Sadly, racial and religious violence is a fact of life for millions of people around the world.

Globally, the "war on terror" has pitted the Judeo-Christian and secular West against militant Islam. In the Middle East, Israel and Palestine remain bitter enemies. The sectarian divide is still to heal in Northern Ireland. Other examples abound but in Australia, thankfully, incidents of racial and religious violence are generally few and far between.

And in Newcastle, even more so, which is why the graphic images of two men attacking the Newcastle Muslim Association mosque in Wallsend this week are such a shock.

This is not a random act of violence.

The footage shows the perpetrators in a sustained and violent attack, hurling abuse and showing no fear of the security cameras that will hopefully help bring them to justice. Nor is this the only attack on the mosque. Last month a car parked outside the building was sprayed with the word "Srebrenica" - an ominous reference to the 1995 massacre of 8000 Muslims during the Bosnian war. Garbage has been strewn across the front of the Wallsend premises. Messages of abuse - including culturally offensive photographs of slaughtered pigs - have become all too common.

Muslim association spokeswoman Diana Rah says the group has faith in the wider Newcastle community but she sees links between the increasing hostility and the association's plans for a new, larger mosque in Elermore Vale.

Indeed, until the mosque plan was made public in early 2010, few people outside of the Muslim community would have been aware of the association's long history in Newcastle.

But the Elermore Vale application generated widespread and heated opposition.

A state government planning panel eventually rejected the project on traffic, parking and noise grounds but an appeal is under way, with a court date set for next month. Throughout the months of the mosque debate, racial and religious issues were rarely far from the surface. Opponents worried that Elermore Vale would become "another Lakemba".

Regardless of any trigger, however, the Wallsend violence must stop.

Newcastle's Muslim community - indeed, any religious grouping - should be free to follow peaceful beliefs without persecution or fear of violence.

Newcastle Herald editorial, Friday, 6 January 2012