From the Ashes of 9/11: Kuraby's Masjid al-Farooq
The September 2001 arson attack on the Kuraby Mosque was a catalyst for the Brisbane Muslim community to articulate what it means to be a Muslim post-9/11.
By Ryan Williams and Zerrin Afza
This is a 20 minute read, published in December 2024.
Masjid al-Farooq, also known as Kuraby Mosque for its location in the southern Brisbane suburb, was firebombed two weeks after the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001.
Someone put that box of tinder on fire at night. We found out during the night, when I went there for prayers early morning. We found out someone burned the mosque. And some Qurans were also burned … pages scattered around here and there, burnt, half burnt and fully burnt. Qurans was burned, for which we felt very sad, because copies of Quran, what we read every day, were burnt. It is very sacred to us. (Ahmed, 2022: Interview)
The arson attack received international attention. At the time, the local Muslim community had already outgrown the former Anglican church that served as a site for learning and prayer and that was now reduced to ashes and twisted corrugated metal. The distressing event, however, served to kindle in the growing community the motivation to articulate new forms of community and ways of being socially and politically active Australian Muslims.
An Organic Emergence: 1989-2001
The Masjid Al-Farooq was established to meet the needs of a small Muslim population in the Southern Brisbane suburb of Kuraby. Migrants from South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Zambia, arriving in Australia in the mid–1970s, purchased the timber Anglican church on Beenleigh Road at the end of 1989 with the help of thirteen donors (Vahed and Vahed, 2014: 71). The former church was built in 1924 on land later donated to the Church of England by Charles Jacob who had inherited a portion of the original block in the south-eastern part of Wally Tate Park (Donovan, 2000: 60). By purchasing an established religious site, the community avoided lodging a rezoning application for a place of worship. In the early years, a new roof was added, and two classrooms were constructed at the back of the building.
The building was used as a madrasa before serving as a musalla for performing salah Initially, use was irregular although international speakers were brought in during Ramadan for the nightly taraweeh prayer. The first congregational prayers were held there around 1994 (Vahed and Vahed, 2014: 71). An early trustee of the mosque, Hamid, recalls how the site was originally a “bit of a community centre” and people saw the value in the facility, and “as the community grew, they saw need for having religious education nearby and this was a convenient space.” It was well-placed near a railway line. The area was a site of emerging housing development, providing people that may have been of low socio-economic standing the opportunity to buy close to the mosque. The emergence of the mosque, Hamid explains, “just happened organically.”
At the time, Kuraby was a sparsely populated area, with less than 5000 residents and a small number of Muslim families in 1991. Ahmed, who moved to the area when he retired from a teaching career in 1997, recorded every family’s name as he welcomed them to the community: “Initially, I went up to about seventy. More started coming.” Now, he observes, “there are about more or less 500 families.” He explains his motivation for counting early mosque-goers: “I wanted to know them. To invite them to the mosque, those who don’t pray, they should pray.” So he would “tell them why they should pray in the order of Allah — God and the Prophet. And they listened. I don’t know whether they really act upon it or not, Allah knows.” Following Islamic tradition, Ahmed expresses the idea that Muslims “should come to the mosque and pray there instead of at home. They get more reward to pray in the mosque.”
When Professor Mohamad Abdalla began serving as resident and acting imam in 1997, the mosque was a quiet place:
there were 10 people who would come for the Isha prayer, the night prayer. There would be a similar number of people for the fajr prayer, the first prayer. So then when I got there, I was told that has been the case for the last few years since the mosque was purchased. So hardly anyone there. Friday Sermon would have probably a maximum of 25 people … there was some Quran teaching for children, but it was very small numbers indeed. (Abdalla, 2022: Interview)
To address these small numbers, Professor Abdalla determined to visit every Muslim within a 10-kilometre diameter: “literally every night, I would visit Muslims, just to see how they are, and invite them to the mosque.” Within a year of doing that, he now remembers, “the mosque was full.”
