Once again a convert to Islam gets the idea that his new religion commands treason and violence against unbelievers. Authorities, however, universally remain indifferent to this phenomenon.
“Neil Prakash: The confused Buddhist who became a top IS jihadist,” BBC, November 25, 2016:
Sometime in the middle of 2012, a friend of Neil Prakash asked the young Australian if he was religious.
“I’m a Buddhist,” said Prakash, “but I believe there is a god, a deity”.
“You are not a Buddhist then,” replied the friend, “you are confused”.
The simple exchange marked the beginning of a journey, literal and spiritual, that took Prakash from his home town of Melbourne to the heartland of the so-called Islamic State.
Neil Prakash, Buddhist and sometime wannabe rapper, became Abu Khaled al-Cambodi, dedicated jihadist and top IS recruiter.
Now, in the latest twist in that journey, Prakash is reportedly in custody – and back from the dead. In May 2015, US officials announced that he had been killed in an air strike in the Iraqi city of Mosul, but according to a report in the New York Times he was arrested recently in an unidentified Middle Eastern country.
Australian media reports say that Prakash handed himself in to Turkish authorities several weeks ago.
‘Land of jihad’Born in Australia to a Fijian father and Cambodian mother, Prakash travelled to Cambodia for the first time in 2012, at the age of 20. It was a confusing trip for a young man already uncertain in his faith. What he saw of Buddhism in Cambodia “didn’t make any sense”, he said later, in a slick IS recruitment video.
Prakash returned to Australia, tempted to convert to Islam but knowing little about the religion. He began spending time with a group of Muslim friends and learning about Islam. He decided he wanted to recite the Shahada – a pledge of faith in Allah.
He made the pledge at a local leisure centre used for Friday prayers. It was, he said in the IS video, “one of the best feelings I had in my life”. The trip resulted in a chance meeting with Harun Mehicevic, an alleged extremist from Bosnia who had settled in Melbourne.
Prakash began spending time at Melbourne’s Al Furqan Islamic Centre and bookshop, where he was radicalised by Mehicevic and others, but for more than a year after his conversion he did not substantially change his way of life. He grew frustrated and ashamed.
“I thought to myself, what am I doing? I have a job, I have an income, a car, a house, what sacrifice have I made? What have I done for the sake of Allah? All those nights I slept in comfort, I thought about the people overseas in the Muslim lands that are suffering.”
So Prakash began to dedicate himself unsparingly to Islam. He sold his possessions and prepared to undertake the Hijrah – a journey overseas for the cause of Islam. In 2013, he travelled via Malaysia to Raqqa in Syria, the de-facto capital of IS and, in his own words, “the land of jihad”.
‘Most dangerous Australian’Once in Syria, Prakash was invited by an IS fighter to “come to Dawlah”, forcing the young convert to confess he did not know the Arabic name for the group.
“I was thinking ‘Dawlah? What’s Dawlah?’ … I only knew the English name, Islamic State.”
But IS brought him into the fold. “There are a lot of brothers from Australia that want to meet you,” the fighter said.
Prakash has since been linked to several terror plots on his home soil, including a knife attack against two policemen by 18-year-old Numan Haider, who was shot dead, and a foiled plan to attack police on Anzac Day, Australia’s war memorial day.
In April 2015, a 12-minute IS propaganda video surfaced in which Prakash praises Haider for carrying out an attack. He also tells the story of his conversion and, with increasing fervour, calls on others to follow him.
“If anyone was to tell me three years ago I would be living under Sharia, among Muslims, I would tell them they were crazy,” he says. “But look at the mercy of Allah, look what he has planned for me, and he can plan this for you too. All you have to do is believe!”…

Michael Laudahn says
What an effing mutant
Allan says
On the contrary, his egocentric outlawry is boringly common. See, for example, the remarks about Neil having been a “sometime wannabe rapper” and believing in “a god, a deity”.
