CRIKEY: As we chuckle at the ‘cali-fatties’, real questions remain unanswered

Western young men travelling to the Middle East to become jihadis is a serious problem that demands serious coverage. But all the tabloids care about it is jelly belly jihadis. Irfan Yusuf, lawyer, author and commentator, reports.

The anonymous parents sit in their Sydney home consumed with grief. They believe four of their sons, aged 17, 23, 25 and 28, have travelled to Syria to join Islamic State or one of the other groups battling each other and the army of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. They’d been told by their oldest son he’d won a free holiday to Thailand and was taking his three brothers, one of whom had just finished his year 12 exams. The others had stable jobs.

The mother received a text stating the boys were now Syria and looked forward to seeing her “in paradise”. At fist she assumed it was a joke and deleted it. Now she believes it is real. The mother begs for her sons to come home. Who knows what she and other members of her family are going through.

Why did this happen? Assuming they have signed up for a militia in Syria, how did four young “cleanskins” become indoctrinated to leave behind loving parents, stable jobs and bright futures to join a war whose contours they might barely understand?

These are serious questions requiring serious analysis. Instead, what we have received is a chorus of fat jokes from the tabloids. The right-hand corner of yesterday’s Daily Telegraph front page carried the headline: “TOO FAT FOR JIHAD. Weight might stop Sydney’s would-be death cult recruits”. Page 6 carried the headlines “JELLY-BELLY JIHADIS” and “Sydney’s biggest losers too overweight to join IS cali-fat”. A photo is shown of a boy holding his head on his chin with his right fist while holding a half-eaten kebab in his left.

Two of the boys each weigh allegedly 140 kilograms and “can’t even run on the field”. A similar report appeared in the Daily Mail Australia, which cited a source saying:

‘We are hoping the fact that because two of them are quite obese they will not good foot soldiers, they are over 140 kg. People are going to realise, what are we going to do with them? Are they going to eat al [sic] the food and you can’t even run on the field.’

The source for the boys’ physical fitness or lack thereof? Dr Jamal Rifi, a GP who says he is a friend of the family. Is there any evidence that Islamic State will reject them? Any kind of statement that they are not fit enough to become soldiers? Nope.

I hope to God that the boys were playing a joke on their parents, that they return to Australia soon and that they make a fast buck pursuing defamation proceedings. No doubt that would wipe the tears off their parents’ faces.

Tabloid media discussion on these issues has tended to demonise not just those fleeing to Syria but the communities they leave behind. The same communities that more likely than not despise IS and other groups, which seem to have a knack for beheading more Muslims than anyone else. Now in the case of the four Sydney boys, the tabloids have resorted to ridicule. It might entertain the readers, but I doubt it generates much sympathy for the poor parents.​

First published in Crikey on 19 November 2014.

VIDEO/AFGHANISTAN: Secret talks between Karzai government and Taliban ...

While Australian and NATO troops are engaged in fierce fighting against the Taliban, the US-backed Islamist government of Hamid Karzai is secretly negotiating to strike a deal with Taliban leaders. The secret talks have taken place in Saudi Arabia, London and Dubai. The US denies any direct involvement in the secret negotiations.

It seems the deal involves allowing leader of the Hizb-i-Islami jihadi faction, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, to be allowed to eventually return to Afghanistan with full immunity from prosecution. Hekmatyar led one of the larger jihad factions that fought against the Soviet Union during the 1980's, most of his support coming from the US and Saudi Arabia. Following Soviet withdrawal, Hekmatyar served as Prime Minister but was unable to resolve differences with his main jihadi rival, the late Ahmad Shah Masud of the Jamiat-i-Islami faction. The current Karzai government is dominated by Masud loyalists.

But after 9/11, Hekmatyar decuded to support the Taliban. Following the Taliban's defeat, Hekmatyar has been in hiding.

Will the talks succeed? Who knows ...

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf




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COMEDY: Herald-Sun writer exposes marsupial jihad

Writing in the Sunday Herald-Sun, Eleni Hale desperately clings to straws in an effort to find a jihadi angle to the bushfire tragedy in Victoria.

In an article headed Jihadists revel in our misery, Hale reports as follows ...

Terror watchdogs said fundamentalists had blogged on websites across the globe, applauding the lives lost and destruction.

Senior analyst at SITE Intelligence Group Adam Raisman said they were posting pictures of burnt homes and devastated victims and "taking joy in the scenes".

