Suhoor – the pre-dawn meal – is typically shared at home. But in Sydney customers also queue outside food trucks, restaurants and cafes with extended trading hours

It’s just after midnight in an industrial courtyard in Auburn in Sydney’s west and a glow of string lights and the constant sizzle of a grill signal one of Ramadan’s newest late-night rituals. A food truck specialising in halal steak sandwiches has attracted a small crowd and a queue begins to form.

The rest of the city is largely asleep but here the courtyard hums with life as young Muslims arrive in waves after evening taraweeh prayers, chatting and checking their phones as the clock edges closer to suhoor – the pre-dawn meal eaten during Ramadan before the day’s fast begins.

Tony Burke expected to discuss incident with Australian federal police commissioner Krissy Barrett on Wednesday

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A Muslim community is reeling after police opted not to immediately arrest a man accused of crashing an iftar dinner and hurling racist abuse.

The 37-year-old man, described as partially undressed, forced his way into an iftar dinner gathering at a community hall in the Ballarat suburb of Alfredton in Victoria on Sunday.

Communities secretary tells MPs that government has to act against record levels of hate crimes

A new definition of anti-Muslim hate will not restrict freedom of speech, the communities secretary has pledged, as he said that “clear expectations” will still be set for new arrivals and existing communities in Britain to learn English.

MPs were told by Steve Reed that the government had a duty to act against record levels of hate crime against Muslims, but that “you can’t tackle a problem if you can’t describe it”.

From the Chagos Islands to ‘windmills’ and sharia law, the US president’s comments do not bear much scrutiny

Donald Trump has been opining about the UK again, saying on Tuesday that Keir Starmer was “not Winston Churchill” and repeating his complaint about the deal to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. Here are some recent things the US president has said about British issues, and how they compare with reality.

A small number of Shia mosques and Islamic centres hosted vigils for Iran’s supreme leader who was killed in US missile strikes on Sunday

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Iranian Australia community members have expressed distress after a small number of mosques and Islamic centres in Melbourne and Sydney invited members to mourn the death of Iran’s supreme leader.

Iranian state media on Sunday confirmed the death of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, after Israel and the US launched strikes on the country, plunging the Middle East into a volatile conflict.

US government buildings in Karachi and Baghdad targeted by crowds after killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

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At least 22 people are dead following pro-Iran demonstrations in Pakistan in which hundreds of people marched on the US consulate in Karachi. Security forces in Iraq have also fired teargas at protesters who tried to storm the US embassy in Baghdad.

As anger boiled over after US-Israeli strikes killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a crowd of demonstrators in Karachi chanted against the offensive before entering the reception hall of the consulate building and lighting a small fire.

Imam Shuaib Din was not hit by multiple shots fired by Abdul Raouf Afridi, who ambushed him outside his home

A man has been arrested for recently shooting a gun at prominent Muslim leader Imam Shuaib Din in Utah, the police department in the city of Sandy said Saturday.

Din’s suspected attacker was identified as Abdul Raouf Afridi. Police said the man was arrested on 12 counts of aggravated assault, including felony discharge of a firearm, possession of a controlled substance, dangerous discharge of a weapon from a vehicle and possession of a dangerous weapon as a prohibited person.

PM criticises ‘sectarian politics’ in byelection but party may fear Greens’ nascent leftwing political machine

The Green party’s success at winning Muslim votes in Gorton and Denton has sent tremors through Westminster, prompting recriminations and accusations from opposition parties, who sense another major realignment in British politics.

Experts say Hannah Spencer’s unexpectedly wide margin of victory was delivered in part by a significant shift of Muslim voters from Labour to the Greens.

The astroturf group’s strategy event had the theme ‘evolve’ – but its speakers want to take the country back to the past

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Last weekend, the astroturf body Advance Australia held its first national conference in Darling Harbour. Contrary to its theme, “evolve”, what leaked recordings of the speeches reveal is that Advance wants to return Australians to a mythical past.

At a time when Australian politicians and certain members of the commentariat are lecturing us about “social cohesion”, Advance’s messaging was a reminder that our definition of hate speech often depends a lot on who does the speaking.

I am, like millions of others, dutifully fasting from dawn to dusk this month. My faith does not define me. It refines me

• Nazir Afzal is chancellor of the University of Manchester and a former chief prosecutor

As Ramadan begins, Muslims across Britain prepare for a month of fasting, reflection and charity. For most of us, it is a time of spiritual discipline and generosity. For too many of us, it is also a time when the drumbeat of anti-Muslim hatred grows louder.

I have never liked the word “Islamophobia”. It sounds abstract, almost clinical. What we are dealing with is not a vague fear. It is hostility. Suspicion. Discrimination. Abuse. So, I call it what it is, anti-Muslim hatred.