Olo says
islam is a very convenient ideology for all kinds of savages, rapists, murderers, thieves, adulterers and paedphiles.All these are very finely and nicely promoted in kuran and justified by it.kuran, which is a lousy and full of contradictions dull book written by half-illiterate thug, trying to copy various extracts from the Bible here and there
mortimer says
164 jihad verses in the Koran that mandate warfare against disbelievers… what could go wrong?
PRCS says
“He began spending time with a group of Muslim friends and learning about Islam.”
Learning not so called “radical” Islam, rather “the real deal”.
Angemon says
Like the Yazidi, who are being slaughtered and used as sex slaves? Of course not – the people “suffering in muslim lands” are the islamic state members who are killing Yazidis and using them as sex slaves. Nice piece of s*** religion you got there, mate…
Gary says
Not to worry Angemon,
He’ll give account for his actions: “The good man brings out of his good treasure what is good; and the evil man brings out of his evil treasure what is evil. “But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment. “For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” (Matthew 12: 35-37)
And despite what muslims,”believe”, The Word of God, (The Bible), is not “corrupted.
SAHANI says
SAUDIS ARE GREAT THEIR WAR MANUAL A PERFET DOCUMENT TO CONVERT WEAK MINDS INTO A ISLAMIC SOLDIER TO DESTROY OUR WORLD FOR THEM .THEY ENJOY, CONVERTS DIES.
David says
Another “Confused Muslim?”
I don’t think so…….
Once Satan or a Demon has begun to influence their thoughts, nothing can be done to save them from……..?
There is no “Radical Islam”. There is only the original, Demonic, Satanic version!
Anything else, well it’s just not ISLAM at all.
Allan says
Mr. Gotama’s religion, or what remains of it, is not so difficult to understand if you hold fast to one of its most fascinating features, the rejection of BOTH personal immortality and personal annihilation. Theists and secularists, alike, tend to gag on this rejection, but it becomes easier to grasp if one is familiar with contemporary philosophy of space and time, which usually rejects presentism and endurantism in favor of four-dimensionalism and perdurantism. Wikipedia has entries for these terms plus, I believe, for the relativity of time and the relativity of simultaneity. (See also the entry for A-series and B-series.)
It’s probable that the alleged Buddhist was confused also by Gotama’s extreme, hard-core hostility to secularism and sensual indulgence. This hostility is evident in the very beginning of Gotama’s first discourse, the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, and the religion, from the renunciant’s perspective, is preoccupied with overcoming animalistic cravings. Suffice it to say that “Buddhism” was not designed to appeal to the lower classes of humanity.
Dennis says
I think he was a Buddhist because mom was from Cambodia. He most likely never practiced meditation , probably never took the Pansila, and never studied the texts. It would have been too difficult for his ( lack of) intelligence.
Allan says
Yes, it’s almost certain that his mother’s ethnicity motivated his interest in “Buddhism”, and being a 20 y.o. wannabe rapper he likely had very little patience for study and meditation. I wonder, however, what he encountered in Cambodia. More than 90% of the people there are supposed to follow Theravada, but the Khmer Rouge may have been quite hard on the bhikkhus and bhikkhunis given the fanatical physicalism of Marxism and leftists’ hard headed hatred of tradition. I would expect that the best Theravadin scholars were forced to do agricultural or other hard labor until they dropped dead, and disciplined monastics with charisma would have been counted as a great threat to the KR, then eliminated. So maybe when Neil showed up one day in Cambodia he found the appearances of Gotama’s religion but not so much of the substance and depth.
katherine says
The name Prakash clearly indicates he’s an Indian,while the belief in ‘a deity’ is related to Hinduism. He’s neither Fijian, Cambodian nor Buddhist : just a confused Aussie.
Damocles Junior says
It really annoys me when the media describe people such as this as Australian, unfortunately this is his place of birth, but Australian, no, never. (He could be if he wanted to be, but that is another issue.)
Likewise Fijian, not really, just another descendant of the Indian workers who were sent to Fiji to work the sugar plantations. The Indians have subsequently out bred the ethnic Fijians leading to all sorts of problems in those otherwise beautiful islands.
Cambodian mother, oh the joys of multiculturalism. And note, the Indians in Fiji all want to come to Oz because they are persecuted in Fiji and blame the UK & Oz sugar industry for their current predicament.
