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In my article earlier in the week I discussed the teenage terrorist that murdered a NSW police employee in Parramatta last week.
It goes without saying that there has been a lot of talk about a number of issues since. How does a 15-year-old become so radicalized? How does a 15-year-old obtain a gun? How did he slip under the radar that George Brandis and Tony Abbott have been assuring us is so powerful? For all their talk a child managed to beat the all-powerful radar.
All of these are valid questions and certainly need to be explored in-depth. However they need to be explored in a constructive manner that is respectful to all concerned if they are to serve any purpose at all.
This is why I am concerned with the tone of some media organisations when dealing with the head of Parramatta’s Mosque, Neil El-Kadomi.
Lets be upfront, a Mosque or Islamic prayer hall is a faith-based enterprise, just as a church, temple, or if your Hill$ong an auditorium is. Faith based institutions do not have a tendency to knock back those who come to worship, nor do they tend to make judgments of them.
The Vatican was even quite content dealing with the Nazi hierarchy while they were gassing Jews by the million.
Hitler having a jovial meeting with a Vatican official as Jews are being rounded up massacred
Neil El-Kadomi stated when interviewed that if he knew of any radicalized Muslims attending his Mosque he would report them to police. Some may shrug that off, but that really is quite a statement.
In that statement he is in effect saying that any act of terror is not only an attack on society at large, but is also an attack on the Islamic faith. For this reason he will not tolerate it, and rightly so.
We may have no choice but to take him at his word, but why shouldn’t we? He has co-operated with police every step of the way, he has assisted police in identifying the killer and helping find the killers family despite not knowing him.
Some media and news agencies however appear to be seeking to make an easy target of El-Kadomi and take the predictable path of saying he has provided a meeting place for extremists.
It is worth noting that El-Kadomi has an “Order Of Australia” and is dedicated to his community. As the picture of him and his family below shows they hardly have the appearance of extremists and neither of his daughters have any Islamic headwear at all.
If we compare the attitude of El-Kadomi to that of a Christian church, there is a distinct difference in attitude. While the El-Kadomi’s Mosque would report a radical to police, a Christian Church would welcome him with open arms, they’d even take money from him if possible. If it were Hill$song they’d no doubt try to set up a direct debt system for ongoing donations. If it were a Catholic Church, even if they confessed to murder, they’d be told to say some Hail Mary’s and them be welcome to sit on the front pew.
While a Mosque seeks to be open with police and the press about suspicions, even a Royal Commission finds it hard to get past the lies and attempts to cover up the sexual abuse of children on an industrial scale by the clergy.
As I mentioned in my last post there has been talk around the school that the teenage terrorist attended as there have been other students from there under the eye of detectives for their radical views.
So what sort of religious message are they picking up at the school?
In NSW a shady deal was contrived out of desperation between the religious extremist Fred Nile and his Christian Democrat Party and a Coalition needing every vote it could muster in the upper house. That deal saw Nile get his attempt to religiously indoctrinate kids back into schools with ethics classes turfed out and scripture reintroduced.
Could the shooting be a result of anger at attempts to religiously indoctrinate at school? The last place the young terrorist went before shooting Curtis Cheng was the school, not the Mosque as many are reporting.
Whatever it was that triggered this barbaric act by a teenager, one thing is certain, we need to find the real reasons for his extremism, not the easy scapegoats.
I note that as I as about to publish this that Fairfax have published a great article by Eryk Bagshaw on El-Kadomi, and his plans for tough words to those attending his Mosque.
Well done Eryk, I hope others follow your lead.
He’s your problem now Malcolm.
Hey Wixxy,showing a level head when many are losing theirs O_o
I tried to talk down a group last night from joining in a counter protest telling them to leave it between the RWNJ`s and the police.
I also said if I was a Muslim that I`d go fishing this weekend because hey the Reclaim Australia/Australian Patriots etc are hate groups intolerant of others :/
http://www.photoonica.com/media-temp/XhbGju7-0.jpg
He was not a terrorist, you fall into the same racist hyperbole as all the others. And one man at one mosque does not speak for anyone but himself.
Where you are right sort of is that Christian churches protect murderers, pedophiles, rapists and other monsters or try to make money out of them.
If this child was a terrorist so was the islander mother who murdered 8 children, the man who murdered his entire family, the dozens of men who have murdered their wives and so on.
Because there is no hope in hell this child would join IS to kill fellow Kurds.
Good post Peter.
Actually I’m surprised that more young people don’t want to go off to Syria. The public discussion is currently centered on the question of why this happens, and they look to parents, mosque, community, peer group, the internet to find the source of the ‘radicalisation’ or failure to keep the young person on the straight and narrow. That’s fine, they probably all play a role.
But how about looking beyond those immediate possible influences. How would a young Muslim man feel listening to Pauline Hanson ranting about how Muslims will never fit in to our society, watching a Reclaim Australia rally, reading about Gert Wilders and knowing he has a following in Australia big or rich enough to finance his speaking tour here? How would he feel to see well-attended protests whenever there is a proposal to build a mosque? Or how does he react when, as is reported from time to time, his female friends or relatives have their head-scarf ripped off or are even spat on. And then there’s the unmentionable, or at least I’m not hearing or reading about it: What happens when he reads about the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ and the mess that coalition has made and continues to make of his co-religionists in the Middle East. If he feels excluded from Australian society, and if he has empathy with people from his or his parents’ country of origin who are being killed, maimed, or displaced, by wars in which Australia participates, who can blame him?
It seems to me there’s a lot of blame to go around, but it’s broader than just the young person’s immediate circle.
This Is a great post, I also think the letter above by leftkearninglufter speaks my concerns and thoughts also.