Planning permissions for a new mosque had already been set in motion by the time Professor Abdalla arrived as imam in 1997, with a planning application lodged in October 1995 for a new double story building to be used as a place of public worship. The building aligned with the development plan of Kuraby, but the town council required 43 parking spaces rather than the proposed 24 spaces. Permission for 24 spaces was eventually approved because of the nearby Kuraby Railway Station that had public car parking facilities. The proposal was further considered in relation to traffic concerns, but it was concluded that it would not have an adverse impact on traffic in the area (Vahed and Vahed, 2014: 71). The Council granted permission for the development in May 2000.
The Kuraby Mosque development faced little opposition. There was no coordinated community opposition and few written submissions in reply to the development (Vahed and Vahed, 2014: 68), an experience that contrasted sharply with the opposition faced in mosque development and Islamic school construction in New South Wales. In 2003, for instance, the Baulkham Hills Shire Council rejected the construction of a mosque, a decision that was later overturned on the basis that the rejection was based on ‘subjective fears’ (Vahed and Vahed, 2014: 68). In 2007 intense community opposition was demonstrated by two pigs’ heads being displayed on the site on metal stakes (Vahed and Vahed, 2014: 68). The Queensland experience of opposition was comparably muted.
A box of tinder: 2001
In the early morning of September 22, 2001, an arsonist used a petrol bomb to set Masjid al-Farooq ablaze. The former Anglican church was burned to the ground, including its religious and educational books.
My wife woke me up: ‘get up, get up, our house is on fire!’
Professor Abdalla lived a short distance from the mosque, close enough to hear the crackling of the fire. As the flames engulfed the building, his first thought was to check on their eighty-year-old neighbour who was sandwiched between their house and the mosque. He remembers her unflustered, resilient reply when he suggested she evacuate: “I’ve got my hose with me, it’ll be fine.” Within thirty minutes the “whole Muslim community was there: men, women, children.” After the fire brigade put out the blaze the shocked community prayed the morning prayer outside. The imam recalls: “you could see it on the faces of the community, like, ‘where did this come from?’”
Community ties between mosque attendees and non-Muslim residents in the lead-up to the arson attack had not been antagonistic. Professor Abdullah remembers “excellent” neighbourly relations with non-Muslims in the Kuraby community, a mutually “respectful relationship.” Kuraby was regarded as a quiet, peaceful suburb. It was for that reason that the event was so devastating and unexpected for the resident imam who remembers the “utter disappointment with the burning of the mosque” felt by everyone in the community.

Figure 1: 'Mosque officials survey the damage after Saturday's fire', Southern Star, 26 September 2001 (Derrick Tonkin).
The arson attack was met with shock from community members. “It was the ideal mosque,” Professor Abdalla explains, “and then, suddenly, 9/11 happened.” The events of September 11, 2001, had rippling, international significance for Muslim and non-Muslim relationships. “From that moment onward,” he feels, “life changed completely.”
The mosque leadership can recount stories of the divisive aftermath. A truck driver, seeing Professor Abdalla’s Muslim attire while driving to the university, suddenly “almost took us off the road.” More generally, he remembers that “something [was] different, you know, you could cut through the atmosphere, so to speak.”
A former mosque trustee, Huda, recounts the feeling of unease in his work cafeteria the day after the 9/11 attacks. Televisions broadcast the events and workers clustered in discussion: “I remember one guy saying we should not allow any people into this country,” Huda recalls. He was later pulled into the discussion as a “Muslim”, but one who was “different” than “those” Muslims who committed the attacks. But Huda was nonetheless called to account for the actions of terrorists overseas: “They asked me what we’re thinking and why they did it.” He could only fumble for a response, saying that he didn’t know, and recalls acting “goofy” to distract his inquisitors’ attention from him. He did not know how to reply: the hijackers didn’t consult him, he explains, nor did they consult the Muslim victims who also died in the attacks to see whether the attacks were in accordance with Islam (Huda, 2022: Interview).
