This is a timeline of Islamic State activities related to Australia and New Zealand, collectively known as Australasia. The events below include terrorist and extremist activities of Islamic State supporters in Australia and New Zealand, Australians and New Zealanders who travelled overseas to join the Islamic State (a journey that was referred to by the group as hijra) attempted to, and depictions of Australians and New Zealand in Islamic State propaganda on social media and in I.S. state media. It also includes Australia and New Zealand's military and intelligence involvement in the war against the Islamic State.
The most deadly terrorist attack on Australian soil was the Islamic State-inspired 2025 Bondi Beach shooting (detailed timeline), committed by Naveed Akram (who was charged with 15 counts of murder) and his father Sajid Akram (who was killed by police during the attack), targeting Jewish Australians at a Hanukkah gathering at Bondi Beech. Before this, several Islamic State plots were successfully thwarted by Australian intelligence and law enforcement bodies.
Prior to the Bondi attack, one of the most significant Islamic State-related problems faced by the Australian government were the family members of Islamic State fighters from Australia, who remain in detention camps in Kurdistan and neighbouring regions. ASIO estimates that over 200 Australians migrated to the unrecognised state / illegitimate Caliphate founded by the Islamic State movement while they controlled territory in Iraq and Syria.[1] The survivors are mostly widows and children, most of the men died of the battlefield or were killed in targeted strikes.[2][3] Young boys who have been there nearly a decade are transferred to the menz prison when they reach military age. The are also a few remaining Islamic State fighters from Australia who have been confirmed alive or remain unaccounted for. The Australian Government have been criticised for treating the ongoing situation as somebody else's problem.[1]
2002 – Al Qaeda-backed militants carry out the bombings targeting Australian tourists in Bali, Indonesia, killing 88 Australians and 38 locals, and 202 people in total.[8][9] The attack, carried out in response to Australian actions in the US-led war on terror.[10][11] This remains the deadliest terror attack in Australian history, albeit in a neighbouring country.[8] It was a mass casualty event, overwhelming local hospitals and requiring many victims to be evacuated to hospitals in Australia, with assistance from Australia's defence force.[8][12]
The Islamic State group form in Iraq and begin their conquest of Iraq and Syria.
July 2014 – The Islamic State declare a Caliphate, and announce this on Twitter and elsewhere online.[15][16] The Caliphate's physical territory is in Iraq and Syria, and they proclaimed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi the Caliph.[17] Their Caliphate is rejected almost immediately by mainstream Muslims, in the Letter to Baghdadi and a wide variety of other public statements.
23 September 2014 – 2014 Endeavour Hills stabbings: Two counter-terrorism police officers stabbed. Perpetrator shot dead.
3 October 2014 – Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced that Australia would contribute eight F/A-18F Super Hornets to aid the war effort against Islamic extremists in Iraq. The aircraft join a KC-30A Tanker and an E-7A Wedgetail AEW&C aircraft already deployed.[20]
29 October 2014 – Australian IS leader and recruiter Mohammad Ali Baryalei was confirmed to have been killed.[21]
15 December 2014 – Lindt Cafe siege in Sydney, by Man Haron Monis. Allegedly an IS supporter who pledged allegiance to the group held 18 hostages at a café at the APA Building in Martin Place, Sydney, Australia. One hostage was murdered during the siege and one killed by a bullet ricochet from a police officer during the subsequent raid. Perpetrator shot dead by police during raid.
20 April 2015 – An 18-year-old boy from New Zealand joins IS and is reported missing.[24] New Zealand and Australia are concerned about IS-related terrorism at Anzac day.[25][26][27]
9 September 2015 – Joshua Ryne Goldberg, a Jewish American internet troll, was arrested for planning a bombing in Kansas City while posing as an Australian ISIS supporter. A 17-year-old Melbourne teenager who had been in contact with Goldberg pleaded guilty to preparing a terror attack, after bombs were found in his home.[28][29] Goldberg's ISIS persona also attempted to incite mass shootings in Australia.[30][31][32] Goldberg reportedly set up a fake account in the name of Australian Muslim preacher Junaid Thorne. Goldberg also created multiple fake jihadist accounts, which interacted with the fake Thorne account, and he then sent screengrabs of the fabricated interactions to journalists, at least one of whom published the fake interaction in an article of The West Australian in April 2015.[33][34] The fake jihadist personas were also used to besmirch Amnesty International and the Human Rights Law Centre by claiming that the fake jihadists had employment ties, or donated money to, these organizations.[33]
14 September 2015 – Two Australian Hornet fighter aircraft destroyed an IS armoured personnel carrier with a precision-guided missile in east Syria.[35]
25 November 2015 – Samra Kesinovic, an Austrian teenager who traveled to Syria to join the Islamic State, is reported dead, having been beaten to death by the group after trying to escape from Raqqa. Her companion, Sabina Selimovic, was reported to have been killed in fighting in Syria in September.[36]
31 January 2016 – A prominent Australian IS member's death is reported. Neil Prakash, also known as Abu Khaled al-Cambodi, was involved in the group's online recruitment activities.[37]
By 2017 the Islamic State had lost 90% of their territory.[40]
15 July 2017 – Failed Islamic State–linked plan to bomb an Etihad Airways flight departing Sydney for Abu Dhabi.[41] Brothers Mahmoud and Khaled Khayat in Sydney planted a bomb in luggage belonging to their brother Amer Khayat, using parts sent to them by a forth brother, Tarek Khayat, from overseas. Amer was found not guilty, he was used as an unwitting proxy, possibly because his brothers disapproved of his drinking and other habits.[42][43][44][45]
August 2018 – Australia stripped the Australian citizenship from five terrorists who had travelled to fight with the Islamic State and barred them from entering Australia again.[46] This was only possible because they had double citizenships because international law stops the measure from being used on individuals with only one citizenship. The five brought the total to six.[47]
