Yassmin Abdel-Magied awarded free speech prize for Anzac Day post

Controversial Muslim youth activist Yassmin Abdel-Magied has been awarded a free speech prize for her offensive Anzac Day post.

A civil liberties group gave the 27-year-old former ABC presenter, who now lives in London, its Young Voltaire Award for 2018.

Liberty Victoria said the Muslim activist and writer, who previously worked as a mechanical engineer for Dutch oil giant Shell, deserved to be recognised for weathering criticism from ‘internet trolls, tabloid newspapers and even numerous members of parliament’.

Controversial Muslim youth activist Yassmin Abdel-Magied has been awarded a free speech prize for her offensive Anzac Day post

Ms Abdel-Magied, who was born in Sudan and grew up in Brisbane, caused a furore in April last year when she published a tweet politicising Anzac Day

‘Yassmin refused to give in to fear mongering,’ they said.

‘Despite being personally targeted by high-profile political figures through inaccurate and racist media reporting, she would not be silenced.’

Ms Abdel-Magied, who was born in Sudan and grew up in Brisbane, caused a furore in April last year when she published a tweet likening Anzac Day to refugees.

‘Lest. We. Forget. (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine),’ she said.

The hijab-wearing founder of Youth Without Borders quickly deleted that tweet and apologised unreservedly, however, late last year she likened the criticism in Australia she faced to ‘dating an abusive guy’.

Liberty Victoria said the Muslim activist and writer deserved to be recognised for weathering criticism from ‘internet trolls, tabloid newspapers’ and federal politicians

Two months earlier, she declared Islam to be ‘the most feminist religion’ during a clash on the ABC’s Q&A program with former senator Jacqui Lambie. 

Ms Abdel-Magied previously had travelled to the Middle East and North Africa as a member of the taxpayer-funded Council for Australian Arab Relations.

But despite going on a taxpayer-trip to promote her book and having a part-time job hosting the ABCs’ now axed Australia Wide, she described Australia as a ‘neo-liberalist capitalist project’.

She has also accused white Australians of having ancestors who were guilty of ‘colonising and enslaving’ the world and said the House of Representatives ‘does not represent anyone’  because most federal lawmakers were white.

Liberty Victoria described Ms Abdel-Magied as a courageous activist ‘on topics of race, equality and unconscious bias’

Former cabinet minister Eric Abetz last year called on her to ‘move to one of these Arab dictatorships’ where ‘forced marriages, female genital mutilation and sexuality-based executions are legal’.

Media commentator and public relations executive Prue MacSween also joked she would have ‘been tempted to run her over, mate’.

Liberty Victoria described Ms Abdel-Magied as a courageous activist ‘on topics of race, equality and unconscious bias’. 

‘She continued to speak out against racism, discrimination and harmful stereotypes,’ they said.

Liberty Victoria awarded its Voltaire Award for 2018 to comedian and writer Magda Szubanski for her work campaigning for gay marriage

‘Yassmin continues to give voice to the experience of young Muslim women in Australia and beyond.’

Last month, the Australian Human Rights Commission dropped a racism complaint against her, without specifying the nature of the complaint.

Liberty Victoria awarded its Voltaire Award for 2018 to comedian and writer Magda Szubanski for her work campaigning for gay marriage.

The award was named after the eighteenth century French philosopher also known as François-Marie Arouet who said: ‘I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it’. 

English author Evelyn Beatrice Hall in 1906 attributed that phrase to him.

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