ISIS in our suburbs: This is why I am so concerned...!!!

Despite the fact that the police choppers are hovering over our heads in Western Sydney suburbs on daily basis for the last few months. And despite the “big mouth” politics exercised by our government and authorities about the “new approach and new actions” to curb radicalisation in the society. And despite the billions of dollars spent on or allocated to measures to fight against extremism and potential terrorist activities.

Despite all these, I had information during the last week about three community members in our neighbourhood disappeared from community, most likely travelled to fight in Syria (or Iraq). And I have information about more people disappeared from other suburbs, most likely we will hear about them killed in Syria, soon.

Not only this.

I have information that extremists had successfully infiltrated some of our security agencies, including police force.

And in previous article I explained how extremists had infiltrated our political system, which developed closed relations with our major (and minor) political parties.

So, it is clear that things are not moving in the right direction.

There are many reasons for this. Till now, no action was taken to limit extremists’ influence. Some of the millions of dollars allocated to be spent to counter radicalisation program were allocated to extreme groups who are the source of radicalisation. And terrorists are still called “freedom fighters” when they cut heads of Syrian soldiers or policemen.

It is very clear that our authorities have no plan. But we are deeply concerned because our lives are on line here.

When someone is disappeared from my neighbourhood. I contacted anti-terrorism agencies and passed the information. I expressed to them that I and my family are very concerned, taking into account that I was physically attacked several times, attacked verbally several times and received thousands of death threats, authorities should have understood my concerns. But no action was taken.

We were not contacted by any official. We were not given any assurance that the families of these disappeared extremists are not security threat to our neighbourhood. And when we asked about confirmation of the fate of these disappeared persons. No answer was received.

The continued flow of extremists to fight in Syria has one interpretation: ISIS has established itself in our suburbs. We know that extremists existed in our suburbs for the last few decades. But the new issue here is that the militant savage medieval terrorists have sleeping cells in our suburbs. Maybe your neighbour or maybe mine. Maybe your teacher at local TAFE. I suspect the owner of local convenience store. Who knows?

The authorities who suppose to know, either do not know or do not give a damn. They are busy talking tough to win votes. While local groups of extremists managed to build tens of mosques, musallas and “bookstores” to brainwash, recruit and collect funds. Millions of $s were either locally collected or brought from countries sponsoring terrorism (on the top of them is Saudi Arabia). All this happened under the eyes and noses of our authorities.

But our authorities are still confused: where did all this radicalisation come from?

To be fair, I saw our PM got angry, at some stage, because of this high radicalisation. He asked tough questions. He promised to take action. And he took important actions.

He invited all extremist leaders and held consultations of “how to deal with high radicalisation”. And after few rounds of intense consultations, the invited “leaders” reached an important conclusion: we do not have radicalisation in this country. All is government conspiracy to win election next year. And the vowed to boycott any future consultations. Government retaliated by bribing them with couple of millions of dollars to help fighting against the same radicalisation they helped to create.

So if radicalisation does not exist, who shot Ali Ibrahim? Who physically attacked me? Who sent threatening messages to all Shia local businesses? Who burned down Naji and Hariri chicken shops? Who stormed Lindt Cafe? Who is Jake Bilardi, Khaled Sharrouf, Mohamed Elomer? And why police choppers hovering over our heads day and night in the suburbs?

I was never highly concerned about radicalisation as I am now. When local doctor gone missing, most likely to fight with ISIS. When your next-door neighbour went missing for weeks, most likely to fight in Syria. And when your son is not safe at local school. When the only constant news item on all our channels is the news about Australians who escaped security measures to join medieval terrorist organisation. You should be highly concerned.

Most importantly, when your authorities are not taking the matter seriously. When these authorities ignore your safety, ignore your feeling; ignore to tell you what is really happening in your neighbourhood. When you feel that you are on your own fighting against local extremists/potential terrorists. All of us should be highly concerned.

After recent developments, we all should be both alert and alarmed.
Authorities need to take actions. The actions should not be limited to appointing terrorism minister or counter-terrorism coordinator. It should not be limited to distributing millions of dollars to extremist organisations to convince them to depart their radical preaching.

Actions should include iron-fist approach: close down centres and mosques that preach hate. Arrest local “imams of hate”. Close down websites and Facebook pages promoting hate. Clean up our “Islamic” schools from extremists. Shut down radio stations, TV channels and newspapers. And suffocate funding of extreme organisations. In addition to education campaign to restore harmony and peace.

Simply: stop talking and put your money where your mouth is and let us reclaim our suburbs from ISIS and other terrorists.

