This piece is from a newspaper but could apply to any situation and place. The Thorne Brothers are Aussies from an aboriginal father and a Malaysian mother. Their mother later remarried a Moroccan guy. The older brother have been arrested and sentenced to 4 and half years for terrorism in Saudi Arabia and the younger Junaid in which the story below he has role was deported from Saudi Arabia for similar reasons. He is now married to the daughter of Australia's most famous terrorist, the Algerian Benbrika who is serving a sentence of 15 years and his citizenship will be revoked and deported back to Algeria when he is released next year.
This the story.
ONE of his first memories is seeing the planes crash into the Twin Towers.
At the time it means nothing to him, politically.
He is just a boy, a long way from Manhattan’s ground zero, raised in quiet Australian suburbia.
In the years that follow, he learns his family’s origins.
They come from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan (or Somalia).
He may even have been born there, but the memories have faded.
He does not feel a part of Australian society. It’s just a comment here or there, about Muslims, maybe not even directed at him. But it bites.
He begins to question. The first questions are directed to, and against, his parents.
Why were they not openly outraged by what follows 9/11, with US leading invasions into Afghanistan and Iraq, always with Australia on its heels?
Unlike his parents, who had chased a better life away from the sectarian violence of the Middle East or South Asia, he does not understand their mild take on religion, or their rejection of extremism.
He begins to see his parents as weak. Bad Muslims.
Raised with the luxury of free thought, he grasps it not with appreciation but defiance.
As one of the pioneering socially networked global children, he starts off looking for friends but sees mostly enemies. His friends hear, and become tired of, his one-track narrative of Australia as a racist and Islamophobic place.
A Muslim spiritual leader — a sheik, imam, ustad or just a self-nominated blowhard — notices he has started attending prayers. He wonders if the young man seeks deeper understanding.
He might be pointed to a discussion group led by someone like Junaid Thorne, the Western Australian man who travels around the country, holding forums.
Thorne impresses him. He’s 25, and after spending much of his youth in Saudi Arabia, is fluent in Arabic, very bright, knows his Islam and, as an Aboriginal man, has a double disconnection with Australia: not only are the brothers in the Iraq and Syria under attack, Thorne is a survivor of white invasion.
The young man’s questions are answered. Allah’s is the only true religion; Islam will rule over all, and all will fall beneath it. He knows people are being watched. It does not put fear into his heart. It emboldens him. He is now within a special circle.
This teacher, whoever he may be, listens to the discontented young man.
He does not propose a trip to Syria or to stage a terror attack; he does not need to.
He talks in riddles. He asks the young man challenging, deep questions. Any answer he gives proves correct.
The teacher knows with the right pacing, and the right doubletalk, the young man will soon come to suggest a radical move himself, as though it’s his own idea.
He is one of many who have plotted homegrown terror attacks, gone to cut off heads in Syria or Iraq, or blown themselves up.
Question via whatsapp to Junaid Thorne: People say you’re clever. And dangerous.
Thorne: “Never believe people. But then maybe I am.”
Jake Bilardi, 18, who blew himself up at a market in Ramadi, Iraq, in March, and killed at least 17 people, used to visit the Hume Islamic Youth Centre, near Broadmeadows.
The youth centre includes a sizeable restaurant, an Islamic superstore and a large prayer room out the back. It is a kind of mixed business.
Last Friday night, after prayers, News Corp tried to ask some young Muslim men whether the cause of the growing radicalisation was due to a feeling of alienation within Australia.
The inquiry’s purpose was to look beyond the often-cited explanation that all young radicals are the products of Twitter and Facebook indoctrination, as police and politicians often say.
But, after five young men were seized by police for allegedly planning Anzac Day knife or sword attacks, and two of them were later charged, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said the search for answers now needed to go deeper.
“We don’t fully understand what is driving these people,” Andrews said.
“We need to get to the bottom of it and we will.”
At the youth centre, immediately after prayers finish, it doesn’t take long to find an aggrieved young Australian. He is only the second person we approach. His passport was suspended a fortnight back.
“I wanted to go to Lebanon with my mother to see my grandfather who’s dying and they suspended my passport for no reason,” he says.
“(He) will probably die and I won’t get to see him. This is how they treat us here.”
Attempts to ask more questions — such as, why he believes he is under suspicion? His name? Whether he sees himself as an outcast? — are not possible. The sheik and other older men gather around and tell us to stop talking to the young men, who look to be over 18 and capable of giving their views.
This is a feature of the young radicals. They are not treated as adults by older men.
This means that between the ages of 14 and 25, Muslim males are subject to the strong influence from their elders.