Muslim women received the brunt of prejudice and hate in the aftermath of the events of 9/11. Aaima remembers how there was “huge backlash” that she experienced personally and with surprise:
Even myself, I was at Sunnybank Hills shopping centre on the corner of Compton. And so I was parking the car, I got out, and I was going towards the entrance. And a woman said, “Get out of here! Why are you here?” And she just yelled and screamed at me. I was shocked. I just went there to get groceries. I had no idea [of the events in New York] and I didn’t realise the extent of incident…Whoever did it, obviously they were wrong on that. But still, you don’t just blanket blame on everyone. (Aaima, 2022: Interview)
With family connections tied locally in Australia for more than 160 years, Aaima was shocked at suddenly being treated differently. Other Muslim women, she recalls, stopped wearing the hijab to avoid drawing attention to themselves.
In the days following 9/11 “that feeling of being secure, suddenly changed,” Professor Abdalla explains. The Holland Park Mosque had been firebombed a week prior, but with little damage except for scorch marks on brickwork at the front of the mosque. Mosques were receiving “a lot of threats,” a school bus carrying Muslim children was reportedly stoned, and Professor Abdalla recalls that “somebody came at night and put a for sale sign in front of my house and other Muslim houses”. With the “community … on high alert,” they had people guarding the mosque around the clock. On the night of the firebombing, no one was in attendance at the early hours of the morning as many had gone away to a camp.
According to Ahmed, reflecting on the incident, the attack could have happened “anywhere,” “to a church” too, and it was a “mishap from a nonsense person” with no respect for religion. Ahmed explains that during his 52 years in Australia he had never felt unsafe, and he asserts that you find “nonsense” people everywhere in any country, whether it be Pakistan, his country of origin, or in Australia. The mosque had remained an anchor-point for him in his 27 years as a local resident in Kuraby: “I feel very peaceful and safe when I go there. And also, I’m very lucky to have my house close to the mosque.” (Ahmed, 2022: Interview)
A Message in the Rubble
By sunrise, with the embers still hot, “the whole media was there.” Not only the local media, but Professor Abdalla was receiving calls from international media such as the BBC in London and media outlets from South Africa. The Premier, the Police Commissioner, and other official and political figures arrived. The crowds were gathered and the mosque was gone when Ahmed arrived for early morning prayers. “So you look at this mosque, which was thriving, and now it’s completely in ashes.” (Abdalla, 2022: Interview)
People were upset, angry, and there was concern among Muslim leaders that there would be backlash. Professor Abdalla was pulled in to “speak to the media to represent the community because they wanted to calm the tensions and not to inflame” them.
Then, in the debris, they found something. “This is a miracle”: a page from the Hadith with charred edges and with a message, translated from Arabic as: “a strong person is not one who wrestles and defeats others, but controls himself in times of anger.” It was a call for restraint when people were feeling angry, upset, and distraught.
Professor Abdalla recalls that the television news cameras were there, with their lenses poised, and he remembers them turning to a member of the community who had arrived and was visibly angry. He placed his hands over the man’s shoulders and thought, “absolutely this is not what we’re going to do. This is not the way we will respond.” Rather, Professor Abdalla considered instead how this was “the time to show the beauty of Islam.”
That day planted a seed in Professor Abdalla that would lead to a twenty-year marathon of public engagement. When he was interviewed and asked about the solution, his response was: “education is the solution: we need to learn about each other.” The interview had an “immense ripple effect.” He was invited to speak at “every church and every school” in Gympie, a city to the north of Brisbane known for its conservative tendencies. He was told he might want to wear jeans, a shirt, and a hat, but he refused, and wore his traditional attire.
On the second day of his speaking tour, he was pictured on the front page of the Gympie Times, in front of St Patrick’s Cathedral surrounded by students with the caption “City Embraces Peace Message.” He wanted to “battle [the] media’s political and negative rhetoric” and to thrust into the spotlight the “misrepresentation of Islam” in the media which was always based in “negative connotations” and “loaded without any benefit of the doubt for us.” “Always I have to be on the back foot,” Professor Abdalla explains.
