Not the first case of soccer jihad, either. An update on this story. "12 stand trial in Australia terror plot," from the Associated Press:
MELBOURNE, Australia - Twelve terror suspects planned to bomb a packed sports stadium during the grand final match of the Australian Football League in 2005, a witness testified Tuesday.
Izzydeen Atik, a former associate of the suspects, told Australia's Victorian Supreme Court that the stadium plot was postponed after police raided the suspects' homes and seized their assets in June 2005.
Atik said alleged terror cell leader Abdul Nacer Benbrika told him about the plot and subsequent plans to bomb Melbourne's Crown Casino during the Formula One Grand Prix and an AFL preseason match.
Benbrika, an Algerian immigrant to Australia, and 11 other men have pleaded not guilty to charges of being members of a terrorist group and related charges. Prosecutors say the 12 intended to undertake "violent jihad" in Australia, had discussed killing former Prime Minister John Howard, and identified railway stations and sports fields as likely targets.
Atik, a former religious student of cleric Benbrika, told the court he used stolen credit card numbers to buy airplane tickets and mobile phones for the accused men. He faces separate charges of credit card fraud.
The 12 terror suspects on trial in Melbourne were arrested in November 2005 and their trial began in February.
The suspects face a maximum penalty of life imprisonment if convicted of membership in a terrorist group.
Most of them are reportedly born or naturalized Australians with Muslim immigrant backgrounds.
UPDATE from Robert Spencer: Several Australians have emailed me to say that this is not another case of soccer jihad, because Australian Rules Football is not soccer. My apologies -- I don't even know what inning we're in.
As one who lives Down Under, these reports are very worrying.
Yet, it just reiterates the fact that even though most of these people were born here, they were still willing to kill innocent Australians for the glory of Allah. No other ethnic or religious group has been arrested for attempting to do something like this.
AFL or "Aussie Rules" is not actually soccer, but a weird Melbourne-based game using a small oval ball that has some similarities to Gaelic Football.
A hit on the sacred cow of AFL would be the silliest thing the jihadis could do, and would force even the dhimmi Melbourne Age (think "NYT of the South Pacific")to snap out of its deep self-satisfied sleep and face reality.
From the article:
"Atik, a former religious student of cleric Benbrika, told the court he used stolen credit card numbers to buy airplane tickets and mobile phones for the accused men. He faces separate charges of credit card fraud".
A 'religious' young muslim - carrying out his 'religious' obligation to Jihad by religiously stealing credit cards from the dirty kuffar Australians so his fellow jihadis can religiously kill lots and lots of kuffar all at once, thus religiously furthering The Ultimate Good - Total Islamic World Domination.
In the west, *usually* seen as inculcating moral/ ethical values. (Oh, sure, we've had corrupt clergy and conmen - be they Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist or Christian - but when exposed they have been universally condemned by their fellow believers, as violating the norms of the faith they claimed to represent).
When, when, when will the journalists reporting these stories sit back and slap their foreheads and declare: "This Islam thing is a mafia!"? Or - 'this Islam thing is about armed sedition'?
Something else to think about: "[they, the jihadis] had discussed killing former Prime Minister John Howard".
Muslims plotting to kill the then Prime Minister of Australia. Where have we heard that kind of thing before? Oh yes: there was a Muslim plot in Canada to 'take' the Parliament and behead the Prime Minister; a Muslim plot in the UK to blow up the Houses of Parliament; a Muslim plot in Uganda to assassinate the Queen of England; an actual Muslim attempt at an armed takeover of the Parliament of Trinidad and Tobago; an armed Muslim attempt to attack the Indian Parliament. Those are the ones I can think of, off the top of my head, without even trawling the jihadwatch archives.
Anybody see a pattern? Classical Islam seems to produce an awful lot of people who think like assassins - 1. identify current centre of power/ head of state 2. Kill!