The leaders shoo the young men away and, without asking us to leave the premises, effectively shut us down.
The reaction by the sheik and other senior men can be understood. The interception of the alleged Anzac Day plot — which happened on the other side of the city — is big news. They cannot see any benefit in being linked in the aftermath.
It is possible the young man had his passport suspended because he attends this Islamic centre, now associated with a suicide bomber.
There is no question young Muslims are feeling under scrutiny in Australia. Everyone’s watching, though maybe not closely enough.
The alleged Anzac plot only came to light after British police alerted Australian police of contact between an English youth and some of the young men.
This was despite the fact that all five had alleged links to the Al-Furqan book shop in Springvale, near Dandenong.
The book shop, run by Bosnian cleric Harun Mehicevic, also had a prayer room and meeting place.
Junaid Thorne was a visiting speaker there.
Al-Furqan — which closed its doors on April 22 due to what it said was “harassment, pressure and false accusations” — had been regularly visited by Afghan-born Numan Haider, who was shot dead last year after he stabbed two police officers.
Mehicevic distanced himself from Haider.
Thorne, who knew Haider, called his death a “cold-blooded murder”.
The centre, which had posted pro-Islamic State statements the day before Haider’s death, had been raided in 2012 and — you would imagine — its visitors would have been under ASIO or AFP surveillance.
But ASIO only comes knocking in the aftermath of an event, whether in Australia or the Islamic State battlefields, seeking information on people who have already been arrested or are in the fight.
That’s the view of Melbourne man Yusef Mekaoui, the cousin of Adam Dahman, who blew himself up at a Shia mosque in Baghdad in July 2014, and killed five.
“They ask about known quantities,” Mekaoui says.
“I tell them they should be looking at some of my young cousins, the ones they don’t know about.”
Question to Junaid Thorne: Chan and Sukumaran (have been) given three days’ notice. What do you think?
Thorne: “Australian jets drop bombs on civilians with no notice. And American jets. Israelis as well.”
It may seem odd that Yusef Mekaoui suggests authorities investigate his own relatives. But he has had enough. He grew up with the Raads, several of whom were jailed over a plot to wreak terror on the MCG in 2005; and would go on to Syria, where one of the brothers was killed. When his cousin Adam Rahman blew himself up, Mekaoui was appalled but not shocked.
He describes Adam as “lovely” but not especially bright and easily led. His weakness? “He was just young. Everyone patted him on the head and gave him cuddles.”
Two of Adam’s sisters married into the Raad family. Mekaoui says the language he was hearing started to change.
He started copping lectures about his lifestyle from some of the Raad family — even though by most standards he passes for a good Muslim. Mekaoui does not drink or smoke, prays and strongly adheres to Islam as a religion of love. The responsibility of Muslims, he believes, is not to create an exclusive worldwide club, but to view all people as brothers and sisters.
“I’m still told I’m a bad Muslim — which is one for the worst things a Muslim could tell another Muslim,” he says.
The five-times daily prayer sessions every Muslim should attend are peaceful and introspective. The shoves towards jihad happen afterwards, in private sessions.
Growing up with some of the Raads at Northcote High, where Adam also went to school, they offered Mekaoui a form of Muslim brotherhood: they were big, loud and promised to bash anyone who gave the smaller Mekaoui a hard time.
The loyalty was admirable, but he could see they were off the leash. Mekaoui didn’t want their protection, he wanted to figure out life on his own.
He sees most of the young radicals — whether Muslims or recent converts — as coming from homes without good parental guidance. The radical groups become their new families. Utopia is the caliphate of the Islamic State.
Mekaoui says the young Australian Muslims have no idea how hard it is to be a Muslim in the Middle East.
“If you want to be a Muslim and live in Saudi and Jordan, you’re treated like crap unless you’ve got money,” he says.
“I had a cousin who wanted to go back to Lebanon because it’s ‘better’ there. I said, ‘You’ll be back in a couple of months when your son’s sick and you have to pay for it.’ No one is telling them the benefits of being Australian — the schooling, the breaks during work to pray. If someone was coming to invade Australia, I, as a Muslim, would pick up a gun and defend it.”
One of his cousins started handing out pamphlets condemning Jews. As he sees it, she was not part of a genuine Islamic awakening.
She was using the pamphlets to atone for her own earlier “mistakes”, such as seeing boys.
Atonement, when conducted within the sphere of Islamic extremism, demands condemning or killing a victim, whether they are a soldier, a Jew, or other randomly selected innocents.
“IS wants people who are weak or from broken backgrounds,” Mekaoui says.
