The death of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, killed in a joint US-Israeli strike last weekend, has reopened one of the most contested questions in Australian public life: where does religious expression end and support for terrorism begin? The answer, it turns out, is far less clear-cut than the bipartisan political condemnation suggests.
On Sunday, as Khamenei's death was confirmed by US President Donald Trump and state-run news agencies in Iran, several Shia mosques and Islamic institutions across Melbourne and Sydney entered three days of mourning. The gatherings prompted an almost immediate political backlash. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese joined several federal politicians in condemning the memorials, telling ABC's 7.30 programme that he did not think they were appropriate and that "overwhelmingly people won't be participating."
NSW Premier Chris Minns was sharper still. Minns condemned the acts as "atrocious", pointing to the regime's responsibility for killing 30,000 protesters "for simply demonstrating against the regime and their brutal practice." From the Opposition benches, defence spokesperson James Paterson argued that the Australian Federal Police should investigate whether the events violated the law, on the grounds that the IRGC is a proscribed terrorist organisation in Australia. The AFP declined to comment on whether any investigation was underway.
The legal backdrop is significant. The IRGC's listing followed ASIO's assessment that the organisation had orchestrated attacks against Australia's Jewish community, including the arson of a kosher restaurant in Sydney in October 2024 and the firebombing of the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne in December 2024. The government responded by passing the Criminal Code Amendment (State Sponsors of Terrorism) Act 2025. The IRGC is the first listing of a state sponsor of terrorism under that new framework.
The counter-argument deserves serious consideration. Not everyone in Australia's Shia community mourns Khamenei as a political figure. Shahram Akbarzadeh, Director of the Middle East Studies Forum at Deakin University, explains that to those community members, the supreme leader holds "more than a political role", drawing a comparison to the papacy in Catholic tradition: a religious scholar whom followers look to for spiritual guidance. A large segment of the Shia community across Iran, Lebanon, Pakistan and parts of Syria followed Khamenei, making mourning his death, in Akbarzadeh's words, "only natural."
The Shia Council of Australia stressed that Khamenei's death is a "religious and communal loss", arguing that reducing the moment to celebration "erases the reality that millions are grieving" and "dismisses the spiritual dimension of his leadership." The Council noted that Australia's Shia community numbers more than 200,000 people, roughly a third of all Australian Muslims, though there is no suggestion all of them are mourning; SBS News confirmed only three mosques held public rituals.
The same community that includes those grieving also includes those who would not shed a tear. Akbarzadeh acknowledged that for many Iranians, Khamenei was the "embodiment of a repressive regime" which silenced dissent and suppressed political opponents for decades. Iran International described his killing as the long-awaited end of "the dictator a nation longed to see gone," framing it as the close of an era defined by repression and mass bloodshed. That duality within a single diaspora is something politicians rarely acknowledge when they reach for a microphone.
The fundamental question is whether the new hate speech laws are a precise legal instrument or a blunt political one. ANU international law professor Donald Rothwell said that on its face, a religious gathering mourning the Ayatollah would not meet the threshold for indicating support of a proscribed terrorist organisation. He noted the January hate speech laws are untested and it is "not necessarily extraordinary" that test cases could emerge, but called for "great sensitivity" in how police proceed. University of Sydney Professor Emerita Anne Twomey offered a practical distinction: simply expressing condolences for a person's death would not constitute a hate crime or advocacy of terrorism; it is only when past actions are used as a basis for advocating force or violence that an offence might arise.
Strip away the talking points and what remains is a genuinely complex tension between two legitimate state interests. The first is protecting social cohesion and ensuring Australia's new counter-terrorism laws carry real deterrent weight. Under the existing framework, it is a crime punishable by up to 25 years in prison to direct, recruit for, fund, or support a listed terrorist organisation. The second is preserving the religious freedoms that underpin Australia's multicultural settlement. Rothwell put it plainly: police monitoring of memorial services raises "enormous sensitivity" and goes to the heart of what social cohesion actually means in practice.
This is not a left-right issue; it is a competence issue. Bipartisan political condemnation is easy to deliver and costs nothing. What is harder, and considerably more important, is drawing a precise legal line that prevents genuine glorification of terrorism without sweeping up ordinary religious grief in its path. For longstanding allies such as Australia, the broader conduct of the US in the region creates a significant challenge that extends well beyond the question of who is permitted to light a candle in a mosque in Banksia. The government's new laws will be tested sooner than most expected. How the Australian Federal Police chooses to apply them will say a great deal about whether Australia can hold the line between security and freedom without losing its footing.