The most significant FACT about today’s front page in The Daily Telegraph is that nothing on it is actually NEWS.
That returning jihadists from Syria or Iraq present dilemmas to our authorities is not news. It has been discussed endlessly in recent times. Coincidentally my friend Chris T forwarded an article written by a former University of Wollongong acquaintance of his now resident in Uganda: Spotlight on Australian Jihadists in the Middle East by Herman Butime, Small Wars Journal 30 December 2014:
Abstract
This article examines the activities of Australian Jihadists in Syria and Iraq. The author traces the roots of Islamist militancy in Australia; its growth from being a domestic to being a trans-national security concern; the characteristics of Australian Jihadists; the challenge of disengaging these fighters from their current vocation; and the overall Australian response to the security challenge they pose. It is argued that the phenomenon of Australian Jihadists in Syria and Iraq is primarily a product of challenges in integrating Australians of Middle Eastern descent (and by extension Australian Muslims) into mainstream Australian society. The emergence of conflicts in Syria and Iraq to which Australians of Middle Eastern descent can relate have not only attracted them to these conflict zones but also exported the organizational dynamics of these conflicts to Australia making the country the highest per capita contributor of Jihadists to these war zones and Jihadists from Australia exhibiting greater commitment and representation in the Syrian and Iraqi insurgent campaigns. Given the above dynamics, Australia is now grappling with a choice between managing the Jihadist threat abroad and managing it at home.
Nor is it news that the Martin Place siege perpetrator had taken up with/been influenced by the group Hizb ut Tahrir. See for example Anne Davies in The Sydney Morning Herald 16 December 2014.
It was the night of September 19 this year, in the aftermath of the dawn raids on a dozen houses around south-west Sydney by the anti-terrorism squad. I had been sent out to report on the mood in the Muslim community and to attend an evening rally in Lakemba organised by Muslim organisation Hizb ut Tahrir .
The group is on the more radical end of the spectrum – its aim is to establish a global caliphate governed by Sharia law – and the mood was very tense in the park near Lakemba station.
About 400 men, mostly with long beards, had gathered. A group of women hovered on the fringe of the meeting, minding children and there was a large contingent of media.
Among the angry crowd was a man dressed in a long white robe and an embroidered white cap. He was tall, wore glasses, and had a neatly clipped beard, greying at the edges.
I approached him after the rally to ask him why he had attended. He was willing to talk and introduced himself as Sheik Haron.
“We just want to voice against injustice, and we want to express our feelings that this not a war against terrorism, it is a war against Muslims,” he told me…
As a matter of fact I had my own brushes with Hizb ut Tahrir in the mid 2000s.
The Mine and the Islamists: cause for concern?
17MAR 2006
This back link to last year is vital background to what follows. Naturally the links therein to Diary-X no longer work, but I will shortly post the relevant items on my Angelfire blog and reset the links.* The gist: the article above discusses the visit by some interesting people to my former place of work. See also another August 2005 entry, Indigo Jo Blogs Patrick Sookhdeo on moderate Islam.. I have been able to correct the links on that one.
I urge you to read those articles, and also not to jump to conclusions when you read what follows. I do not feel threatened, but I do feel concerned.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, the Islamic Students Society at The Mine has made some connection with clearly Islamist groups. I have just read a Wikipedia article, currently being considered for deletion [it was], written by some of the students themselves.
In 2005 the ISSBH enjoyed its most productive year, with a range of activities undertaken by the society to promote its newly dubbed “Annual Forum and Presentation on Islam”. Leading up to the event, several information stalls were held in order to give people a taste of multicultural food and also to promote the event. The Forum was well attended at around 310 people, with the speakers on this occasion being the world famous Sheikh Khalid Yasin, and the Sydney-based Islamic media personality Wassim Doureihi, invited to speak because of recommendations of his eloquence and sound expression. Both speakers impressed the audience present, despite campaigns run by senior students in the school to question the validity of Islamic law as a useful means by which to guide mankind’s affairs. The ISSBH was on the ABC program “the 7.30 Report” and has since concentrated on internal efforts and discussion with students at the school on a personal basis…
Wassim Doureihi is spokesman for the Sydney branch of the Muslim Hizb ut-Tahrir, a thorough but unfriendly account of which you may read here. [link no longer works] According to Wikipedia, “The party is banned in many Arab countries, but not the more liberal Sharjah, or the UAE, Lebanon and Yemen; it is also banned throughout the former Soviet Union states of Central Asia, and in Germany. It operates legally in most Western nations, and survived a ban in Australia after clearance from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. On August 5, 2005, Tony Blair announced the British government’s intention to ban the group in the United Kingdom.” Note, then, the organisation is not illegal in Australia but is still “of interest”…
See also from 2007 On the extreme ugliness of fanatics of all kinds… and Extended comment: On the extreme ugliness of fanatics of all kinds….