“Don’t look at this as them recruiting people. Look at it as building a business. It’s a pyramid scheme. Go fight to cleanse your soul and be taken to heaven. It’s marketing. And you need a marketing strategy to break up ISIS.
“I get a person trying to sell me life insurance every week. They say, ‘I’m not here to sell you anything.’ It’s the same at the mosques.
“They say, ‘It’s terrible what’s happening overseas.’ Next thing, you’re in someone’s house, talking to them. It’s all suggestion. Then you’re in Turkey, crossing to Syria. You’re doing ‘humanitarian work’. Next thing, it’s muscle work.”
The message is that all comers are welcome to IS. You will likely need an introduction from someone in Australia to get through the door. After that, you will be processed, within days.
If you’re perceived as stupid, you’ll become a suicide bomber. If you’re seen as valiant, you’re off to the frontline. If you arrive without references, you’d better make a convincing case, quick. Otherwise, you’ll get a bullet and no grave.
Question to Junaid Thorne: Did multiculturalism fail to factor in Islam?
Thorne: “Islam broke those barriers 1400 years ago.”
Muslims are bad. You don’t need to go far out your front door to hear it in Australia. Counter-examples are too frequent to catalogue, but here’s one.
Kuranda Seyit, from the Islamic Council of Victoria, was in Istanbul, Turkey (the place of his origins) in late 2013 when he was contacted by the father of a young Australian man, aged about 20, of Afghan background.
The dad had received a message from his son, sent hours before from Malaysia, saying he was off to Syria to fight. The dad asked Seyit for help. Seyit went to Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport and told authorities the young man was arriving on a flight from Kuala Lumpur.
The authorities prevented the young man from entering the country and sent him back to KL. Seyit arranged for his brother, who was living in Malaysia, to care for the young man while his father flew in from Melbourne.
After a week or so, the dad convinced the son to come home to Australia.
His son had been associating with extremists in Melbourne, who had got into his head. But his father was able to take him home, thanks to Seyit’s intervention.
It has been likened to the heroin scourge of the late 1970s, when children from comfortable homes were dying or destroying themselves in numbers.
Like heroin, you can never be sure the curse is removed.
Seyit knows the young Afghan man is still semi-active in the radical world. He follows his posts. He’s not completely sure the guy won’t try again. Seyit did the right thing. He stopped a young man heading to war.
But perhaps some Australians would prefer this young man had been permitted to travel into the war zone where, with any luck, he would be killed.
This is the problem wise heads must confront. These young men may renounce their citizenship, but they are still Australians and they are our problem. Like it or not, they were made in Australia.
If we give up on them, they are nothing more than headlines. They need to be brought in from the desert, before they reach it.
Question to Junaid Thorne: For the sake of young lives, those boys who are heading overseas or thinking about action here at home, would you under any circumstances be prepared to make public statements advising them against it?
Thorne: “For the sake of young lives in Palestine? Burma? CAR (Central African Republic)? Syria? Where exactly?”
Tony Abbott holds no appeal when he asks young men to avoid social-media indoctrination.
Bill Shorten can do no better. Neither can the cops, the parents, or the imams who lead big mosques.
They have already found inspiration in the small chat sessions and the exciting pictures of men holding up severed heads as trophies.
They see a new world movement, a place with battlefields and comfort women. It may be glamorised in the videos, but it’s real enough. They want to be part of it. Federal money — $660 million — is being spent on workshops, police taskforces and engaging Muslim leaders.
The money is heading in the wrong direction.
No kid will attend an anti-radicalisation program, for self-evident reasons.
A Muslim hero is needed, someone from within who breaks rank. It’s not going to be Anthony Mundine, who’s too flippant; it must be someone who has turned back from the front to come home to Australia, or someone who can get to young men.
It needs to be someone like Junaid Thorne.
Thorne — according to discussions with moderate Muslims — is the “most dangerous” Muslim indoctrinator in this land.
But it won’t be Thorne.
The Federal Government’s position is that no one who has gone to fight can ever expect to reintegrate in Australian society until they have served a 25-year Supermax sentence. That needs to be reviewed.
An amnesty window must be provided. Not for those like Neil Prakash, who advertises death, nor Khaled Sharrouf, who has his son hold up the heads of fighters from the Free Syrian Army.
Until Australia finds someone who has been to the other side, and can tell the true story of the inhumanity of the IS corpse grinder, the campaign against radicalism cannot properly begin.
Junaid Thorne advises I check his (often suspended) Twitter account to understand his views; I tell him I don’t do my reading in 140-character grabs.
