Source: The Guardian

The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has praised the Muslim community as “respected and valued” in Australian society, in a speech community leaders have said will go some way towards mending fences with the government after strained relations with Turnbull’s predecessor, Tony Abbott.

“I want to emphasise to each and every one of you that the Australian Muslim community is respected and valued,” he said in a speech to the Islamic Council of Victoria on Monday. “And we do not consider or talk about or contemplate the Muslim community solely through the prism of security.

“You are an integral part of an Australian family that’s bound together by the shared values of freedom, democracy and the rule of law.”

The Islamic Council of Victoria invited Turnbull to meet leaders shortly after November’s deadly Paris attacks. At the time Turnbull reassured the public that Australia was a successful multicultural nation with top-class intelligence agencies.

After the Parramatta shootings, which occurred less than a month after he took the prime ministership, Turnbull spoke to Islamic community leaders of the necessity of mutual respect. He reiterated that in his address on Monday, which coincided with a visit to the Islamic Museum of Australia.

“The glue that holds us together, the bonding agent, is mutual respect,” the prime minister said. “It’s a two-way street. It means you respect others and they respect you. It means you seek to understand others and they understand you. It means that you and each and every one of us is enriched by the cultures and faiths of our neighbours.”

The relationship between the federal government and Australia’s Islamic community reached a record low after the assertion by the then prime minister, Tony Abbott, in February 2015 that Muslim leaders were not doing enough to stamp out terrorism.

“I’ve often heard western leaders describe Islam as a ‘religion of peace’. I wish more Muslim leaders would say that more often, and mean it,” Abbott said during a speech on national security.

Many community leaders were upset with the tenor of the debate on extremismand the former prime minister’s fondness for polemical “with us or against us” statements.

Turnbull’s strikingly different tone, including in his remarks on Monday, have been welcome by the leaders of Muslim organisations.

“It went beyond our expectations,” said Nail Aykan, the general manager of the Islamic Council of Victoria. “Everyone felt he was humble and genuine.”

Aykan said Turnbull was introduced to 18 young Muslims slated as future leaders, which emphasised that about two-thirds of Australia’s 500,000 Muslims were under the age of 35.

Aykan said he hoped that some of the youth assembled would run for office. “Social cohesion is a core aspect of what we’re trying to achieve but one level above that would be civic participation,” he said.

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