Deport Ben Brika on a one-way ticket. If it was up to me, if the plotters are convicted (I HOPE THE JURY HAVE WATCHED 'FITNA'!), all those jihadis, born in Australia or not, would be stripped of their citizenship and on their way to a randomly chosen Islamic 'paradise'; along with the imams of whatever mosque they were associated with. In the 18th century traitors and the seditious were - if not executed - exiled. Sounds like a plan.
MBR- you speak of the likely 'wakeup' effect of an attack on an AFL game.
Don't forget our OTHER national passion - the cricket. If the jihadis are stupid enough to attack, or be caught plotting to attack, our sacred cricket grounds - the MCG or SCG, say, or even 'the Gabba' -that, too, might shock Australians out of any pre-dhimmi state.
Off topic somewhat but what the heck.
"AFL or "Aussie Rules" is not actually soccer, but a weird Melbourne-based game using a small oval ball that has some similarities to Gaelic Football." - posted by MBR
MBR is correct that AFL (Australian Rules Football) isn't soccer. However that's where his post's accurate comments about AFL ends.
To call it a weird Melbourne-based game is incorrect. The AFL has teams from every state in Australia except Tasmania (but it still has a big following there). Australian Rules football is the major winter sport in all states except for Queensland and New South Wales, and that's only because the Rugby administrators didn't follow through in the early 20th Century on their plan to switch to aussie rules.
While the AFL (Australian Football League) was originally created from the VFL (Victorian Football League), it also includes teams from the other mainland states and the AFL Hall of Fame now includes football stars from the leagues of the other states. Reviewing the winners of the Premiership over the past 20 years reveals very few Melbourne based clubs have won.
AFL is of course the best football game in the world and only lacks international fame because Australia doesn't want to rub that into every other country's nose.
After all, when we win proportionally more medals per head of populaion at Olympics than almost any other country, we'll we have to leave some crumbs of sporting honour for the rest of you guys.
Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi!
Of course, MBR's other comments about any attack on an AFL match being enough to awaken the sleepers from their dhimmi stupor are right on the money.
terrorists (with a Muslim background) planning mass death ...no surprise here.
and what kind of jobs did they have? If they immigrated to Australia , what did they enter on the immigration papers as to the reason for immigration? Who approved the immigration? Were they attending a mosque , if so, which one?...
ok world, time to tighten up..
"...Lebanese Muslims, and no-hopers with little intelligence or aptitude..." (above)
Perhaps, but not entirely. Some years ago, having to go out to the Sydney suburb of Lakemba, a Lebanese Muslim stronghold, I was enlightened by stories from the Lebanese Christian cab driver, unguarded stories he had heard coming from the back seat. One involved the common occurence of letters of concern posted home from the school, which the non-English-speaking parents passed on to their errant sons for translation.
The sons would reassure parents the letters were wholly about how brilliantly they were doing at their studies, how well behaved they were, and then would write appropriate replies back to the school in the name of their parents, keeping home and school very much apart.
The driver reminded me, however, that a high proportion of these kids and their parents were in effect war refugees, psychologically and socially very damaged individuals fleeing from a long and murderous civil war.
Add that onto a "Religion of Peace" jihad mindset and the future becomes rather less than reassuring.
Note how the AP avoids any mention of an Islamic connection until the very last sentence of the article, and even then says they are "reportedly" Moslem, as though there was some question about this. At least "jihad" is mentioned earlier in the article.
As MBR and veil1416 mention, Australian Rules Football is not soccer. Here is a link describing the sport from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_rules_football and here is a link to the AFL's official website http://www.afl.com.au/ and here is a link to the official site of my favorite team, the Saint Kilda Saints. I may be a New Yorker born and bred, but I think Aussie Rules may be the most exciting sport in the world.
Many apologies to our Australian readers-- I had honestly never heard of Australian rules football. I simply assumed a non-U.S. reference to football would be soccer.
Won't happen again.
Marisol Seibold
Sports-impaired Jihad Watch News Editor
Relax, Marisol. There are actually four codes of football in Australia: Rugby League (for the working class), Rugby Union (the upper class), Australian Rules (the Melbourne class) [also known as aerial ping-pong], and Soccer (for anyone not man enough to play a real game).