Who is this SITE Intelligence Group? You can find out more about this non-government profit-making enterprise here. SITE takes a fair wack of its work from MEMRI, an organisation which seems to have its own political and sectarian agenda.

Hale then revels in putting her discovery to one bushfire victim:

Bushfires victims said they were stunned.

"We're minding our own business and trying to cope with all this and they are celebrating our suffering," said Denise McCann who lost her home in the Kinglake blaze.

So one bushfire victim becomes "bushfire victims". Maybe basic numerical skills aren't a prerequisite for employment at some newspapers. And maybe tabloid editors shouldn't waste victims' (or should that be victim's?) time with such nonsense.

And who are the jihadists that are revelling in our collective misery? Again, when evidence is required, plural suddenly becomes singular:

One jihadist wrote: "It would be an act of revenge for Australian's participation in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq."

One "jihadist"? Where? On what site? In what language? When? Is Hale citing Osama bin Ladin typing this from his cave? Or is this "jihadist" a 15 year old kid writing on this online chat room?

Already Hale's article has been picked up by a variety of websites known for their sensible and unprejudiced reporting and analysis.

But it seems the Herald-Sun's readers don't share Hale's obsession with finding the jihadist angle to everything.

This is an unnecessary and dangerously incendiary article. How stupid and pointless to stir up anti-Muslim sentiment at a time when emotions are running high and there's so much good will and community support to be celebrated.
Posted by: Deborah Bartlett Pitt
9:53am today

Don't fall for this people. The general Muslim community want nothing to do with these lunatics. As arsonists walk amongst our community, idiots walk amongst theirs.
Posted by: CFA Volunteer
12:05am today

Watch out for Eleri Hale's next article where she exposes Koala Sam's efforts to recruit other koalas on a massive marsupial jihad mission for al-Qaeda and JI. I've already received a photo taken by the SITE Intelligence Group of the devious un-Australian extremist fundamentalist jihadist creature just as it was about to film its pre-suicide video will.


My suggestion to Hale is that she stick to writing articles about Oktoberfest.

CRIKEY: Charlie Wilson's prophecy comes true ...

Our military campaign in Afghanistan involves allying ourselves with thugs who may be tomorrow’s bin-Ladins, writes Irfan Yusuf ...

In the movie Charlie Wilson's War, Tom Hanks plays the role of the Democratic Congressman from Texas who embroiled the United States in the last hot conflict of the Cold War. In real life, Wilson appeared on American 60 Minutes explained how he saw the Afghanistan conflict as being not just about defeating the Soviet Union, but also about making real and lasting change to the lives of ordinary Afghans, millions of whom were displaced in refugee camps in Pakistan and Iran.

In 1993, Wilson described the jihad in these terms ...

... the Afghan freedom fighters ... probably the most heroic response to tyranny in modern history.

The US and its jihadist allies (including an all-Arab militia led by Osama bin Ladin) defeated the Soviet Union, which withdraw its troops from Afghanistan in 1989. The Americans abandoned Afghanistan to tribal warlords and then to the Taliban. Wilson tried in vain to convince his colleagues in Congress and the President that the US now needed to rescue and repair Afghanistan in much the same way as it did Western Europe after the Second World War. They ignored his pleas. Congressman Wilson tld his colleagues:

We always go in with our ideals. Then we leave. But the ball keeps bouncing.

At the conclusion of the film, a quote from Wilson appears on the screen:

These things happened and they changed the world. Then we f-cked up the end game.

The grand Afghanistan f-ck-up continues, with President Hamid Karzai telling the Chicago Tribune that the United States policy of empowering allegedly friendly militias will prove disastrous in the long term. Karzai describes them as:

... thugs or warlords... those people who have no limits to misbehaviour.

In his Christmas visit to Australian troops in Afghanistan, Kevin Rudd told troops he had been to too many funerals. Our troops are involved in both fighting insurgents and building essential community infrastructure in Oruzgan province, including schools and hospitals. Young soldiers like Stuart Nash die doing work Congressman Charlie Wilson insisted America needed to do back in 1989. Meanwhile, Osama bin Ladin and Mullah Omar still haven't been captured. Our military campaign involves allying ourselves with thugs who may be tomorrow's bin-Ladins.

They call this madness "The War on Terror".

First published in Crikey on Friday 19 December 2008.




Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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CRIKEY: Olympics over, let's consider the mess we're making in Afghanistan...

Last week, Sally Neighbour interviewed former Sydney architect Mahmoud Saikal at length about his dreams for a future Kabul. Saikal, who was once the Australian rep of the late Ahmad Shah Massoud's Jamiat-i-Islami faction during the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union, has also served his country in a variety of diplomatic posts.

