A report from the Islamic Sciences and Research Academy of Australia and the Diversity Council Australia shows high rates of complacency around witnessing incidents of Islamophobia in public.
The research shows that intervention from passers-by is rare, despite around half of all incidents taking place in public places such as shopping centres and train stations.
Mariam Veiszadeh, president of the Islamophobia Register Australia, said the report’s release was particularly important "as there is a continuing debate over the existence and the scale of Islamophobia in Australia".
The research will be released on Tuesday at the New South Wales parliament.
Close to 250 incidents between September 2014 and December 2015 were investigated, including physical, verbal and online assaults, with less than 32 per cent being reported to police.
Of these, only a third were formally recorded.
“A group of young males yelled out ‘ISIS B**** go back to where you came from’,” one person said.
“None of the train staff helped me out or stopped them.”
Another case study revealed they “have never felt so afraid/vulnerable in my life” during the incident.
Females made up the majority of targets, at almost 70 per cent, with males being the perpetrators in three-quarters of the attacks.
Almost all of the women were wearing a head scarf, while more than half had their children with them at the time.
The document also reports a correlation between terror attacks and an increase in incidents of Islamophobia.
Furthermore, it found a connection between media reporting and increasing Islamophobic attitudes, linking the government’s 2014 proposal to ban Muslim women from wearing face veils in federal parliament with a spike in cases.
The laws would have forced women who cover their faces to sit in a glass-enclosed public gallery.
The move was scrapped by former speaker Bronwyn Bishop, after then-prime minister Tony Abbott criticised the measure.