Complicating matters too is the fact that as long ago as July last year Hizb ut-Tahrir came out against the so-called Islamic State.
Across the board, Lebanon’s Islamists did not view the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) declaration of an Islamic caliphate and their proclamation of the group’s leader, Ibrahim al-Badri (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi), a caliph positively. There was a near consensus among them to reject the announcement, even though in their religious writings, they consider restoring the caliphate an important issue. In the eyes of Lebanon’s Islamists, the day the caliphate was declared is not a historic day in which the Islamic caliphate is resurrected about 90 years after it was dismantled by the Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
The party most concerned with this development is Hizb ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation) because resurrecting the caliphate is a priority in its political literature. Nevertheless, it did not hide its rejection of ISIS’ announcement. “Resurrecting the caliphate should not be accomplished through blood, charges of apostasy and explosions,” explained Osman Bakhach, the director of the central media office of the party in Lebanon. He said: “We are invested in the question of the Islamic caliphate and are advocates of the idea. We devised for this end a certain approach – the prophetic approach – calling for a state that opens its arms to all people, Muslims and others, including Christians and Jews, not to be a state where Muslims can not stand each other and fight amongst each other. That is something we categorically reject.”…
Make what you will of that, it does indicate that the world-view endorsed by the Tele is grossly oversimplified. Odd too that there is a kind of connection to Gallipoli in all this – the caliphate’s fall was a result of World War 1. Personally I don’t for a moment endorse the aims of Hizb ut-Tahrir either in its idealistic or at times more fanatical and sinister manifestations, but then I am in no way a Muslim of any kind either. Inconveniently — and in many places it would be fatally — I simply do not believe God has ever written or dictated or caused to be infallible a book of any kind, Jewish, Christian or Islamic. But those who agree with me and those who don’t have to learn to get along without violence. Surely it can happen.
So if the Tele front page is devoid of news, what is it there for? To scare the sh*t out of us and sell papers. Sadly, from their point of view, this (and several other mass events such as cricket matches) has passed without significant incidents.
Though some say Sydney NYE numbers were down on last year, speculation being that PM-originated chatter about terrorist chatter did put some off going – not to mention the tough anti-alcohol regime in play on the night. I watched and enjoyed on TV myself – but I’m now a bit old for traipsing off to such events. But it does appear that despite that murderous drongo in Martin Place whose act served mostly to strengthen our civic ties across backgrounds and cultures we are doing the right thing and NOT being spooked by the chance of “death cults” or whatever you want to call them in our midst.
So here is a New Year Resolution: boycott The Daily Telegraph, or laugh at it loudly and long. Focus also on stories like this: New Zealand cricketers donate kit, funds to Pakistan school massacre survivors.
Neil's Commonplace Book 
Great article. I too am concerned about Islam and it’s basic ideology. I would advocate the Quaran be translated into english and it’s reading be encouraged by current muslims so they can gain a much better understanding of what they are agreeing to follow. I understand that most muslims are not actually encouraged to read the Quaran but to rather have it interpreted for them in the Friday mosque sessions by someone else. I think most rational thinking people would thus understand the potential for a lot of people to be misled by a charismatic person. Heck, this happens with supposed christian leaders now using a book already translated into english. So, the potential for being misled is greatly amplified with active discouragement of reading a book in a language not understood by many people.
Thanks for liking my post, alrharris. I have had a look at your blogs too and find them interesting. It is true that hearing the Quran in Arabic is the way most Muslims engage with it — in keeping with the name of the work which means “recitation”. It is also said that the book can’t really be translated, but despite that there are many English versions out there and online. There are also some good books by Quranic scholars; an Australian example being Abdullah Saeed,”Interpreting the Qur’an: towards a contemporary approach”, Routledge 2006. Saeed is Director of the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Islam at the University of Melbourne.
There is also a thoughtful piece in today’s Herald: “From tragedy comes hope for Sydney’s Muslim community” by Samier Dandan, President of the Lebanese Muslim Association.
Perhaps the best thing we could do is to start holding the media accountable for the garbage that they’re printing. After all, they are basically an essential service, and if the fire department went roaring around town with their sirens screaming, trying to convince everybody that every building in town was on fire, I’m sure the townspeople would very quickly have something to say about that kind of behaviour. The newspapers, and the radio and television stations have an obligation to report the news. If the populace wants fiction, we can always take in a Saturday matinee.