The risks of “Big mouths” democracy

Politicians and political analysts in Australia like to call Australian democracy (and Western democracy in general) as “participatory democracy”. The term wants to say that “if you participate in the processes, your voice will be heard. If you do not participate, you will be ignored”.

I will not try to discuss how deceptive this term is, as the democracy in real term should mean to listen and represent every citizen not only the ones who have certain capabilities and expertise. The term “participatory democracy” would indeed refute any claim of politicians to represent constituents, if they listen only to “active members” of the society.

So in reality, our democracy is democracy for “big mouths”. So if you keep whinging and making big lies loudly and publicly, they will listen to you. Even if you represent no one. And to silence you and win you to their side, they will give you some bribes in form of “grants and community funding”.

All this comes with big risks. Mostly opportunists will exercise this kind of democracy. This will mean that media and authorities will listen to the wrong people, reward wrong people and try to consult wrong people. This will result in resources being wasted and stories will be reported wrongly.

Let me give some examples.

Among Muslim communities, few extremists and few opportunists came forward for the last few decades and started to shout foul about Islamophobia and about “ignoring of Muslims’ interests and needs”. Consequently, government, opposition parties, security agencies, media and other authorities actively tried to appease these “big mouths” by engaging them and give them prominence they do not deserve and do not have in the communities.

For the last decades, the Lebanese Moslem Association was claiming day and night that they represent ALL Muslims. They were on the frontline demanding engaging its officials, as sign of engaging Muslims. And they were given a lot of prominence they do not deserve and have no right to claim.

From its name, Lebanese Moslem Association should not claim to represent Non-Lebanese Moslems (who are the overwhelming majority of Muslims). It also cannot represent Non-Sunni Lebanese (many indications point to the fact that LMA does not recognise non-Sunnis to be Muslims at all). So, if we exclude Non-Lebanese Sunnis, and Non-Sunni Lebanese, who does the LMA really represent?

So what are the risks with this “big-mouth” democracy?

Lebanese Moslem Association was representing extreme version of Islam in the last 2 or 3 decades. By claiming to represent ALL Muslims, it is very easy for the racists and Islamophobes to step up their Anti-Muslim campaigns by saying “Listen to the Muslims’ representatives what they say about this and that”.

Also, by authorities accepting that LMA represents Muslims in this country, they will consult only them and engage with them and so claim later that “everything is ok, we listened to Muslims and we have acted”.

This is what was happening in this country for the last few decades. Few fake organisations who are mainly follow and adopt extreme version of Islam were on the frontline trying to represent the Muslims. And this was one of the main reasons we have currently high radicalisation and high Islamophobia.

Some can argue that “we understand the argument about LMA and “big mouth democracy” causing high Islamophobia, but how they caused high radicalisation?”

The answer is very simple. Imagine that ordinary Muslim is hearing day after day from media and authorities that LMA and other extreme organisation represent Islam and Muslims. And at the same time, he/she is listening during Friday ceremonies and media speeches by LMA (and other extreme groups) representatives vending all kinds of extreme preaching and messages? Of course they will start to believe that this is the real Islam. So the brainwashing and recruitment will be easier.

When an ordinary Muslim hears from our authorities and media that LMA represents ALL Muslims. And LMA confirmed this lies. Then listens to the LMA religious spokesperson’s fatwa against saying “Merry Christmas” to Christians. Would not he start to believe that this is the real Islam?

And what did the government do to discipline these extremist groups?

After all extreme activities by LMA, government granted the organisation more than $2,750,000.00 to spread “harmony in the society” and to “empower marginalised religious and ethnic groups”.

Some of the tax-payers money was spent on broadcasting lectures of extremists and terrorists which lead to brainwash more Muslims and urge them to join terrorist groups like Al Qaeda.

Then our authorities did not stop on this. As LMA could have successfully deceived ALL political parties and authorities that they represent ALL Muslims in this country, governments started to compete who will grant LMA with more money (public bribes in the name of public funding for community projects) to win the Muslims votes that LMA supposedly controls.

Since mid 2011 until mid 2014, LMA was active in brainwashing Muslim youths under the banner of “supporting Syrian revolution”. Every Friday prayer ceremony will be focussed on Syrian “revolution” and the needs for community members to do all they can to support the “mujahedeen” (we discovered later that these mujahedeen are in fact AL Qaeda and ISIS terrorists). LMA was very active in supporting activities and fundraising to Syrian “revolution”. LMA was active in organising “tributes for fallen mujahideen (including killed terrorist Mustapha AL Majzoub)”.

With this track history of participating in brainwashing our youth, recently we learnt that the government has granted LMA money to “Share Humanity” as part of government’s “de-radicalisation plan”. What kind of humanity they can share by issuing fatwa against Christmas, paying respect and tribute to killed terrorists and in broadcasting lectures of extremists and terrorists?