Second class citizen and possibly confused or angry young man, yes, fertile material for Jihad recruitment.
Latest news suggest that Australia, Israel and the USA all want him on terror charges.
Robert_k says
“All you have to do is believe”
Sounds like the theme song to
“The Prince of
Egypt” – the Islamic version.
Eric Jones says
This guy Prakash is wack. He says’ look what allah’s mercy has done for him, all you have to do is’; * be a masochist*.
As someone who has practised Buddhism in the past; I find it hard to believe that any Buddhist could find anything attractive in islam.
Eric
FYI says
He should have stayed a Buddhist.
It’s like those stupid Christians who convert to islam in the tragically mistaken belief that it is actually a religion of peace.
Converting to islam allows one to commit murder,to “slay the unbelievers” which of course is absolutely prohibited in the Judeo-Christian Commandments.
Converting to islam, if you are a Christian ,will not work in .terms of salvation because
the rejection of Christ as Savior will result in the loss of your soul.
An ex-Christian convert to islam is like an idiot who runs the WRONG WAY in a marathon and somehow,amazingly,he expects a medal for it.
You win no prize if you go the wrong way.
Jerry says
My Shahada:
La Allah Illah YAHWE ue Muhammas Rassoul Shaitan
(There is no God but YAHWE and Muhammas is Satan’s Messenger).
Jerry says
Typo correction: Muhammad – Not Muhammas (rusty touch typing).
BTW: YAHWE (in the original Hebrew יהוה is more a description than a
name derived from a combination of the words translated as Was היה
Is הוה and Will be יהיה )
Carolyne says
Why do the Muslims, even the converts, always look so dirty? Is it in the Koran that they shouldn’t bathe?
Aussie Infidel says
Robert_K, “All you have to do is believe.” That’s the problem with religion. All religion is based on faith – and faith is simply belief without proof – no matter how sophisticated its tenets and doctrine. For anyone with a scientific background, that is anathema. Science is based on the most rigorous proofs possible. Without evidence to support them, hypotheses are discarded in favor of those with more substantial evidence – and never make it to the status of a ‘Theory’. On the other hand, religions offer no proof and are based simply on the text in their ancient holy books, which are considered to be the ‘word of God’. But since they are all different, they can’t all be right. And most likely are all wrong!
Nevertheless, ‘freedom of religion’ – no matter how crazy it is – is a basic human right, provided it is not harming others. But therein lies the problem. While most other religions are relatively benign, Islam clearly does great harm to Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Its scriptures command believers to wage ‘holy war’ against kafirs. And while many ‘moderate’ Muslims do not take up arms ‘in the cause of Allah’, some (a few percent) like this “confused young man” who is already “uncertain in his faith”, are incited to commit these acts of violence. The fact that Prakash was “tempted to convert to Islam” but knew “little about the religion”, indicates just how ignorant and gullible he was. However, I would also assert that people like Prakash, who embrace the doctrine of Jihad and are willing to kill unbelievers – simply because they are not Muslims – have not only been deeply indoctrinated with this vile ideology, but must also be psychopaths. Only someone who is devoid of empathy and remorse could do such wicked things.
Prakash also met “Harun Mehicevic, an alleged extremist from Bosnia who had settled in Melbourne.” Unbelievably, the Keating Labor government also allowed Muslim ‘refugees’ from the Balkans to settle here in the 1990s, as a result of the conflict in Yugoslavia. As one leftist MP remarked, “We can’t discriminate on the grounds of religion!” I replied, “Not even when they are commanded to kill us?” And his response was, “That’s a racist attitude!” To which I replied, “No, it’s in the Quran – read it and learn!” May the gods save us from ‘useful idiots’!
Kenneth T Tellis says
This Buddhist who veered off from the road to Nirvana and was led to Makka, Arabia and a false prophet who mislead him into the darkest recesses of savagery and murder. that mankind will ever know or indeed learn from. Hatred and bigotry are the weapons of Islam and a troubled mind of a pseudo prophet.