The chalkboard — which appeared in the window of the New South Wales butcher shop — said: "Eating two strips of Rapley's award winning bacon for breakfast reduces your chance of being a suicide bomber by 100%".
The sign was removed within hours, after a local resident complained, but it was photographed by a passer-by and went viral across social media. It wasn't long before the outrage had spread far beyond the sleepy little town of Narooma, on the south eastern coast of Australia.
Jeff Rapley has insisted that he didn't intend to cause any offense, just to increase the sales of his bacon, although many have since criticised him for unfairly conflating the practise of suicide bombing with Muslims — who are forbidden to eat pork products on religious grounds.
'I'm not racist': Aussie butcher defends 'bacon suicide bomber' sign https://t.co/W4gQtRBV1P pic.twitter.com/23HiGiOskE
— Australia Trends (@australizer) May 24, 2016
This story comes at a time when the Australian Government continues to put its national terrorism threat at "probable", due to what it calls "credible intelligence" obtained by security agencies pointing to the possibility of a terrorist attack.
The prevalence of Islamophobia in Australia has been subject to debate, but a survey from 2014 suggested that a quarter of Australians harbored anti-Muslim sentiment — five times more than any other religion.
Another poll, conducted by the University of South Australia's International Centre for Muslim and Non-Muslim Understanding — released this year — found "most Australians display low levels of Islamophobia."