9 November 2018 – a man named Hassan Khalif Shire Ali went on a stabbing spree in Melbourne Australia. The attack took place on a crowded Melbourne street where he attacked and killed a police officer with a knife and light bulb. The attacker also injured two other bystanders until he was eventually killed by law enforcement. The perpetrator supported IS and IS also took responsibility for the attack.[48][49]
Youssef Uweinat (an associate of Naveed) was convicted of terrorism and imprisoned, for attempting to recruit minors to carry out attacks for IslamicState.[54][55]
January 2024 – A new Commonwealth offence introduced as part of amendments to Australian counter-terrorism legislation outlawing transmission of violent extremist material online. First person sentenced in March 2025.[56][57]
20 March 2025 – A 19-year old West Australian man is sentenced to three years’ imprisonment by the Perth District Court on one count of transmitting violent extremist material online and one count of using a carriage service to cause offence after sharing Islamic State-produced videos that included beheadings and recordings encouraging violence. He is the first person convicted and sentenced in Australia for transmitting violent extremist material online under the new Commonwealth offence introduced in January 2024 as part of amendments to Australian counter-terrorism legislation.[60][61]
August 2025
3 August 2025 - Two past supporters of Islamic State, connected to Naveed Akram in 2019,[55][62] were noticed trying to exploit public protests to further a conflicting agenda.[54][63] Both men were later reported as a past associate of Naveed Akram from 2019.[55][62] Youssef Uweinat (sometimes known by the kunya Abu Musa al-Maqdisi) was imprisoned from 2019 to 2023 for terrorism-related offences, after trying to recruit 17 and 18-year-olds to pledge loyalty to the Islamic State cult, a role that some media described as an Islamic State "youth recruiter". He has since claimed to no-longer support the cult.[55][62] Uweinat was photographed waving a black flag (used by ISIS, Al Qaeda, and other groups) at the edges of a protest on the Harbour bridge.[54][64] Both men were later reported as a past associate of Naveed Akram from 2019.[55] William Haddad (see "June 2025" above) posted the flag image on social media saying, "The only flag that counts!" A report from ABC News Australia described the preacher as having "no interest in a Palestinian state" and trying to "exploit and fracture the pro-Palestinian movement".[54]
14 December 2025 – Bondi Beach shooting: Two ISIS inspire gunmen fire upon approximately one thousand people at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. A total of 16 people were killed, including a ten-year-old child and 40 people were injured.[65][66]
↑Hoffman 2025: "This linkage signals that the threat from ISIS, and the lethal ideology that both it and al-Qaeda embraces, continues even as we approach the twenty-fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks."
123Taylor, Chris (15 December 2025). "Bondi terror: we'll need a wide-ranging royal commission". The Strategist. Australia. ...it was the worst terrorist attack ever carried out on Australian soil... Australians have been victims of mass casualty terrorist attacks before, the worst at Bali in 2002.
↑"Rival Islamic States: ISIS v Iran". The ISIS "caliphate," declared in July 2014, practices a rigid Salafi interpretation of Sharia. It has no constitution. No country recognizes its borders, which include about one third of both Syria and Iraq. It has vowed to fight any state or group that does not share its rigid worldview. It is a member of no international organizations. It persecutes all other faiths and forces conversion.
↑Michael West Media 2026 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFMichael_West_Media2026 (help): "2017 – Isaac El Matari jailed in Lebanon for attempting to join ISIS: returned to Australia June 2018"
↑"Bondi Beach shooting: Israel joins terror probe as calls grow to revi…". 15 December 2025. Archived from the original on 15 December 2025. Israel has a long history of sharing counterterrorism intelligence with Australia, including in 2017 when Israeli agencies provided critical information that helped police disrupt an Islamic State-linked plot to smuggle a home-made bomb onto an Etihad Airways flight from Sydney to Abu Dhabi.
↑"Wong will not say if further Islamic State family members on track to return". www.abc.net.au. ABC News. 4 December 2025. A group of two women and four children returned to Australia in late September, six years after the terror organisation's defeat, but the government has consistently maintained that it was not involved in their removal from Syria.
↑"Livestream Terror in the Viral Video Age". Archived from the original on 29 December 2025. Islamic State spokesman Abu Hassan al-Muhajir (kunya) emerged after nearly six months of silence to argue that Christchurch was "enough to wake the sleep" and to incite supporters against the "nations of the Cross and the apostate". He also likened the attacks to the battle raging in Baghuz, the last village then under Islamic State control in Syria.
12345"Bondi Beach shooting gunman Naveed Akram was follower of pro-Islamic State preacher Wisam Haddad". RNZ. 16 December 2025. Archived from the original on 29 December 2025. (ASIO were) concerned about Naveed Akram's association with an IS youth recruiter, Youssef Uweinat. Uweinat was later jailed for nearly four years for encouraging Australian minors to launch attacks while acting as a youth leader at Mr Haddad's prayer centre and a street preacher alongside Naveed Akram. After his release, he re-emerged publicly in August, when he was photographed waving a black flag associated with jihadist groups at an anti-Gaza war protest on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
↑Michael West Media 2026 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFMichael_West_Media2026 (help): "Aug 2025 – Youssef Uweinat photographed waving black ISIS-associated flag at anti-Gaza war protest on Sydney Harbour Bridge; Wissam Haddad posted approving message"
↑Michael West Media 2026 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFMichael_West_Media2026 (help): "Aug 2025 – Youssef Uweinat photographed waving black ISIS-associated flag at anti-Gaza war protest on Sydney Harbour Bridge; Wissam Haddad posted approving message"
1Currently imprisoned. 2Released after serving sentence.
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