Thorne: “They say, ‘A wise man speaks less words’.”
I respond: “The Koran could not have been tweeted.”
Australia has produced, on a per capita basis, about 13 times as many foreign fighters as the United States.
It’s an astounding figure, though I’m not sure I agree with the Islamic Studies expert from Deakin University, Sharhram Akbarzadeh, on the reasons for it.
He argues that “ethnic groups in the US are absorbed, they take on the sentiment and psyche, they identify with it as their land”.
He describes Australia as having a less embracing patriotism, though Australia is becoming evermore patriotic.
It is doing so in defiance of radicals, as the big Dawn Service turnouts showed.
Akbarzadeh says he doesn’t believe Australia is Islamophobic, but says vocal groups such as Reclaim Australia are creating a sense among Muslim youth that they are hated.
“It feeds into the narrative which groups like IS bank on, and promote,” he says.
“From their point of view, the Australian system of government and legal system is aimed at subjugating Muslims.
“It’s a blinkered view. If you look at it objectively, Australia and its legal system has provided much more freedom and opportunity to Muslims to practice religion, have prayer breaks at work, mosques, Islamic schools, access to Halal food.
“It had provided more opportunity for Muslims to be good Muslims than most of the countries they come from.”
Akbarzadeh says it is a myth among Muslims that they are not heard in Australia.
He says they forget to mention the right to vote; and they need to be reminded that Islam is highly politicised in the Middle East, where governments “interfere and seek to control Islam and Muslim behaviour. Muslim minority sects feel this doubly hard”.
Muslims, he says, “need factual information. They need a positive narrative. You have to keep at it, challenge their negative stereotypes of the west, not washing your hands of someone who is on the path of radicalisation. If you wash your hands, you will have a terrorist down the track.”
Question to Junaid Thorne, sent on Anzac Day: Did any of your ancestors fight in World War I, World War II or Vietnam?
Thorne: “They fought when they were invaded by the first white people to come here.”
Thorne often repeats a view that if people take no opposition to Muslims, then “Islam tells us to leave them alone”; but if they take up arms or have views against Muslims, then judgment is on them and they are declared enemies.
Thorne talks of correct strategies to adopt during battle situations between Muslims and others. He has a mastery of concealing menace with a gentle tone.
“We don’t blow up a school full of children,” he says in one of his many videos. “We don’t target women. We don’t target religious people. We don’t target elderly people. But if they happen to be in a place being used by (enemy) combatants, and they were caught in the crossfire, that’s collateral damage. But we’re not allowed to target them.”
It’s Thorne’s use of the word “we” that sees him regarded with such suspicion.
It is not thought he has ever been in conflict, but there is no question he is happy to offer strategies for who those who may.
Thorne, these days a resident of Sydney who cannot apply for a passport or come within 200m of an international airport after he was found to have flown domestically under a false name, continues to preach and fly close to the outer limits of acceptable free speech in Australia.
The profile of the young Australian radical, says the Islamic Council’s Kuranda Seyit — the kind who may listen to Thorne — is of someone disconnected from their family; someone who sees a world more Islamised than ever.
“The spike is because of the slick nature of (IS) appeal and the kids who have grown up post-2001 believing Islam is under attack,” Seyit said.
“He’s grown up in an environment where the war on terror is constant.
“They have more Islamic content than my generation.
“There’s more mosques, there’s more groups, there’s more activity on social media.
“Most of the parents of these young people either came from secular societies (or) did not grow up in a very religious environment.
“The young people see themselves as having more knowledge in Islam than their parents, and their perception of their parents is that they’re lukewarm.
“In every story, you will see a marked change from a normal kid to becoming religious.”
Most, says Seyit, develop strong disdain for Australia, for its involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, and now in Iraq once again.
“They revoke their Australian identity,” he says.
The Islamic Council worries about three groups: those aged 15 to 25 who are on the sidelines but not yet radicalised; those in their early 20s who are self-radicalised; and then the hard line kids who would not have radicalised had organisations such as Al-Furqan not provided the ideology.
Even kids who don’t openly support IS are “sceptical about media reports”, says Seyit.
“They have sense that what IS is doing is wrong but they also believe it’s no different to what America does,” he said.
When a parent appears in the media, expressing shock that their child has gone to Syria, or has been arrested for planning an attack, Seyit says they should be taken at their word.
“The parents’ stories are genuine. They are shocked, surprised and gutted,” he says.
“For these families, it’s like when a child overdoses.
“They always think someone else’s child will get the problem. It’s a big shock.
“They are embarrassed and ashamed.”
