Mariam Veiszadeh

Mariam Veiszadeh is an in-house lawyer, a community rights advocate, pro-Islam campaigner, keynote speaker, opinion writer and Twitter personality. She is ranked in the top 0.5% users on social media.[1] She is an official Ambassador for Welcome to Australia, a migrants' support group and original founder and President of the Islamophobia Register Australia, a reporting platform which allows incidents of islamophobia to be reported, recorded and analysed. Veiszadeh and her family [2] fled from Kabul, in Afghanistan in 1988, when she was just four years old. They ended up in Australia three years later via India, the Czech Republic and Germany and were granted asylum in 1991 under the Refugee and Special Humanitarian Program.

Veiszadeh is a prominent member of the Australian Muslim community, has been described as a "typically assertive Australian woman" [2] and has a large social media following, and her tweets are often cited in news articles. Veiszadeh 's tweets often make it to the NSHIP digital and Which-50 Retweets list (a report which takes the pulse of the Australian Twittersphere to discover the most-retweeted tweets).

Veiszadeh topped the list of ‘12 Muslim Australians Who Crushed It In 2014‘, by US news media website Buzzfeed, as she was acknowledged for “leading the charge against Islamophobia” and classified as being part of “Australia’s best and brightest”.

Trolling and threats

Veiszadeh made global headlines as she endured months of cyber-bullying and several death threats, specifically including decapitation[3] for simply speaking out against bigotry. Australians responded by rallying behind Veiszadeh and showing their support on social media using the hashtag #IstandwithMariam.[4] Her experiences of cyber-bullying has been cited as a case study in several publications and books including inTargeted and Trolled: The Reality of Being a Woman Online.[5]

The cyber-bullying Veiszadeh experienced intensified when in October 2014, she railed against a Cairns Woolworths supermarket selling a singlet adorned with the Australian flag and the words, “love it or leave”. Veiszadeh took to Twitter to object to what she perceived to be a bigoted message she felt that the singlet carried, and the fact that an iconic Australian brand like Woolworths was seen as endorsing the message by selling the singlet.[6]

Three months later, the anti-Islam group the Australian Defence League criticised her tweet, Cropping the words from the picture of the singlet, the organisation posted her tweet to its Facebook page, insinuating to its nearly 5000 followers that Veiszadeh objection was to the flag itself. It opened the floodgates to a torrent of online abuse and which expanded to the Daily Stormer, a Neo-Nazi group in the US, which had Joshua_Ryne|a writer]] who wrote several articles about her.

Joshua Goldberg

In a bizarre twist, Veiszadeh fell victim to a US-based, libertarian Jewish-American troll named Joshua Goldberg, who was charged by the FBI with illegally distributing information relating to the creation of explosives in a plot to bomb a 9/11 memorial ceremony in Kansas City, Missouri as part of an ISIL persona. Goldberg made several online posts under a number of different pen names. He posted to The Daily Stormer as white neo-nazi supremacist Michael Slay, and contributed to feminist blog Feministing under the name Tanya Cohen. He promoted an illusory friendship between Australi Witness and Veiszadeh with the stated objective of trying to smear her reputation.[7] Under his "Michael Slay" persona, Goldberg wrote the majority of articles criticising Veiszadeh and the initial piece criticising her stance on the flag shirt. Upon learning the true identity of the writer, website owner Andrew Anglin removed all content by Goldberg. The website currently contains content criticising him.

Accolades

Veiszadeh was selected by Elle Magazine Malaysia as one of 12 women who were helping “change the world” for International Women's Day 2015, alongside the likes of Michelle Obama and Angelina Jolie. And domestically in Australia, Get Up, an independent, community advocacy organisation featured her alongside other strong women advocates, including Rosie Batty, 2015 Australian of the Year, for ‘making it happen’. Veiszadeh was also featured in Elle Magazine Australia for their #WeAreWomen campaign and was a finalist in the Daily Life Women of the Year Awards as well as being awarded Westpac’s ‘Woman of Influence’ Award for 2015.

In December 2015, Veiszadeh was awarded the “Role Model of the Year” and “Woman of the Year” at the 9th Australian Muslim Achievement Awards.[8]

References

  1. ↑ "Klear Profile".
  2. 1 2 Price, Jenna (18 September 2012). "Freedom of Religion is a Really Great Thing". Sydney Morning Herald.
  3. ↑ "Aussies Stand Up for Muslim Activist After She Was Threatened with Beheading in Twitter Hate Campaign".
  4. ↑ "Hate Groups Launch Global Attack on Muslim Advocate".
  5. ↑ Targeted and Trolled: The Reality of Being a Woman Online" by Rossalyn Warren
  6. ↑ Whiteman, Hilary (27 February 2015). "I will not be silenced: Australian Muslim fights Twitter 'troll army'". CNN. Retrieved 15 May 2016.
  7. ↑ Potaka, Elise; McMahon, Luke (12 September 2015). "Unmasking a troll: Aussie 'jihadist' Australi Witness a 20-year-old American nerd". Sidney Morning Herald.
  8. ↑ "Mariam Bags Two Awards at AMAA".
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