Aftab Malik spent a month in Lakemba, “Australia’s unofficial Muslim capital.” He came away warning that the atmosphere in Lakemba “reminded him of London prior to the 7/7 terror bombings of 2005.” He says that the tensions have been “fuelled by the photos and videos of thousands of gruesome deaths in the West Bank, Gaza, Syria and Iraq viewed daily, unedited, on smartphones” — in other words, the budding jihadis are being “radicalized” by jihad grievance propaganda and resistance to jihad aggression and terror. They are apparently further “radicalized” by “the Islamophobes and their vitriolic diatribes against Islam and Muslims,” as well as by “legislation that, at worst, singles them out as potential terrorists, or moulds them as a suspect community at best.” In other words, they’re also being “radicalized” by writers who note how Islamic jihadis use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and supremacism, and by efforts to stop jihad terror plotting in Muslim communities.
So according to UN high-level expert Aftab Malik, in order to prevent young Muslims from the West from joining the Islamic State, Western non-Muslims must not talk about the jihad threat and its sources in Islamic texts and teachings; Western governments must cease counter-terror efforts at home; and all resistance to the “Palestinian” jihad and the Islamic State must cease. Then all will be quiet — and Aftab Malik is absolutely right, it will, because the free world will have surrendered and jihadis will have a free hand.
“Young misfits fall prey to pull of jihad,” by Trent Dalton and Greg Bearup, The Australian, September 13, 2014:
…Last year, The Weekend Australian sat down with British Muslim Aftab Malik, a visiting member of the UN Alliance of Civilisations, a group of “high-level experts” formed by former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan in 2005 to “counter the forces that fuel polarisation and extremism”.
Malik had spent a month embedded in Lakemba — Australia’s unofficial Muslim capital — studying young Muslim Australians. He warned of a “sense of uneasiness” in Australia that reminded him of London prior to the 7/7 terror bombings of 2005.
Those simmering tensions he felt in Lakemba a year ago are now at boiling point — fuelled by the photos and videos of thousands of gruesome deaths in the West Bank, Gaza, Syria and Iraq viewed daily, unedited, on smartphones.
Australia, Malik said, needed serious discussions on Muslim issues that reached beyond Halal meat and hijabs. “Unfortunately, for British Muslims it took the 7/7 terror attacks for us to have that discussion,” he said. “You need to pre-empt this. Don’t wait till something tragic happens.”
“Something like what?” we asked.
“Something tectonic,” he said.
Yesterday, Malik said Muslims in the West were “stuck between a rock and a hard place”. “We have to address the Islamophobes and their vitriolic diatribes against Islam and Muslims,” he says.
“In Sydney, we face a young community struggling between legislation that, at worst, singles them out as potential terrorists, or moulds them as a suspect community at best.
“Rather than enfranchising the very community that would be the most potent weapon against a common enemy, the government appears to be alienating them.”
Zakaryah Raad is one Australian-born Muslim from Sydney’s southwest who latched on to a hardline, literal interpretation of the Koran. He had no time to grow into a moderate view of Islam.
How much time does it take, and why? If the peacefulness of Islam is so obvious to non-Muslims like Barack Obama, David Cameron, and John Kerry, why isn’t it obvious to a Muslim like Zakaryah Raad?