Question to Thorne, originally from Perth: Dockers or Eagles?
Thorne does not respond.
If someone told you they wanted to go to Syria to join the Islamic State, and sought your counsel, what would you say?
Thorne: “Bulldogs.”
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/vi...g/news-story/88678887d70f558d3332f43f639a611a
This the story.
ONE of his first memories is seeing the planes crash into the Twin Towers.
At the time it means nothing to him, politically.
He is just a boy, a long way from Manhattan’s ground zero, raised in quiet Australian suburbia.
In the years that follow, he learns his family’s origins.
They come from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan (or Somalia).
He may even have been born there, but the memories have faded.
He does not feel a part of Australian society. It’s just a comment here or there, about Muslims, maybe not even directed at him. But it bites.
He begins to question. The first questions are directed to, and against, his parents.
Why were they not openly outraged by what follows 9/11, with US leading invasions into Afghanistan and Iraq, always with Australia on its heels?
Unlike his parents, who had chased a better life away from the sectarian violence of the Middle East or South Asia, he does not understand their mild take on religion, or their rejection of extremism.
He begins to see his parents as weak. Bad Muslims.
Raised with the luxury of free thought, he grasps it not with appreciation but defiance.
As one of the pioneering socially networked global children, he starts off looking for friends but sees mostly enemies. His friends hear, and become tired of, his one-track narrative of Australia as a racist and Islamophobic place.
A Muslim spiritual leader — a sheik, imam, ustad or just a self-nominated blowhard — notices he has started attending prayers. He wonders if the young man seeks deeper understanding.
He might be pointed to a discussion group led by someone like Junaid Thorne, the Western Australian man who travels around the country, holding forums.
Thorne impresses him. He’s 25, and after spending much of his youth in Saudi Arabia, is fluent in Arabic, very bright, knows his Islam and, as an Aboriginal man, has a double disconnection with Australia: not only are the brothers in the Iraq and Syria under attack, Thorne is a survivor of white invasion.
The young man’s questions are answered. Allah’s is the only true religion; Islam will rule over all, and all will fall beneath it. He knows people are being watched. It does not put fear into his heart. It emboldens him. He is now within a special circle.
This teacher, whoever he may be, listens to the discontented young man.
He does not propose a trip to Syria or to stage a terror attack; he does not need to.
He talks in riddles. He asks the young man challenging, deep questions. Any answer he gives proves correct.
The teacher knows with the right pacing, and the right doubletalk, the young man will soon come to suggest a radical move himself, as though it’s his own idea.
He is one of many who have plotted homegrown terror attacks, gone to cut off heads in Syria or Iraq, or blown themselves up.
Question via whatsapp to Junaid Thorne: People say you’re clever. And dangerous.
Thorne: “Never believe people. But then maybe I am.”
Jake Bilardi, 18, who blew himself up at a market in Ramadi, Iraq, in March, and killed at least 17 people, used to visit the Hume Islamic Youth Centre, near Broadmeadows.
The youth centre includes a sizeable restaurant, an Islamic superstore and a large prayer room out the back. It is a kind of mixed business.
Last Friday night, after prayers, News Corp tried to ask some young Muslim men whether the cause of the growing radicalisation was due to a feeling of alienation within Australia.
The inquiry’s purpose was to look beyond the often-cited explanation that all young radicals are the products of Twitter and Facebook indoctrination, as police and politicians often say.
But, after five young men were seized by police for allegedly planning Anzac Day knife or sword attacks, and two of them were later charged, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said the search for answers now needed to go deeper.
“We don’t fully understand what is driving these people,” Andrews said.
“We need to get to the bottom of it and we will.”
At the youth centre, immediately after prayers finish, it doesn’t take long to find an aggrieved young Australian. He is only the second person we approach. His passport was suspended a fortnight back.
“I wanted to go to Lebanon with my mother to see my grandfather who’s dying and they suspended my passport for no reason,” he says.
“(He) will probably die and I won’t get to see him. This is how they treat us here.”
Attempts to ask more questions — such as, why he believes he is under suspicion? His name? Whether he sees himself as an outcast? — are not possible. The sheik and other older men gather around and tell us to stop talking to the young men, who look to be over 18 and capable of giving their views.
This is a feature of the young radicals. They are not treated as adults by older men.
This means that between the ages of 14 and 25, Muslim males are subject to the strong influence from their elders.
The leaders shoo the young men away and, without asking us to leave the premises, effectively shut us down.
The reaction by the sheik and other senior men can be understood. The interception of the alleged Anzac Day plot — which happened on the other side of the city — is big news. They cannot see any benefit in being linked in the aftermath.
