Izhar Ul-Haque (Channel Nine)
In this story about the usual protestations of innocence and discrimination that follow whenever any Muslim is charged with terrorist activity, there is the blinding insight that Ul-Haque was sort of an ordinary guy — which is presented as if it is evidence that he is not guilty. This is what passes for analysis? He played cricket and slept late, therefore he couldn't be a terrorist? From The Australian, with thanks to Jean-Luc:
TWO pictures have emerged of the first Australian to face court charged under new anti-terror laws for allegedly receiving training from a terrorist group.While the prosecution alleged this week that terror suspect Izhar Ul-Haque, 21, trained with a banned terrorist organisation in Pakistan, expecting to fight in a jihad, or holy war, and die a martyr, the defence painted a very different picture of the medical student.
A Sydney local court heard that Mr Ul-Haque, who was arrested two weeks ago, was a courteous student originally from Pakistan, who loved playing cricket with his brothers and sleeping late on weekends.
When he was not diligently studying for his medical degree, he helped with household chores. The deeply religious student, the court heard, was a credit to his family and the well-heeled community of northwestern Sydney where he lived.
Both were stunned when Mr Ul-Haque was charged this month with training in a camp run by banned terrorist organisation Laskar-e-Taiba. It was the first time the war on terrorism had reached these prosperous suburbs.
Since then, his family and community have rallied together, livid that such an unlikely person has been targeted by anti-terrorism investigators.
To show support, former teachers, a school counsellor, hockey coach, students and family packed a local court during his application for bail this week from solitary confinement in the nation's most secure prison.
"We were so appalled that someone of this calibre should have been thrown in jail," says a former principal of North Sydney Boys High School, where Mr Ul-Haque attended his final years of schooling.
"Terrorism wins an awful victory when we are prepared to destroy a young person's reputation and future on the flimsy grounds which have landed ... Ul-Haque in this present situation," Bernard Newsom continues in his affidavit to the court.
"After 36 years of teaching, one can identify the gems among the young people ... Izhar is one of those gems." ...
An award-winning student, Mr Ul-Haque gained a university entrance score of 99.7 and wanted to become the first doctor in his family.
A sensitive person, his brothers say in affidavits that he has a wicked sense of humour that reminds them of comedian and talkshow host Andrew Denton.
But frustration set in after he failed his second year at the University of NSW. Visiting his father in Pakistan in January 2003, he wrote him a letter outlining his distaste for Westerners and his desire to join a jihad and die a martyr, the court heard.
His alarmed father and brother went to the camp, where he was training for three weeks in combat and weaponry, to try to send him home. In an apparent change of heart, he later returned to Sydney to resume his studies.
For us to tolerate evil in our environs and allow it to be successful, evil must look trivial and banal. Past spies and past terrorists have employed this tactic for thousands of years. (Remember the Trojan Horse)
War is Deception!
This cas is instructive because it illustrates the susceptibility of young muslims in the West to the ideology of radical islam. Ir reminds me of students in the 60's joining the SDS because it was 'cool', 'radical', etc etc and an outlet for frustration and resentment. Most SDS members probably did not engage in violence because they realized the severity of crossing this line. But the crossing of this line into violence is encouraged by radical islam and has the weight of an historical movement behind it. The SDS was a contemporary invention of the times with no ancient history, while radical islam can call upon a long historical lineage of 'heroes' to inspire its new converts. That is what makes it so dangerous.
This case illustrates the danger of this appeal to dis-affected young muslims in the West seeking their own identity in an often confusing world.One way this young man could demonstrate his allegiance to Australia, and the West, is to freely provide as much intelligence as possible about the activities of radical islam. That would be a real change of heart.
Mike H
"Deeply religious student" -- media code for radical Islamist.
They said the same nice things about Ted Bundy. "He was so bright, and polite..."
Basil~ Yes, but remember: Bundy was white. according to the liberal elite that automatically makes him bad.
"deeply religious student" -- That's the problem! If he was an apostate he'd be housebroken.
On the subject of apologists for Jihadism and their running-dogs in the international media, I draw attention to their collaborators in politics, the public sector, many churches and in academia, craving your indulgence as I re-post an entry from yesterday, on a serious item which looks to have escaped notice.
Over the weekend, dozens of retired and former US diplomats have, predictably, jumped onto the band-wagon loosed by their British colleagues a week ago, to harshly censure Allied policies in Iraq and "Palestine".
The Arabs and Moslems are calling up their pet heavy hitters now, the reflexively compliant, defeatist crème of the pernicious, Western Arabist establishment, which has been lodged and nurtured, profoundly and insidiously, within every level of the Department of State and the Foreign Office.
These stooges are basically an exclusive "club" who've cheerfully been compromised, corrupted and co-opted by the dar el-Islam for many, many decades, inbred generations of bureaucrats - men who, serving their true, sinister owners, have directly led the West (and the Middle East) into the dangerous predicament we're all in today.
They deviously screen their masters' arguments behind the mask of their own "unquestionable patriotism" and "lengthy service to the nation", urging that prompt disengagement from Iraq and abandonment of Israel are in the best interests of America and Britain, conveying the rabid Arabs' and Moslems' (empty) pledges that this path will gain the US and Britain peace from the Islamo-fascist onslaught (even going so far as to claim - ingenuously, if not treasonably - that these policies would neutralize it).
More than naïfs, they're mouthpieces for blackmail, they're nothing but classic arch-appeasers; if the "War on Terror" was being waged as seriously as it ought to be (in the face of an implacable, mortal enemy), these Western quislings' state pensions and their quiet subsidies from Araby should be cut off at once, at the least.
Thanx.