Chris Minns' Eid Message

Chris Minns wished the Muslim community "Eid Mubarak". His message deserves an honest response.

“Eid Mubarak to everyone celebrating across NSW and Australia!”

How generous of him. After years of aggressive rhetoric and demonisation of the Muslim community, the Premier now arrives with a festive greeting, as though a two-word salutation can bleach a public record. It reads as a politician borrowing the language of community after helping degrade it in practice.

“Eid al-Fitr marks the end of Ramadan and is a joyous occasion…”

A joyous occasion for whom, exactly? This is the part where the statement stops sounding hollow and starts sounding obscene. Muslim families across New South Wales are carrying grief from Gaza and Lebanon in real time. Entire bloodlines have been erased. Parents are receiving news of children killed, cousins buried, homes obliterated, and families scattered. And Minns, with the timing of a man who thinks sentiment can outrun memory, serves up the word “joyous” as though Muslim life exists in a sealed cultural bubble, untouched by the political choices of the state. That is not empathy; that is airbrushing.

“…to reflect on core Islamic values like charity, compassion, justice, and selflessness.”

This is the line that deserves to be framed and hung in a museum of political shamelessness. Justice? From Chris Minns? The same Chris Minns who welcomed Isaac Herzog into New South Wales, backed extraordinary police powers around the visit, defended police after peaceful protesters were assaulted, and then would not apologise after Muslim worshippers were physically assaulted in prayer? He now wants to stand on the borrowed carpet of Islamic vocabulary and recite “justice” back to the people he demonises. This is what it looks like when a politician borrows the language of virtue the way a thief borrows silverware.

“It’s a chance to come together with family and friends…”

This line would be laughable if it were not so grotesque. Muslim families are trying to come together around absence, around funeral photos, around destroyed homes, around messages from overseas that stop arriving. Minns speaks about family the way politicians speak about weather: pleasantly, safely, from a distance, untouched by consequence. He has spent months treating Palestinian expression as a public order catastrophe, yet now wants to wrap himself in the soft language of family and togetherness. The costume change is too rushed because the audience still remembers the last scene.

“On behalf of the NSW Government, I wish you a joyous and peaceful celebration.”

“Peaceful” is doing a lot of work here. It comes from a premier who defended the policing of peaceful protest and openly admitted being responsible for their actions, saying of the NSW Police, "They did everything we asked them to." So when Minns says “peaceful,” it is not a wish for a blessing. It is a condition. Be peaceful. Be quiet. Be ceremonial. Be grateful. Mourn privately. Do not bring Gaza into the street. Do not let your grief become political. Do not make power uncomfortable. That is the subtext, and everyone can hear it.

This is why the message enrages people. It is not merely tone deaf. It is an attempt to borrow the moral beauty of Eid while escaping the political filth of his own record. Minns wants the greeting without the reckoning, the symbolism without the memory, the community photo without the community’s judgment. He talks about compassion after defending force. He talks about justice after protecting impunity. He talks about peace after backing the crushing of peaceful dissent. This is not an Eid message. It is a cheap costume draped over a government that has spent years telling Muslims exactly how little their dignity matters once power is on the line.

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