It is possible the young man had his passport suspended because he attends this Islamic centre, now associated with a suicide bomber.
There is no question young Muslims are feeling under scrutiny in Australia. Everyone’s watching, though maybe not closely enough.
The alleged Anzac plot only came to light after British police alerted Australian police of contact between an English youth and some of the young men.
This was despite the fact that all five had alleged links to the Al-Furqan book shop in Springvale, near Dandenong.
The book shop, run by Bosnian cleric Harun Mehicevic, also had a prayer room and meeting place.
Junaid Thorne was a visiting speaker there.
Al-Furqan — which closed its doors on April 22 due to what it said was “harassment, pressure and false accusations” — had been regularly visited by Afghan-born Numan Haider, who was shot dead last year after he stabbed two police officers.
Mehicevic distanced himself from Haider.
Thorne, who knew Haider, called his death a “cold-blooded murder”.
The centre, which had posted pro-Islamic State statements the day before Haider’s death, had been raided in 2012 and — you would imagine — its visitors would have been under ASIO or AFP surveillance.
But ASIO only comes knocking in the aftermath of an event, whether in Australia or the Islamic State battlefields, seeking information on people who have already been arrested or are in the fight.
That’s the view of Melbourne man Yusef Mekaoui, the cousin of Adam Dahman, who blew himself up at a Shia mosque in Baghdad in July 2014, and killed five.
“They ask about known quantities,” Mekaoui says.
“I tell them they should be looking at some of my young cousins, the ones they don’t know about.”
Question to Junaid Thorne: Chan and Sukumaran (have been) given three days’ notice. What do you think?
Thorne: “Australian jets drop bombs on civilians with no notice. And American jets. Israelis as well.”
It may seem odd that Yusef Mekaoui suggests authorities investigate his own relatives. But he has had enough. He grew up with the Raads, several of whom were jailed over a plot to wreak terror on the MCG in 2005; and would go on to Syria, where one of the brothers was killed. When his cousin Adam Rahman blew himself up, Mekaoui was appalled but not shocked.
He describes Adam as “lovely” but not especially bright and easily led. His weakness? “He was just young. Everyone patted him on the head and gave him cuddles.”
Two of Adam’s sisters married into the Raad family. Mekaoui says the language he was hearing started to change.
He started copping lectures about his lifestyle from some of the Raad family — even though by most standards he passes for a good Muslim. Mekaoui does not drink or smoke, prays and strongly adheres to Islam as a religion of love. The responsibility of Muslims, he believes, is not to create an exclusive worldwide club, but to view all people as brothers and sisters.
“I’m still told I’m a bad Muslim — which is one for the worst things a Muslim could tell another Muslim,” he says.
The five-times daily prayer sessions every Muslim should attend are peaceful and introspective. The shoves towards jihad happen afterwards, in private sessions.
Growing up with some of the Raads at Northcote High, where Adam also went to school, they offered Mekaoui a form of Muslim brotherhood: they were big, loud and promised to bash anyone who gave the smaller Mekaoui a hard time.
The loyalty was admirable, but he could see they were off the leash. Mekaoui didn’t want their protection, he wanted to figure out life on his own.
He sees most of the young radicals — whether Muslims or recent converts — as coming from homes without good parental guidance. The radical groups become their new families. Utopia is the caliphate of the Islamic State.
Mekaoui says the young Australian Muslims have no idea how hard it is to be a Muslim in the Middle East.
“If you want to be a Muslim and live in Saudi and Jordan, you’re treated like crap unless you’ve got money,” he says.
“I had a cousin who wanted to go back to Lebanon because it’s ‘better’ there. I said, ‘You’ll be back in a couple of months when your son’s sick and you have to pay for it.’ No one is telling them the benefits of being Australian — the schooling, the breaks during work to pray. If someone was coming to invade Australia, I, as a Muslim, would pick up a gun and defend it.”
One of his cousins started handing out pamphlets condemning Jews. As he sees it, she was not part of a genuine Islamic awakening.
She was using the pamphlets to atone for her own earlier “mistakes”, such as seeing boys.
Atonement, when conducted within the sphere of Islamic extremism, demands condemning or killing a victim, whether they are a soldier, a Jew, or other randomly selected innocents.
“IS wants people who are weak or from broken backgrounds,” Mekaoui says.
“Don’t look at this as them recruiting people. Look at it as building a business. It’s a pyramid scheme. Go fight to cleanse your soul and be taken to heaven. It’s marketing. And you need a marketing strategy to break up ISIS.
