Imams' move against on-campus radicalisation is well worth supporting
Islamic leaders deserve recognition and support for their move to send moderate preachers to universities to pre-empt radicalisation. The threat is real and has chilling precedent. Security agencies have learnt Islamic State is particularly targeting Australians, including students. The insidious methodology is well-established: radicals approach potential recruits at universities and mosques and via the internet before shepherding them into chat rooms.
Some of the members – including the ringleader – of the Islamist extremist group that perpetrated the September 11, 2001, US attacks were recruited while at university.
The Victorian Board of Imans’ decision comes as evidence emerges that a suspected organiser of the Easter Sunday attacks by Islamist extremists in Sri Lanka, which killed 253 and injured twice that number, studied at the same time at the same Melbourne university as two other terrorists. Sri Lanka has more than three times the Muslim population of Australia, yet Australia is believed to have produced three times as many radicalised Islamists as Sri Lanka.
‘‘Campuses are the place they [radical preachers] can find a base for their hate ... particularly among international students who are not familiar with the positive relationship Australian Muslims have with other Australians,’’ the board’s deputy secretary, Alaa el Zokm, states. Unqualified firebrand preachers are, he says, propagating ‘‘hate against other religions’’.
The powerful imams’ group is linking experienced, moderate imams with campus mosques. They have already been working with Islamic groups at the University of Melbourne and La Trobe University and are set to connect with groups at Swinburne.
The imams’ pro-active stance is in the national interest. It is imperative that Islamic leaders, community leaders, police and intelligence agencies co-ordinate closely to identify and remove risks. But equally crucial is the role of individuals. The security of the many is, above all, the civic responsibility of the many.
Any reasonable suspicions should immediately be reported. This applies far beyond Australia’s 600,000 Muslims (2.6 per cent of the population).
As events in Australia, New Zealand, the US, the UK and elsewhere demonstrate, much terrorism is domestic, committed by not only religious extremists, but political zealots, racist organisations and white-supremacists.
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the Australian government, which became one of three to commit troops to the US-led ‘‘coalition of the willing’’ that invaded Iraq in 2003, urged Australians to be ‘‘alert but not alarmed’’ about terrorism.
Given only a handful of people have died in Australia from terrorist attacks, that advice appears to have been prescient. But it is perhaps more apt now than ever.
All of us, not just religious authorities, need to lead on this by remaining vigilant – while continuing to relish personal liberty and responsibility in an open and prosperous market democracy with religious freedom.