What does Australia do with homegrown Islamist extremists once they tire of killing infidels overseas? Do we continue to allow these citizens to return home for some taxpayer-funded rest and recuperation? Or should we do what the British Government is proposing and cancel the passports of jihadis to prevent them from bringing their skills in mayhem back to the West? We have already had about 20 to 30 citizens return to Australia after betraying our national interest by fighting for Islamist groups in the Middle East. If you listen to some, we are obliged to take these traitors back to fulfil our obligations as a signatory to the 1961 United Nations Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. But surely the Australian Government’s primary obligation is to protect the interests of its law-abiding citizens who’d rather go about their business without fear of being butchered by battle-hardened madmen. We are already fulfilling our duty as good global citizens by cancelling the passports of suspected terror sympathisers eager to go to fight in the Middle East. That means we are not exporting our homegrown extremists to foreign lands. By keeping those radicalised miscreants in Australia we are increasing our own terror threat level. We saw that in Melbourne when Numan Haider attacked two police officers before being shot dead; friends claim the 18-year-old, who’d earlier waved an Islamic State flag in a shopping centre, was infuriated about his passport being cancelled. Surely there are ways we can legislate to keep jihadists from returning to Australia without breaching our obligations as a signatory to the UN convention on statelessness. It wouldn’t be too difficult for the Abbott Government to follow in the footsteps of the British Government in cancelling the passport of extremists who have gone to Iraq or Syria to fight a holy war. Last November, UK prime minister David Cameron introduced a raft of new anti-terror measures including granting the Home Secretary the power to issue “temporary exclusion orders”, which effectively cancel a terror suspect’s passport for at least two years leaving them stranded in whatever hellhole they opted to be in. Under the UK proposals, which are currently going through parliament and expected to be law by February, the minister would act if there was “reasonable suspicion” that an individual had been involved in terrorist activity. Of course any such move in Australia would encounter all sorts of resistance from Greens senators and other bleeding heart simpletons who think the way to overcome the terror threat is to pretend it doesn’t exist. Or they’d prefer we took the Danish option of loving jihadis until they stopped wanting to slaughter us. Aarhus, the second-biggest city in Denmark, has assigned teams of therapists and social workers to assist its returning jihadists to reintegrate into Danish society. Instead of being questioned and imprisoned for their acts of terror, these men, responsible for unspeakable acts of savagery, are given treatment for their war wounds and all manner of other government-funded assistance. It’s that sort of permissive attitude to Islamic extremism that has seen Denmark overrepresented in the numbers of foreign fighters in the Middle East. Indeed only Belgium has a higher per capita proportion of fighters. I much prefer the approach of the Muslim mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb, who said anyone who did not accept the freedoms of the West can “pack their bags” and “f ... off”. The latest Australian-born citizen to join Islamic State is 23-year-old Suhan Rahman who continues to post hate-filled diatribes online imploring other Muslims to commit acts of violence in Australia. “Wallah (I swear to God) theres no good left in u if none of u do something about ... mocking our prophet pbuh. Dont be cowards. Wheres the honour whrres the courage. Let the heads fly and blood flow,” he said. As well posting other semi-literate ravings, this university-educated radical also posted pictures of himself cosying up to fellow Australian-born Jihadis including Sydney’s Mohamed Elomar, who normally prefers to pose with freshly severed heads. It is estimated that up to 300 Australians are fighting in Syria and Iraq. The exact number is near impossible to determine given that fighters often enter via neighbouring countries. Attorney-General George Brandis has labelled the 20 to 30 fighters who have returned “the greatest risk that we have faced in many years” and yet fewer than half have been charged. There have even been calls from Muslim community leaders for the Federal Government to engage with these men rather than punish them. The sobering reality is that even if these returning jihadists are imprisoned there is no guarantee that they won’t be even more radicalised when they are released. The terrorists responsible for the bloodshed in Paris weren’t reformed by prison. In the case of Amedy Coulibaly, who killed a policewoman as well as four Jewish hostages in a kosher grocery store, prison was the place where he first became radicalised. It’s where he went from a garden variety thug and thief to an Islamist crusader. We may never completely eliminate the terrorist scourge but every measure must be taken to protect Australians from the threat posed by home-grown terrorism and that includes restricting the ability of jihadists to return home.
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 07:25:50 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015