seen some western politicians do elsewhere in the world.

Christine El-Khoury: Kevin Dunn believes overall Australia is not racist.

Kevin Dunn: When we look at things like the experience of racism and instances of intercommunal relations harm and especially widespread public disorder, we do very well compared to the rest of the world.

Christine El-Khoury: But he says there are worrying trends.

Kevin Dunn: Too many Australians, for instance, have what we could call Islamophobic attitudes. Far in excess of those people who were implacably opposed to diversity, which is only about 6% or 7%, but the number of people who have some anxiety about the Muslim presence in Australia gets closer to 46%. That's a big variation. So a lot of ordinary Australians who otherwise like diversity and difference have these concerns about Islam and Muslims, and so these organised racist groups, and I'll call them that, are attempting to politically leverage and benefit from that.

Christine El-Khoury: And do you think they could have much success?

Kevin Dunn: Well, there's a negative and a positive response to that. On the negative side, if we're being despondent, we could point to Western Europe where groups like them have had electoral success and it has been bad for community relations in those nations. So that's on the negative side. On the positive side, what we said about the success of multiculturalism makes it very difficult for those groups. They are reminded constantly that they are a minority politically, that their views are deviant in terms of the overwhelming view of the Australian public. So there's reasons to be both hopeful and despondent.

Christine El-Khoury: Also hopeful is Liberal Party pollster, Mark Textor. He thinks Islamophobia doesn't exist in Australia.

Mark Textor: I think that's complete fantasy. I'm not even quite sure what that means. Look, there are a significant number of Australians who are worried about social cohesion, but they're worried about the outcome, they're not anti-Islam, they're not anti-Muslim. They're obviously worried about radicalisation of some Islamic youth, they're worried about…obviously the caliphate potentially forming across the Middle East, but they tend to be strategic concerns about peace and prosperity, not about hatred of a particular faith.

Christine El-Khoury: For years Mark Textor helped craft the Howard government's hardline language towards asylum seekers. He thinks the media shouldn't pay too much attention to the Reclaim Australia movement.

Mark Textor: For good or for bad, these maddies in the far right, my radical brethren, don't represent either my faith or your faith, and the Reclaim Australia don't represent every traditional Anglo-Saxon person either. So we've just got to keep that in mind and realise that we need to re-normalise the conversation.

Christine El-Khoury: Anne Aly says we need to start taking right-wing extremism more seriously or we could see jihadi style violence perpetrated by neo-Nazis.

Anne Aly: I think it's very hard when you have had years, decades, of discourse where the 'other', the enemy is somebody other than you, other than 'us', to have that mirror turned around and to think maybe that there's elements of us that maybe we need to be working on as well. This also explains the reason, for me, why certain parts of Muslim communities become very defensive about violent extremism as well and about the issues within Muslim communities. It's hard to turn the mirror on yourself and be introspective. I think that's part of it. But I do think that we have been very dismissive of it and that we need to be more aware and more vigilant that this doesn't threaten Australia's harmony and the social cohesion that we have, and that it doesn't become something to the scale of the violent jihadism, because it could very well.

Christine El-Khoury: Background Briefing's coordinating producer is Linda McGinness, research by Anna Whitfeld, technical production this week by Andrei Shabunov, and the executive producer is Wendy Carlisle. I'm Christine El-Khoury. And you can listen to Background Briefing any time on the ABC radio app. See you next time.