The message he carried extended not only nationally but internationally as well. On invitation by the Australian High Commission, Professor Abdalla was called to “public diplomacy visits” in Southeast Asia, including the world’s most populous Muslim country, Indonesia, with an aim to educate international Muslims about Australia and to overcome perceptions that Australia is hostile towards Muslims. “It was a two-way street,” he remembers:
… they were seeing Australia, based on the media reporting they were getting, and based on some politics, the way our politicians speak, etc. was that “Oh, my God,” you know, “how can you even live in Australia?” (Abdalla, 2022: Interview)
And I would be asked, “Are you allowed to pray in Australia? Are you allowed to go to a mosque in Australia? Can you wear the hijab in Australia?” And I would say, yes, we can, you know, so our role was to build bridges between both the East and the West, if you like, Muslim and non-Muslim.
The effect of that fateful day was that the Brisbane Muslim community was forced from the comfort of “their own shell” to “engage with wider communities.” Many feel that some good came out of the act of bigotry and destruction.
Getting Active
The arson attack was not only a catalyst for leaders in the Brisbane Muslim community to articulate what it means to be a Muslim post-9/11. Ordinary Muslims felt the gravitational pull of the event to reflect on their own identity for themselves and their wider community. For Huda, a former Kuraby Mosque trustee who began his role in 2004, 9/11 and the arson attack on the mosque was a “turning point.” He recalls: “It allowed me in 2001 to really start to understand that I need to have a positive influence on people from an Islamic point of view. Up until then I was [just] living my life.” Hamid describes a similar transformation when he explains that “as a young person, you think you’re bulletproof and you can just go off and live life and everything will take care of itself, and then you realise your life needs to be rooted in something.”
They were going about their lives, “just like everybody else”, until 9/11 changed how they thought about themselves as Muslims. Stares and the verbal questionings of colleagues turned like the camera lenses of paparazzi to draw the shape of Muslim identities into sharp focus. Huda was relieved that Professor Abdalla was “on the ground” to control the flow of emotions to stem anger as a “war flamed up.” The acting imam was the “voice of the community” that everyone “respected”, there “by the grace of God”. The media anticipated backlash from the Muslim community, and they wanted to capture retaliation “to have news”, Professor Abdalla wondered, another sensational headline. But retaliation never came.
Mostafa describes something of a religious awakening instead. “I started looking into it more in terms of how can I defend myself? If somebody asked me, you know, does your religion encourage you to kill infidels? You know, how do I explain that?” The questioning of Islam by other people created “a kind of enlightenment, where suddenly, you go, hang on, I gotta find out more about our own religion … so that people don’t … weaponise” misunderstandings about Islam.
A longstanding consequence of this reflection was that Mostafa became more politically active. He started a network with politicians and moved into lobbying through the organisation Australian Muslim Advocacy Network (AMAN), offering formal advocacy. He had always been active in the community, having started a newsletter, the Crescents Community News, but after the events of 2001, he became active outside the Muslim community to engage with wider social challenges.
Mostafa describes his recent activism to build a network to raise funds for a legal challenge against a social media company in response to how Muslims were represented on the platform. The effect of this decades-long struggle is that he feels that Muslims were “maturing as a community.” This maturing as a community meant that Muslims could be a part of Australian society “without feeling stuck as victims, without being second class.” (Mostafa, 2022: Interview)
“We can show them that we are on equal footing. And that’s what’s going to change the country is the ability to argue with them on an equal and level playing field. We are not the victims anymore.”
A Multicultural Mosque and Cosmopolitan Islam
From its beginnings, Kuraby Mosque had the resources to develop a non-partisan, multicultural community with a heightened social and political awareness. Mosque committees and attendees can experience sectarianism, with “so-called Salafi and non-Salafi groups or hard liners and more moderate groups,” as Professor Abdalla explains.
