01-Jan-15: In Australia, facing up to reality of local Islamist terror

Hostage flees the Sydney siege, December 15, 2014
[Image Source]

As far from Europe and the Middle East as Australia is, the lethal threats that Islamist terrorism poses are as relevant there as practically everywhere else. 

Australian death cult jihadists who fought with Islamic State in Syria before travel was banned to the region have returned home to roam our streets as free men because of a legal loophole. More than 20 Australian terrorists, who have been militarised and brutalised, have returned from the Middle East and are now free in the community. It is understood about half escaped any form of charges because proving what Australian jihadists have done overseas is difficult. The government introduced new counterterrorism laws giving Foreign Minister Julie Bishop the power to ban travel to particular terrorist regions, but those who are already in the region cannot be jailed for flying there because the laws are not retrospective. National Security agencies are closely monitoring the men. Nineteen of the 25 Australians who returned home from Afghanistan after fighting with Al-Qaeda were later involved in some form of terror activity in Australian. [Australian death cult jihadists who fought with Islamic State in Syria return to roam our streets | Daniel Meers | The Daily Telegraph (Sydney) | January 02, 2015]

The so-called lone-wolf Islamist who took hostages in a Sydney cafe last month has been adopted as a poster child for the cause by the ISIS online propaganda/recruitment publication Dabiq. This comes from its latest edition, as quoted in The Guardian and the Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesday:

"This month, an attack was carried out in Sydney by Man Haron Monis, a Muslim who resolved to join the mujāhidīn of the Islamic State in their war against the crusader coalition,.. He did not do so by undertaking the journey to the lands of the Khilāfah and fighting side-by-side with his brothers but rather, by acting alone and striking the kuffār [non-believers] where it would hurt them most – in their own lands and on the very streets that they presumptively walk in safety.
"It didn't take much; he got hold of a gun and stormed a cafe taking everyone inside hostage. Yet in doing so, he prompted mass panic, brought terror to the entire nation, and triggered an evacuation of parts of Sydney's central business district."

According to the Sydney Morning Herald report (December 30, 2014): "The magazine features a full-page colour photograph of Monis and contains quotes attributed to him on his conversion from Shia to Sunni Islam. Past editions of Dabiq... urged would-be jihadists to keep their plots small and their strategies simple, involving as few people as possible."

Monis on the cover of a Melbourne newspaper
today

And in the Daily Mail UK they point out how the ISIS homage to the dead terrorist flexibly

sidesteps the issue of Monis's dubious morality, which included outstanding charges for more than 50 sexual offences, saying: 'The fact is ... that any allegations leveled against a person concerning their past are irrelevant as long as they hope for Allah’s mercy and sincerely repent from any previous misguidance.' IS had called on Muslims to kills disbelievers in the West, including Australia.

Readers of The Guardian report get a sense of how the glorification of violent thugs like the Iranian hostage-taker serves to attract shiftless young people on troubled trajectories:

Monis’s actions are framed as redemptive, cleansing the fringe, self-styled peace activist of a past that included allegations of fraud, accessory to murder and numerous sexual assaults. “Any allegations leveled against a person concerning their past are irrelevant as long as they hope for Allah’s mercy and sincerely repent from any previous misguidance,” the article says.

Australia's Attorney-General George Brandis, quoted earlier this week [source], said about 20 Australians have already been killed fighting in Iraq and Syria. About seventy Australians are currently there among the ranks of the ISIS Islamists, he said. Which brings us back to the lethal threat this poses, according to the report at the top of this page.