Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been mocked as a “beta male coward” by everyday Australians for looking intimidated as Muslims heckled him at a mosque in an Islamic enclave in Sydney.
Mr Albanese and immigration minister Tony Burke were sitting on the floor of Lakemba Mosque, Australia’s largest, on Friday morning while pandering to the local Muslim population when members of the male-only crowd started hurling abuse.
Video showed Mr Albanese looking worried and shaken as Muslim men called him a “putrid dog” and a “genocide supporter”, and yelling “why are youse protecting him” as he was rushed out moments later.
The Prime Minister later claimed that “overwhelmingly the reception was positive”, but Aussies expressed their disgust for his response to the incident on social media.
“The look of a Beta male coward mixing with the wrong crowd,” one wrote alongside a photo of Mr Albanese looking scared.
“The face you make when you realised you fucked up and are a loser. Well done Anthony Albanese for proving what we all knew,” said another.
“That moment when you realise you’ve been played and they actually want to kill you,” wrote former Liberal candidate Katherine Deves.
“Albanese visiting a mosque to prove Islam can be mainstreamed – only to be heckled by Islamists – is the most 2026 thing ever,” Christian commentator Kurt Mahlburg wrote.
Another man called him a “spineless maggot”, saying: “You need to grow a set Albo, you sook, or stand aside and let someone with some take on these [people].”
Muslims declare aboriginals the “rightful custodians” of Australia before yelling Allahu Akbar and shouting abuse at Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Immigration Minister Tony Burke who sit helpless on the floor in their socks.
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The heckling began when Lebanese Muslim Association secretary Gamel Kheir began speaking and declared that aboriginals were the “rightful custodians” of Australia and pointed out that the Muslim community supported Mr Albanese’s failed Voice to Parliament referendum in 2023.
Members of the crowd began to boo while others chanted “Allahu Akbar” and yelled “get them out of here”, “boo Albanese”, “boo Burke”, and one was ejected by police.
Mr Albanese and Mr Burke were then abused again as they left the mosque, with Muslims yelling “shame on you” and “you have killed our brothers and sisters”.
The mosque, which last year attempted to get approval to blast a Muslim call to prayer from minaret loudspeakers across the surrounding area, is located in Mr Burke’s southwest Sydney electorate of Watson, where White Australians have been almost completely replaced by immigrants.
At the time of the 2021 Census, just 30% of Watson’s population spoke only English at home, 11.7% were of Australian ancestry, and 25.1% were Muslim, while in the suburb of Lakemba the figures were 16.6%, 8.3%, and 61.2% respectively.
Mr Albanese later attempted to play down the incident, and then posted a series of photos on social media captioned “Eid Mubarak”.
“I walked through the crowd to the mosque and not a single person heckled,” he said.
“There were a couple of hecklers inside, they were dealt with … no one was rushed out, we just sat there, it was dealt with. It was dealt with by the community themselves because overwhelmingly they did not want that to occur.”
The Prime Minister has previously cried in public while talking about the Voice referendum, while visiting aboriginals in the outback, and while speaking about alleged online threats to his family.
Header image: Left, right, Mr Albanese reacting to the heckling (ABC News).