[Says the working class hero as he bolts out of this forum...]
Oh, before I go, I'm sure all Australians who are sports fans (and that means almost all of us) appreciate the work that you and the JW team are doing. Thank you. Gotta go.
They should invite in some moderate terrorists to control these immoderate maniacs.
Works for Britain.
Another illustration of the COST of moslem "immigration".
THEY HAVE 51 najislam countries!!!
They can STAY the HELL in their self-made HELLHOLES!!
Ah... Footy... such warm memories, especially when the Adelaide Crows won 2 years in a row...
There are three, maybe four, even as many as five Aussie pastimes jihadists has better stay clear from.
1. Footy, otherwise known as Aussie Rules. Rugby, well, some.
2. Cricket.
3. BBQ. Trust me on this. I guess I should include pub crawling in this too, but generally, do NOT get between an Ocker and his beer, nor his ribs, nor his steak. Now bung another snag on the burner, sheila! And get me another Fosters while you're at it!
4. The beach culture. Slip, slop and slap is the least of it. The burqini (burkini?), after all, is the brainchild of a Muslim Australian trying to enable her fellow muslimahs to assimilate. In a sense.
Lord, I miss the place. And the food. The nudist beaches, not so much. Aussies are large folks, mostly, and the ladies are fairly well-built.
gkong3
you're right about point #4 - the beach.
Don't forget - the Cronulla riots, some years back, featured the following chain of events.
First: Muslim bully boys verbally (and physically?) harassed Australian bikini girls on and near beach for being 'uncovered meat'. Aussie boys started to get angry.
Second: Surf Lifesaver/s - who besides being there to fish folks out of the water (bless them! my husband and teenage son both got caught in a rip last summer - Life Savers to the rescue at once and no harm done) also informally keep order on the beach - reprimanded Muslim bullyboys.
Third: Muslim bullyboys beat up lifesaver/s. Now - Surf Lifesavers are a Sacred Institution in Australia. They are all volunteers and their organisation has been active for 100 years, saving lives. Thus the Muslim assault was UNFORGIVABLE.
Fourth: As a result of Muslim attack on Lifesaver/s Australians get REALLY mad and start chasing and beating up Muslim thugs wherever they can find them.
Fifth: Muslim thugs call up reinforcements and battle is joined - attack churches, etc.
Sixth: Police wade in and mostly arrest non-Muslim Aussies rather than Muslims. PC MSM blames Aussies for racism while Muslims play the victim card.
Anyway: it all started at the beach.
dear DDArmy;
Call me Greg, most people do.
And points 1-3? I'm pretty sure I got 'em more or less right, too... ;) I mean, if someone blew up the MCG (heck, even the WACA), there'll be blood to pay, won't you say?
The thing about Australia jihadists had better remember is this - excepting South Australia, most of the early colonies were convict colonies. Now, I don't know about you, but if I got caught stealing bread, and instead of dumping me in some dank gaol cell for fifteen months or so, you ship me thousands of miles away to some forsaken desert in the middle of nowhere, you better believe that I'd have an attitude readjustment.
Some of those readjustments have been passed on culturally, so in general Australians are:
1. Individualistic. That is to say, they stand up for themselves and brook no nonsense.
2. Pro-American. Aussies used to be more pro-Brit, but WW2 and Charlie pretty much beat that out of them.
3. Underdog-friendly. Probably remembering that their forebears were underdogs, Aussies really like 'poor/disabled/somehow unfortunate man makes good' stories.
4. Friendly. Curious, to some degree, too. You have Aussie backpackers all over the world, so they're quite open-minded folk.
5. Just a wee bit touchy over the whole convict colony business. It was centuries ago by now, and why should Aussies be judged on what ol' Great-Grandpa did in Merrie Olde Englande?