“I get a person trying to sell me life insurance every week. They say, ‘I’m not here to sell you anything.’ It’s the same at the mosques.
“They say, ‘It’s terrible what’s happening overseas.’ Next thing, you’re in someone’s house, talking to them. It’s all suggestion. Then you’re in Turkey, crossing to Syria. You’re doing ‘humanitarian work’. Next thing, it’s muscle work.”
The message is that all comers are welcome to IS. You will likely need an introduction from someone in Australia to get through the door. After that, you will be processed, within days.
If you’re perceived as stupid, you’ll become a suicide bomber. If you’re seen as valiant, you’re off to the frontline. If you arrive without references, you’d better make a convincing case, quick. Otherwise, you’ll get a bullet and no grave.
Question to Junaid Thorne: Did multiculturalism fail to factor in Islam?
Thorne: “Islam broke those barriers 1400 years ago.”
Muslims are bad. You don’t need to go far out your front door to hear it in Australia. Counter-examples are too frequent to catalogue, but here’s one.
Kuranda Seyit, from the Islamic Council of Victoria, was in Istanbul, Turkey (the place of his origins) in late 2013 when he was contacted by the father of a young Australian man, aged about 20, of Afghan background.
The dad had received a message from his son, sent hours before from Malaysia, saying he was off to Syria to fight. The dad asked Seyit for help. Seyit went to Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport and told authorities the young man was arriving on a flight from Kuala Lumpur.
The authorities prevented the young man from entering the country and sent him back to KL. Seyit arranged for his brother, who was living in Malaysia, to care for the young man while his father flew in from Melbourne.
After a week or so, the dad convinced the son to come home to Australia.
His son had been associating with extremists in Melbourne, who had got into his head. But his father was able to take him home, thanks to Seyit’s intervention.
It has been likened to the heroin scourge of the late 1970s, when children from comfortable homes were dying or destroying themselves in numbers.
Like heroin, you can never be sure the curse is removed.
Seyit knows the young Afghan man is still semi-active in the radical world. He follows his posts. He’s not completely sure the guy won’t try again. Seyit did the right thing. He stopped a young man heading to war.
But perhaps some Australians would prefer this young man had been permitted to travel into the war zone where, with any luck, he would be killed.
This is the problem wise heads must confront. These young men may renounce their citizenship, but they are still Australians and they are our problem. Like it or not, they were made in Australia.
If we give up on them, they are nothing more than headlines. They need to be brought in from the desert, before they reach it.
Question to Junaid Thorne: For the sake of young lives, those boys who are heading overseas or thinking about action here at home, would you under any circumstances be prepared to make public statements advising them against it?
Thorne: “For the sake of young lives in Palestine? Burma? CAR (Central African Republic)? Syria? Where exactly?”
Tony Abbott holds no appeal when he asks young men to avoid social-media indoctrination.
Bill Shorten can do no better. Neither can the cops, the parents, or the imams who lead big mosques.
They have already found inspiration in the small chat sessions and the exciting pictures of men holding up severed heads as trophies.
They see a new world movement, a place with battlefields and comfort women. It may be glamorised in the videos, but it’s real enough. They want to be part of it. Federal money — $660 million — is being spent on workshops, police taskforces and engaging Muslim leaders.
The money is heading in the wrong direction.
No kid will attend an anti-radicalisation program, for self-evident reasons.
A Muslim hero is needed, someone from within who breaks rank. It’s not going to be Anthony Mundine, who’s too flippant; it must be someone who has turned back from the front to come home to Australia, or someone who can get to young men.
It needs to be someone like Junaid Thorne.
Thorne — according to discussions with moderate Muslims — is the “most dangerous” Muslim indoctrinator in this land.
But it won’t be Thorne.
The Federal Government’s position is that no one who has gone to fight can ever expect to reintegrate in Australian society until they have served a 25-year Supermax sentence. That needs to be reviewed.
An amnesty window must be provided. Not for those like Neil Prakash, who advertises death, nor Khaled Sharrouf, who has his son hold up the heads of fighters from the Free Syrian Army.
Until Australia finds someone who has been to the other side, and can tell the true story of the inhumanity of the IS corpse grinder, the campaign against radicalism cannot properly begin.
Junaid Thorne advises I check his (often suspended) Twitter account to understand his views; I tell him I don’t do my reading in 140-character grabs.
Thorne: “They say, ‘A wise man speaks less words’.”
I respond: “The Koran could not have been tweeted.”
Australia has produced, on a per capita basis, about 13 times as many foreign fighters as the United States.
It’s an astounding figure, though I’m not sure I agree with the Islamic Studies expert from Deakin University, Sharhram Akbarzadeh, on the reasons for it.