But Kuraby Mosque was notably non-partisan and inclusive:
Muslims of various persuasions, and theological and ideological backgrounds, got together, which was a really, really unique experience, and remains the same today. I have never recalled … any battles in the mosque, say for leadership or for imam-ship …. And whenever somebody, from whichever quarter of the Muslims, tried to bring a controversial issue that could potentially divide the community, the sort of leaders within the mosque would, [regardless of] their theological or ideological orientations, immediately come together and put a stop to that. So that was unique about Kuraby: we created a very inclusive mosque, at the cultural and religious level … Visitors would come from interstate or overseas, they were struck by this cohesion. So, it was the ideal mosque if you like. (Abdalla, 2022: Interview)
Former committee members explain how the mosque has migrants coming from “everywhere in the world”: “We don’t say, ‘we are Southern African’ or ‘No, no, we are Sunni and we like the Hanafi’.” Instead, the community recognises that there are “different types of people from all different colours and we have harmony.” (Hamid, 2022: Interview)
This multicultural, non-partisan spirit was described by the mosque committee members as arising from their own experiences as immigrants from South Africa who had the experience of the racial segregation of apartheid. Mostafa explains why he thought Kuraby Mosque was progressive:
I think there’s a couple of reasons why we probably had a head start, I think most communities were very politically aware, you know, a lot of us have grown up in an environment where we had to get ourselves up to speed about things like communism, and race issues, and so on. So that was like, pretty much on our agenda all the time. And then I think the advantage of maybe we had English as a language that we could communicate and I think, given a bit of a head start, yeah. (Mostafa, 2022: Interview)
Hamid explains the challenge of being on the mosque committee and dealing with forty different ethnicities, and managing issues from how people park to the social expectations of how the mosque is used. He feels he always had to consider where someone might be coming from, and thinking “a little ahead” required a “degree of delicacy” as there are “so many different life experiences that make up the community.” He concludes: “And I think we’re still learning!”
On top of managing the diversity of the community, the mosque was “forward thinking,” having very early on a female trustee on the board, a practice emulated on other boards, and installing the latest round of board members as “youngsters” in their 30s. The mosque served as a catalyst for the access of women into the mosque through a woman-led madrasa called ‘Al-Kawthar’ established by Umm Yusuf, and a sisterhood wing that organises events for women.
Modelled on the Suburban Vernacular
The new building being constructed next to the ruins of the former Anglican church was completed in 2001, the same year as the arson attack. Jessica Harris’ account of the construction plans explain that the building arose from a collaboration between key figures in the Kuraby Islamic Trust and a former Yugoslavian Muslim architect who remains unidentified (Harris, 2013: 350).

Figure 4: Building work, Masjid al-Farooq, c. 2001 (Queensland Muslim Historical Society).
Based on an interview with trustee Imraan Nathie, Harris details the architectural inspiration for the design in the “prevalent suburban vernacular of South-East Queensland,” with a wrap-around veranda, corrugated iron roof, and blockwork construction (Harris, 2013: 350). She describes how the Islamic features and symbolism of the constructed mosque became enculturated within its local surroundings with material features and community collaborations sourced locally:
The site boundaries permit a correct alignment of the entire building to suit the direction of the qibla wall which makes for an ordered plan with symmetrical placement of ablution areas, shoe storage and amenities. Suggestive of the curvature of the traditional dome, the roof instead comprises a corrugated iron clad barrel vault running through the longest section of the rectilinear plan. Internally, the expression of the barrel vault roof runs parallel to the qibla wall, which features a full height glass block window acting as a mihrab in place of the conventional niche (Harris, 2013: 350).
Such reworking of conventional architectural elements, she suggests, “are small constituents that suggest the ongoing process of contestation over symbolism, ethnic diversity, culture and the built environment in Australia” (Harris, 2013: 350).
The minaret is deliberately moderate in scale, reflecting both cost efficiency and a moderate scale to be less conspicuous (Vahed and Vahed, 2014: 71). As former mosque trustee Hamid explains:
If you look at Kuraby mosque it looks like a Queenslander building. So Islam allows you to take from the best of what society offers, as long as it’s within the parameters of … your beliefs. So it’s very accepting and you can build a mosque without a [large] minaret (which becomes the ugliest minaret, I think, which we need to change). So I think it can be just a very basic building … it doesn’t need to be a certain style or certain way doesn’t have to look. And it can be very Australian — it’s fine. (Hamid, 2022: Interview)
Hamid came to realise that Islamic architecture could be Australian, just as Islamic identity could also be Australian: “you can be a good Australian citizen and a productive member of society, and you can be a good Muslim, too, at the same time. It doesn’t mean that you’ve got to compromise.”