I am shocked. And I am sure many of you are shocked too. But others are not only shocked. They used this to prove that ALL Muslims support terrorism.

What makes things worse is that our authorities actually support some part of “big mouth” democracy, but they do not support other parts.

When many of community members exercised their right to participate in “big mouth” democracy, the authorities were quick to ask them to keep silent. When early in 2012 some Muslims tried to say “not in our name” in their opposition to the so-called Syrian revolution, authorities and media either ignored the attacks on them or directly asked them to be silent for their “safety”.

So, it seems that the best description of our democracy is “friendly big mouths democracy”.

By the way, I need to mention here that after the death of prophet Mohamed, Muslims were never united but by sword with rivers of blood. How could anyone believe that Samier Danden and his LMA have more convincing power to unite ALL Muslims, than all Muslim leaders had in the last 15 centuries?

Not in my name. Not as Muslim. And not as Australian.

It is our job to recover our hijacked democracy.

The deadly consequenes of leniency with child accused of terrorism

We are deeply worried about the signs of leniency shown by our legal system in dealing with dangerous terrorist only because he is less than 18 years old. This leniency could have dangerous consequences:
1- It will undermine the efforts of our security agencies in foiling dangerous attempts to conduct terrorist activities.
2- It could soften public opinion about the seriousness of his crimes.
3- It will overlook the needed action on investigation and taking actions against the responsible organizations for brainwashing and recruiting children to carry on such horrendous crimes.
4- It overlooks the responsibility of the child family on his radicalisation to the point of allegedly planning to conduct terrorist activity using bombs.
5- The most important deadly consequence is the fact that any leniency in dealing with this alleged terrorist because of his age could lead to wave of imminent terrorist activities carried on by children, even younger than 17.

It is well documented that the international pressure on Syrian and Iraqi governments and accusing them of targeting civilians and kids had resulted in Syrian and Iraqi authorities lenient dealing with children. This had resulted in the terrorist organizations recruiting and sending children to conduct most dangerous terrorist activities because they knew that they will escape security surveillance.

In Syria and Iraq, almost all snipers and spies for terrorist organizations are "children"... mainly under 15.... And the terrorist organizations could exploit a lot of public opinion to condemn the Syrian and Iraqi army for targeting and killing “children”, when in fact they were terrorists.

It is also deeply concerning that until now no debate about who brainwashed, trained and recruited these kids. This lack of debate and authorities’ proper actions had allowed the extremist organizations (including Islamic schools, centres and mosques) to escape any accountability and actions to stop them.

One eyewitness to the well reported event of auctioning the ISIS flag by Markaz Imam Ahmad told us that the majority of audience was children under 16. The eyewitness and his brothers who were present on the event were 16, 14 and 10. Until now, no actions were taken against this centre of extremism. Many of the “graduates” of this centre were killed recently in Syria fighting with terrorists. One of them was Mahmoud Abdul Salam.

Any leniency in dealing with children-terrorists will have deadly consequences. We strongly encourage Australian authorities to consult on this issue with Syrian and Iraqi authorities.

On local extremism: I was right form the beggining

The news about Australian doctor joining terrorist organisations in Syria is another evidence of our authorities’ failure to stop radicalisation in our society. While we do not know the time this doctor left Australia, the fact that he was brainwashed from womaniser and alcohol drinker to hardline terrorist should raise many questions.

Where were our authorities from the intense brainwashing and recruitment efforts of organisations and individuals? Why authorities had ignored many warnings from different community leaders and organisations, including myself, for long time about the intense campaigns to radicalise and recruit our youths?

The major question here is: what is the holistic plan that our authorities had adopted to stop further radicalisation of our youth?

We are sorry to come to realisation that authorities are busy dealing with symptoms, rather than dealing with the source of these symptoms. The authorities proved to be either lucky or successful in stopping and foiling many terrorist activities. But they are far behind in starting real comprehensive de-radicalisation plan.

As experts on this issue, the authorities’ refusal to discuss with us our de-radicalisation plan, refusal to fund some of our proposed projects to deal with this radicalisation and refusal to consult us of the plan they suggest is deeply worrying.

The news about authorities’ continuous interception of extremists in our airports bound to Syria, news about more Australians participation in the fight in Syria and the news of relations between terrorists fighting in Syria and centres based in Australia are clear evidence of the failure of our authorities approach to the issue.

All these news, in addition to news of closing down of centres of extremism (the latest was AL Furqan) is a moral boost for our anti-extremism campaign. The campaign that started February 2012. The campaign that is getting momentum every day.

While we still receive many threatening messages form extremists, we are receiving a lot of supporting and encouraging messages. Both kind of messages are clear evidence of the effectiveness of our campaign.