Nazir Afzal is chancellor of the University of Manchester and a former chief prosecutor

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The sounds of Afghan history are being erased to prevent music’s ‘moral corruption’ of the Afghan people. We can help keep Afghanistan’s music alive. Plus, Eliane Radigue’s deep listening, and the brilliance of Sinners’s score

The horrors of the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan are all-encompassing. New laws that effectively legalise domestic abuse means that every woman in the country now lives with the threat of state-sanctioned violence. In the context of the twin tragedies of the Taliban’s fundamentalist zealotry, and the rest of the world’s silence in the face of their atrocities, the fate of Afghanistan’s cultural life might seem a smaller catastrophe. Yet it’s equivalently devastating.

The recent burning of hundreds of musical instruments and equipment – reported last week on Afghan National Television – is the latest stage of the Taliban morality police’s ongoing mission to destroy all these artefacts. Last week’s pyre included tablas and harmoniums, instruments that are the bedrocks of Afghanistan’s unique tradition of classical music, as well as keyboards and amplifiers.

Fasting while working long hours is physically demanding. But gratitude is less abstract when hunger has been felt

• Making sense of it is a column about spirituality and how it can be used to navigate everyday life

Iftar isn’t just eating, it’s synchronisation. Everyone waits. Everyone eats together. It is a rare moment of collective rhythm.

In a world where eating has become solitary and rushed, Ramadan restores something quietly radical: shared time. Iftar is not simply the moment hunger ends but the moment waiting becomes collective. People pause together, watch the same light fade over the horizon, hear the same call to prayer and reach for food at the same time. There is no personalised schedule, no eating on the run. This age-old ritual insists that nourishment is not only physical but spiritual and social, that being fed is being seen.

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

This is Lakemba – the suburb that Pauline Hanson claims makes people ‘feel unwelcome’ – on the first night of Ramadan

Muslims donate four times more than the average adult in Britain but banking restrictions mean many humanitarian projects already affected by aid cuts will not get donations

Buckets passed around mosques, fundraisers shared on WhatsApp groups and televised appeals will raise hundreds of millions of pounds for charity over the coming weeks of Ramadan.

Much of the £2bn raised by British Muslims each year comes when giving surges during the holy month, but the full potential of that support – especially at a time of US, British and European government aid cuts – is being limited by challenges charities say they face in sending money abroad.

Exclusive: AFP comment comes as Bilal El-Hayek, mayor of Canterbury Bankstown, says One Nation leader’s comments ‘will incite someone’

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Federal police say they have “received reports of a crime” in relation to comments made to the media by Pauline Hanson this week.

But an AFP spokesperson did not say whether they had begun a criminal investigation, only that they would have more to say “at an appropriate time”.

Israeli police raid compound, arrest staff and curb Muslims’ access as Ramadan begins

A six-decade agreement governing Muslim and Jewish prayer at Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site has “collapsed” under pressure from Jewish extremists backed by the Israeli government, experts have warned.

A series of arrests of Muslim caretaker staff, bans on access for hundreds of Muslims, and escalating incursions by radical Jewish groups culminated this week in the arrest of an imam of al-Aqsa mosque and an Israeli police raid during evening prayers on the first night of Ramadan.

Beyond disproving the tired tropes of Muslims hating the west, Australian Muslims can show us what a month of practising to be a better person looks like

As Australian Muslims prepared for Ramadan this week, the leader of the second most popular political party in the country, Senator Pauline Hanson, said of them: “Their religion concerns me because [of] what it says in the Qur’an … They hate Westerners … You say, ‘Well, there’s good Muslims out there.’ Well, I’m sorry. How can you tell me there are good Muslims?”

None of this is surprising. This same senator has twice worn a burqa into parliament, wrongly claimed that halal certification funds terrorism, and wanted a royal commission into Islam.

The Muslim holy month of Ramadan, featuring celebrations, prayers, pre-dawn breakfasts and post-sundown meals, began at sunrise in the Middle East and a day later in much of Asia. In the Muslim lunar calendar, months begin only when the new moon is sighted, which can lead to variations of a day or two

The loss of sacred spaces during the period of observance and the ongoing conflict reminds us of the importance of cherishing food

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Today starts the first week of Ramadan, and I have the great pleasure of digging into The Sudanese Kitchen by Omer Al Tijani. The war in Sudan has been going on for almost three years now, and Ramadan is a month that arrives with heightened feelings for those fasting in the middle of conflict and displacement. The cookbook, a first-of-its-kind collection of Sudanese recipes, is both a celebration of Sudan and a reminder of all that is at stake.

Al Tijani first realised he needed to learn how to make his own Sudanese food while he was a student at the University of Manchester in the early 2010s. The packages of treats his mother prepared never lasted long enough; he grew sick of student food and began looking for recipes, but there were few resources. Over 15 years, his passion for tracing and documenting Sudanese recipes took him all over Sudan, and his work became, as he told me, “bound” in Sudan’s political story. He gathered recipes and food culture on the ground during the revolution that overthrew president Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s dictator of 30 years.