Despite its modest architecture, Kuraby Mosque has a special character and is seen as a source of connection: “It’s not fancy with the most chandeliers and all great stuff, [but] there’s something about it … people find it relaxing, they find it peaceful, they find they connect.” Abrar describes Kuraby Mosque as a community and educational hub. Many migrants, arriving in Australia as skilled workers, are well educated, and they want their children to be well educated, as professionals in medicine, engineering, accounting, and science, and as Muslims. So, “most of the families have children who have memorised the Quran,” Abrar says, and he concludes: “it’s the best of both worlds.” (Abrar, 2022: Interview)
Consolidation, growth, and community-building
The Muslim community in Kuraby quickly outgrew their new structure. In 2008, the mosque committee was already making plans for an expansion as worshippers were spilling out onto the veranda space during peak times. An adjacent property on Beenleigh Road was donated to the mosque, and when another adjacent property came up for sale, the mosque committee jumped at the opportunity to secure a larger site for development (Crescents Community News, Newsletter 072).
Community funds were raised for these purchases and to refurbish the houses for use as madrasas. But these were short term plans, and a major redevelopment came to completion in 2024. This major renovation and expansion created functional zones, including outdoor spaces for children, educational spaces, an expanded Sisters’ area for female congregants with a dedicated space for mothers and children, increased parking, and an elevator to provide access for the elderly and less mobile.
The expansions and renovations have an updated, contemporary look, adding modern cladding to some of the original concrete blockwork – a sign of the vitality and forward-looking view of the community with its bold and fresh look. But the architecture of the redevelopment retains some earlier pragmatic features that have blended into the local Queensland suburban background, with the veranda and domed corrugated barrel roof retained. The expansion allows the facility to fulfil the needs of a growing community and to satisfy the original purposes of the site as a community hub, where worship, education, and community came together.
Part of the redevelopment plan was accelerated in response to the horrific events of the Christchurch attack in New Zealand in 2019, with a perimeter fence constructed to provide a secure and central point of access for vehicles and pedestrians. Like the burning of the Kuraby Mosque in 2001, the events in New Zealand again intensified the salience of Muslim identity. But as Imam Uzair reflects, “what happened in Christchurch allowed people [in wider society] to shift their view of who is a villain, from Muslims post-9/11, to somebody else: it’s not Muslims who are the culprits, but are the victims”. As international events brought Muslims into the spotlight again by pivoting on the false dichotomy of ‘culprit’ or ‘victims’, Muslims in Brisbane continued in their work to meet the immediate needs of their community and to foster positive community relationships.
The global Covid-19 pandemic, however, took the spotlight off Muslims, shifting “attention away from emotions” as families struggled. The community came to together to serve the wider needs of the area. Since the pandemic in 2021, community relations seemed to return to where they were two decades prior. Community relations normalised and also felt “lighter”, Imam Uzair reflects: “It seems like now, when I’m walking out, I feel that same feeling that I used to have pre-9/11.”
With thanks
We extend our deep appreciation for all members of the Masjid al-Farooq community who shared their stories with us. Please note that some names of participants are pseudonyms to respect requests for anonymity.
Sources and further reading
Crescents Community News. Newsletter 072, ‘Kuraby Mosque Expansion Programme.’ https://www.crescentsofbrisbane.or g/Newsletter/CCN0172.asp
Donovan, Ron. 2000. A History of Kuraby and Eight Mile Plains. Runcorn: Kuraby District Community Support Group.
Harris, Jessica. 2013. ‘Tradition, Identity and Adaptation: Mosque Architecture in South-East Queensland.’ In Alexandra Brown and Andrew Leach (eds), Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand: 30, Open. Gold Coast, Qld: SAHANZ, 341–53.
Queensland Places. ‘Kuraby’. https://www.queenslandplaces.com.au/kuraby
Vahed, Y. and G. Vahed. 2014. ‘The Development Impact of Mosque Location on Land Use in Australia: A Case Study of Masjid al Farooq in Brisbane.’ Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 34, 1: 66–81.
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