We were right from the beginning.

The faction war that cost Christine Milne her job

Without any warning, Bob Brown announced at the begging of April 2012 his resignation as Greens leader. In very similar way and without any warning, Christine Milne tendered her resignation as Greens leader. In addition to the total secrecy and lack of any warning, both leaders resigned months before Federal election.

Then the Greens officials want you to think that this is normal procedure within normal mainstream political party.

What the Greens officials are keen to hide from everyone, including the party ordinary members, is the factional war that was brewing for the last 2 decades inside the party.

Before exploring the reality of what happened today, I need to dissect the reality of power balance inside the Greens party.

The Greens party was established more than 40 years ago by socially conservative environmentalists who cared principally about the attack on our ecological system. The first generation of Greens activists and later on politicians were pure environmentalists who did not care for one second about any of the social-justice issues.

These environmentalists could not achieve much in term of convincing voters to vote for them. Until 2000, the support for the Greens party was less than 2.5% nationally. Without the high support in Tasmania and WA, this popularity indeed was less than 1.5%.

The Greens membership changed slightly after 2 major national and international events:
1- The collapse of the Soviet Union, which saw large numbers of Australian communists lost their platform and direction. They thought that the Greens party is the best for them to prolong their political activities and ambitions for political careers. This is where Lee Rhiannon, Sylvia Hale and others came from.
2- The start of collapse of the Australian Democrats after their hold of “balance of power” during Howard conservative government. Again, the Greens party was the only established party during this period, so it attracted the majority of members and supporters of the Democrats.
3- In addition to the above, the Labor continued in very aggressive way to creep towards the right which convinced many progressive people to join and vote for the Greens, after they lost any hope from Labor.

So the Greens membership comprised mesh-mash of all kind of people feeling hopelessness: hopelessness after the collapse of Soviet Union, hopelessness of the Democrats, hopelessness from Labor and new migrants who arrived to this country and faced by hopeless political system.

It is very safe to claim that the Greens party flourished on hopelessness. Apart from environmentalists, no Greens party member joined or voted for the Greens because they genuinely believe in the Greens platform or genuinity.

Such atmosphere of total hopelessness of political system resulted in the Greens party to rise on the hands of pure opportunists and political careerists, who has no ideology of principles.

This is why you can see all the contradictions and extreme inside the Greens party: Islamophobes and anti-religions atheists defending ISIS and Muslims, white racists defending multiculturalism, Masonic rich defending and representing the poor, Zionists claim to support Palestinian rights and racists who never met Non-English speaking migrant call for refugees rights.

This cocktail of paradoxes resulted in extreme factions fighting each other silently behind closed doors. And this is why resignation of leaders came with no warnings. Election of new leaders happens suddenly. Criticism is not allowed. No public understanding of what is happening inside the party. The party in fact is living behind “iron curtain” of total secrecy.

This is why the few comments by Chris Harris recently was found to be even shocking, by public and by ordinary members of the Greens. And this is why Chris Harris used my earlier description of what is happening inside the Greens to be similar to Animal Farm.
The Greens factions are:
1- Environmental faction: losing grip of power inside the Greens and this is why we saw Bob and Christine enforced to resign.
2- Ex-Stalinist opportunists: and these are fading too. Sylvia Hale gone, and soon Lee Rhiannon will follow.
3- Pure opportunist political careerists: and this is the majority inside the Greens now. They have no principles and no ethics. Most important for them is to win votes and continue their career. These are the majority of Greens politicians and officials.

The fight between factions started by Lee Rhiannon ex-Stalinists faction. They conducted vicious attacks on environmentalists to destabilise their historical grip on power inside the party. For Lee Rhiannon faction this was the only way to pave the road for change of leadership to their benefit. In doing this, they recruited and counted on pure opportunist careerists. These in turn, used the fight between the two factions to climb to top jobs, as a compromise between the two powerful established factions.

This is why Chris Harris and other “old guards” who joined the Greens for some kind of principles or agenda wrote very pessimistic posts about the result of the factions’ war.

Chris Harris admits (and agreed with my writings on the issue for the last ten years) that the Greens party is in fact a “Party about Nothing”.

The sacking of Christine Milne is the last straw of environmentalists reign on power inside the Greens....

Welcome to total opportunist Greens party.... No principles and no ethics... No agendas and no defined platforms.

Final note here: the Greens party is extremely lucky (for the hundred time in the last two decades). Despite the total chaos inside the Greens party and the exposure of its opportunism and lack of principles, there is no alternative party to inherit the votes of disgruntled progressive people of Australia. This is why it seems that the Greens will continue to get around %8 of the votes, until new progressive alternative political party formed.