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Behind the counter of his family’s kebab shop in Brisbane’s south, Burak was lathering garlic sauce on a customer’s falafel wrap when they began talking about Pauline Hanson.

Burak, a 17-year-old school student, had never heard of Hanson – one of Australia’s most polarising political figures, who entered federal parliament almost three decades ago in 1996.

So, later that night, he typed her name into TikTok and began scrolling. The first video was Hanson’s most recent burqa stunt, which had occurred weeks earlier, in which the One Nation leader wore the religious veil in the Senate.

“I felt disrespected because it takes a lot of hate, inside a person, to come up with a stunt like that,” says Burak, who asked that his surname not be published.

Young Muslims say they feel alienated by Hanson’s widely criticised anti-Islam remarks and the surge in support for her One Nation party.

It comes at a time in which their fears of physical and verbal attacks have intensified, with Islamophobic incidents rising around the country since 7 October 2023, alongside an explosion of antisemitic incidents.

While Hanson has long promoted anti-Islamic rhetoric – claiming in 2016 that Australia was in danger of being “swamped” by Muslims – her party’s recent success in the South Australian election, in which it won more than 22% of the primary vote, has sharpened concerns for the Muslim community.

It follows a series of incidents in recent months, including when a man crashing a Ballarat iftar celebration during Ramadan in regional Victoria and multiple threatening letters sent to one of Australia’s largest mosques in Sydney. Reports of Islamophobia have also surged since the Bondi attack.

Burak, who attends the Islamic College of Brisbane, says he has become increasingly fearful to pray in public in recent months.

“I wouldn’t feel safe,” he says.

“I have to be more cautious as a Muslim in public because of the propaganda and the hate that is building … I can’t really be free any more.”

He’s not alone.

Last month, during Ramadan, a woman allegedly attempted to snatch a hijab from a teenage girl while she was eating an iftar dinner with friends along the Manly foreshore in Brisbane, according to a report by the ABC.

Sualyha, a year 12 classmate of Burak’s, worries that younger Muslim children may internalise messages of Islamophobia made by politicians.

“When people up the ladder create this rhetoric of every Muslim being bad … it trickles down a really long ladder,” she says.

“At the bottom … it’s just Muslims who are trying to get about their normal, everyday life.”

‘Alienated within their own country’

Days before the start of Ramadan, the holiest month in Islam, Hanson had appeared on Sky News and discussed attempts by a group of Australian women and children – the wives, widows and children of dead or jailed Islamic State fighters – stuck in Syria to return home.

“You say, ‘Well, there’s good Muslims out there’. How can you tell me there are good Muslims?” she said at the time.

The comments prompted fierce rebuke from some political leaders and Hanson later offered a qualified apology, if she “offended anyone out there that doesn’t believe in sharia law, or multiple marriages, or wants to bring Isis brides in, or people from Gaza that believe in a caliphate”.

Days after Hanson’s interview, Ali Kadri, the college’s chief executive, says a primary school student approached him and said: “Pauline doesn’t like us.”

“Young people are consumers of media … they see it on social media, they see it on mainstream media, and it has an impact on them at a very young age,” he says.

Kadri says the rhetoric disempowers young Muslim people and makes them feel “alienated within their own country”.

“It just shows that no matter what they do, no matter how nicely they behave … they’re never accepted or welcomed.”

Hanson has been contacted for comment.

The Brisbane college has been the target of anti-Islam incidents for years, but Kadri says concerns about One Nation scapegoating and targeting migrants, including singling out Muslims, prompted their decision to employ full-time security guards this year.

“Those kinds of things encourage people to take physical action,” he says.

“If you say that there’s no good Muslim, that means every Muslim is a target.”

For the first time in the college’s history, security guards will patrol the campus during afternoons and evenings when students begin term two next month.

Last year, the school received three bomb threats, with one in September leading to students being evacuated.

‘I feel scared whenever I’m outside’

Weeks before the Bondi terror attack, a then 14-year-old girl was waiting for her father outside her Melbourne school one the afternoon, when two men in a car shouted “terrorist” at her as they drove past.

“I just … froze,” recalls the girl, who requested anonymity due to safety concerns.

“I couldn’t process, in the moment, what was happening.”

Since then, she has tried to avoid being alone while waiting to be picked up from school.

“I just feel scared whenever I’m outside.”

She had begun wearing the hijab about a year earlier – and the incident made her wonder about that decision.

“When I thought about not wanting to wear it any more, or being scared to continue wearing it … what if something happens again? What if it’s something worse? If there is a next time, am I truly safe, whether I wear it or not?”

“It’s made me, like, scared, but it’s also made me stronger.”

Protecting students’ mental health in the face of rising anti-Muslim incidents has become a major concern at some schools.

A principal at an Islamic school in western Sydney, who requested anonymity due to safety concerns, says it began holding wellbeing workshops this year, on topics like identity and ethics, and how to feel calm in times of crisis.

“We have to boost students’ confidence,” she says.

“What they’re hearing in the media is very negative and there’s a clear rise in Islamophobia and racism, which is very confronting,” she says.

Nourhana, a 16-year-old student at the college, says she sees anti-Muslim “hate” comments on social media posts that make her feel “misunderstood”.

“You see what they’re saying, and it’s spread from a false narrative of what they think being Muslim is,” she says.

“You see it, you’re just like, well, that’s not true, and you feel like you can’t say anything, because it’s hard to change someone’s mind just from a comment.”

Last month, students at the Islamic College of Brisbane ventured into the CBD to hand out 300 white roses, symbolising peace, with excerpts of the Qur’an containing messages about kindness.

For Burak, the activity, which students called “Petals of peace”, was a “refreshing” reminder of the acceptance in some parts of the community.

“I just love to see the smiles on people’s faces,” he says.

“I got to see first-hand that, OK, there are nice people out there, and we can be nice. We can accept people in our community.”