6. Contrarily, somewhat proud of larrakins. Somewhat akin to Appalachian rednecks here, I guess.
Now, the impact of the dole and Medicare and Labour Party policies change the dynamics somewhat, but by and large an Australian is a reliable ally and a good friend. But definitely a badass enemy. Like I said, Aussies are big folk. Must be all the bacon, beetroot and eggs.
greg/ gkong3
sorry! I didn't actually mean to imply you were wrong about your points 1-3...in fact I think you're right on the money.
All I meant to do was to show that #4 had already happened.
On reflection, I could add one more major cultural institution and associated sacred site to the list of Australian Things Muslims Had Better Not Attack If They Know What's Good For Them, but I won't go into details. Clue: if you've been to Canberra you'll know exactly which place there is most significant to Australians and it isn't the Wombat Hole (new Parliament House). Second clue: a certain date in late April.
As for being bad enemies...Kokoda Trail. Rats of Tobruk.
General Chauvel in the WWI campaign in the Middle East was asked by a British general - 'what do you think of the Land of the Forty Thieves?' He is said to have replied, 'what do you mean? I've got forty thousand' (thus he affectionately described his Australian troops).
Two excellent books on Aussie soldiers at war: Ion L Idriess, 'The Desert Column', based on his diaries from the campaigns in Gallipoli and 'Palestine'; and a second book 'Horrie the Wog Dog' that Idriess based on the diaries of an Aussie soldier from WWII who fought in Crete, Greece, and North Africa.
Greg and Dumbledoresarmy: About Australians as fighters, the word one would take is that of a powerful enemy. Field-Marshal Erwin Rommel had experience of many different armies - he commanded German and Italian troops and fought Britons, Poles, Australians, New Zealanders, Americans and Frenchmen. He rated the NZ troops the absolute best he ever had to face, the perfect mix of discipline and individual initiative; next to them, he said, the Australians - splendid fighters, individually, but it must be Hell to command an army of them. (Incidentally, he also had a high opinion of his own Italian troops - good comrades and willing soldiers, let down only by a poor officer class. Can't argue with that.)
Well, keep cuddling the pathological, sadistic murderer, the jihad volunteer David Hicks who bragged about butchering Serb civilians, Aussies. His "Islamic brothers" will butcher you even worse than they did in Bali, killing 88 of your fellow Aussies on Oct. 12, 2002.
Ruslan Tokhchukov, EnragedSince1999.
to Ruslan
most of us are not 'cuddling' Mr Hicks - we're disgusted with him.
to Paolo - I liked your quote (presumably from something Rommel wrote down/ said before his death?).
New Zealanders are a combination of Scots and Maori. Maori were incredibly warlike. Scots + Maori = lethal mixture.
Of course, in a lot of the fights we've been in, Australians and New Zealanders have gone into battle together - ANZAC = Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.
As regards Australians as fighters - greg/gkong3, Paolo - have you heard of the Battle of Long Tan in 1966?
180 ANZACs (a combined Australian and New Zealand force - 90 % Australian) held their own against 1500 - 2000 Viet Cong.
Here's a couple of links: not necessarily the best but giving what happened and the circumstances surrounding it -
http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/longtan/
http://www.awm.gov.au/atwar/vietnam.htm
"In August 1966 a company of 6RAR was engaged in one of Australia's heaviest actions of the war, near Long Tan. After three hours of fierce fighting, during which it seemed the Australian forces would be overrun by the enemy's greater numbers, the Viet Cong withdrew, leaving behind 245 dead and carrying away many more casualties. Eighteen Australians were killed and 24 wounded. The battle eliminated communist dominance over the province."
1966 wasn't that long ago.
To Muslim eyes we fun-loving beer and wine-drinking bikini-wearing gambling Australians may look decadent, weak, a pushover.
But every April a great many of us rise at dawn and remember, soberly, coldly, deliberately, every battle we ever fought, including those we lost as well as those we won.
All we have to do is wake up and realize that we're not fighting 'terror' - we're in the War of Self-Defence Against the Jihad. If enough of us 'get' what Serge Trifkovic, Robert Spencer, Bat Yeor and Andrew Bostom, say, are warning us about, Australians will do their part to help make the world safe for Infidels.