He argues that “ethnic groups in the US are absorbed, they take on the sentiment and psyche, they identify with it as their land”.
He describes Australia as having a less embracing patriotism, though Australia is becoming evermore patriotic.
It is doing so in defiance of radicals, as the big Dawn Service turnouts showed.
Akbarzadeh says he doesn’t believe Australia is Islamophobic, but says vocal groups such as Reclaim Australia are creating a sense among Muslim youth that they are hated.
“It feeds into the narrative which groups like IS bank on, and promote,” he says.
“From their point of view, the Australian system of government and legal system is aimed at subjugating Muslims.
“It’s a blinkered view. If you look at it objectively, Australia and its legal system has provided much more freedom and opportunity to Muslims to practice religion, have prayer breaks at work, mosques, Islamic schools, access to Halal food.
“It had provided more opportunity for Muslims to be good Muslims than most of the countries they come from.”
Akbarzadeh says it is a myth among Muslims that they are not heard in Australia.
He says they forget to mention the right to vote; and they need to be reminded that Islam is highly politicised in the Middle East, where governments “interfere and seek to control Islam and Muslim behaviour. Muslim minority sects feel this doubly hard”.
Muslims, he says, “need factual information. They need a positive narrative. You have to keep at it, challenge their negative stereotypes of the west, not washing your hands of someone who is on the path of radicalisation. If you wash your hands, you will have a terrorist down the track.”
Question to Junaid Thorne, sent on Anzac Day: Did any of your ancestors fight in World War I, World War II or Vietnam?
Thorne: “They fought when they were invaded by the first white people to come here.”
Thorne often repeats a view that if people take no opposition to Muslims, then “Islam tells us to leave them alone”; but if they take up arms or have views against Muslims, then judgment is on them and they are declared enemies.
Thorne talks of correct strategies to adopt during battle situations between Muslims and others. He has a mastery of concealing menace with a gentle tone.
“We don’t blow up a school full of children,” he says in one of his many videos. “We don’t target women. We don’t target religious people. We don’t target elderly people. But if they happen to be in a place being used by (enemy) combatants, and they were caught in the crossfire, that’s collateral damage. But we’re not allowed to target them.”
It’s Thorne’s use of the word “we” that sees him regarded with such suspicion.
It is not thought he has ever been in conflict, but there is no question he is happy to offer strategies for who those who may.
Thorne, these days a resident of Sydney who cannot apply for a passport or come within 200m of an international airport after he was found to have flown domestically under a false name, continues to preach and fly close to the outer limits of acceptable free speech in Australia.
The profile of the young Australian radical, says the Islamic Council’s Kuranda Seyit — the kind who may listen to Thorne — is of someone disconnected from their family; someone who sees a world more Islamised than ever.
“The spike is because of the slick nature of (IS) appeal and the kids who have grown up post-2001 believing Islam is under attack,” Seyit said.
“He’s grown up in an environment where the war on terror is constant.
“They have more Islamic content than my generation.
“There’s more mosques, there’s more groups, there’s more activity on social media.
“Most of the parents of these young people either came from secular societies (or) did not grow up in a very religious environment.
“The young people see themselves as having more knowledge in Islam than their parents, and their perception of their parents is that they’re lukewarm.
“In every story, you will see a marked change from a normal kid to becoming religious.”
Most, says Seyit, develop strong disdain for Australia, for its involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, and now in Iraq once again.
“They revoke their Australian identity,” he says.
The Islamic Council worries about three groups: those aged 15 to 25 who are on the sidelines but not yet radicalised; those in their early 20s who are self-radicalised; and then the hard line kids who would not have radicalised had organisations such as Al-Furqan not provided the ideology.
Even kids who don’t openly support IS are “sceptical about media reports”, says Seyit.
“They have sense that what IS is doing is wrong but they also believe it’s no different to what America does,” he said.
When a parent appears in the media, expressing shock that their child has gone to Syria, or has been arrested for planning an attack, Seyit says they should be taken at their word.
“The parents’ stories are genuine. They are shocked, surprised and gutted,” he says.
“For these families, it’s like when a child overdoses.
“They always think someone else’s child will get the problem. It’s a big shock.
“They are embarrassed and ashamed.”
Question to Thorne, originally from Perth: Dockers or Eagles?
Thorne does not respond.
If someone told you they wanted to go to Syria to join the Islamic State, and sought your counsel, what would you say?
Thorne: “Bulldogs.”
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/vi...g/news-story/88678887d70f558d3332f43f639a611a