Saikal seemed to spend much of his time showing off his vision for Kabul's future:

In a nondescript Kabul office, Australian-trained architect and former Afghan deputy foreign minister Mahmoud Saikal flicks on his laptop to reveal a stunning vision for his home town. A computer graphic depicts a sparkling metropolis with glass skyscrapers, trams and terraced lawns.

Of course, current and former members of Hamid Karzai's government spend much of their time dreaming about what Kabul could be. The fact is that, regardless of having such powerful allies as the US and UK, not to mention Coalition partners such as Australia, Karzai's Kabul cabinet seems to hold little sway outside the capital.

And while our eyes were all glued to TV coverage from Beijing, Afghans are becoming increasingly angry with Coalition forces terrorising their poverty-stricken country to prosecute the war on terror. Afghanistan was first invaded in 2001 to punish those responsible for killing some 3000 innocent civilians in New York and Washington. Now, almost seven years on, Usama bin Ladin has almost become a Hollywood superstar.

One 2002 US study showed this civilian casualty count was exceeded in just the first month of the allied invasion of Afghanistan. And on Friday, a Coalition airstrike on the north-western Herat district killed over 90 Afghans, including 19 women and 50 children. The incident has drawn protests even from President Hamid Karzai whose government is being kept afloat by Coalition forces. The civilians were hardly Taliban supporters, having gathered to commemorate the death of a local anti-Taliban military commander.

One tribal elder quoted by the New York Times summed up the predicament Coalition forces face in Afghanistan:

I am 100 percent confident that someone gave the information due to a tribal dispute. The Americans are foreigners and they do not understand.

So here we are, with our troops in Afghanistan, part of a force that often mistakes Taliban for anti-Taliban and that potentially has little understanding of local tribal conflicts that likely pre-date the Taliban's emergence by centuries.

If Coalition forces keep killing innocent Afghan civilians, the popular Afghan backlash will make Iraq look like a picnic.

First published in the Crikey daily alert for Monday 25 August 2008.

COMMENT: Some thoughts on Dr Tariq Ramadan ...

(Here are some excerpts from an article was published on the MuslimWakeUp website during Tariq Ramadan's last Australian tour in 2004/05.)



Ramadan Does Boxing Day in the Sydney Opera House

This year, I spent Christmas midnight for the first time at midnight mass at Sydney’s St Mary’s Cathedral ... I wanted to do something different for Christmas. Watching the majestic organs of St Mary’s playing whilst the magnificent choir circled the isles of the Cathedral was a truly amazing spiritual experience ...

Interestingly, the word “catholic” means literally “universal.” And that Christmas night at St Mary’s, I was putting into practice some of the universalism I had learnt from a certain Swiss citizen whose name appears in the heading.

Tariq Ramadan did not just come to Australia to enjoy a holiday with his family. He came to deliver a message. Had his journey been a mere holiday, he perhaps would have been one of the thousands of anonymous visitors to one of Australia’s cultural icons, the Sydney Opera House (SOH). But on the night of Boxing Day, 26 December 2004, Ramadan addressed a near-packed concert hall of the SOH ...

Ramadan repeated the same questions he has asked Muslims in numerous talks he has given, articles he has written and books he has penned over the years. How do we understand our faith in such a way that it really does become a universal faith? How do we as a Muslim community become truly accommodating, or need I say, truly Catholic in its literal sense?

It was refreshing to hear the grandson of Imam Hasan al-Banna citing the Brazilian Paulo Coelho’s book The Alchemist to illustrate a subtle shade of Qur’anic meaning. And in doing so, those who understand the message of Ramadan’s grandfather would know that he would not be turning in his grave at his grandson’s grabbing of a piece of wisdom that, like wisdom everywhere, is the believer’s lost property.

Ramadan spent a substantial amount of his address re-defining basic terms we use so often ... For Ramadan ... jihad['s] goal is not killing a maximum number of non-Muslims. Rather, its goal is resistance.

Ramadan said that there can be no Islam without jihad. Islam is peace, and so the goal of jihad must be a resistance that leads to peace. Resistance is the name of the game. And it does not just stop at one’s soul.

In this respect, Ramadan laid out a ground plan of how Muslims can practice jihad in their own communities and nations. How? By joining other Muslims to root out social problems in the Muslim community, problems such as racism. And also by joining with non-Muslims in peaceful action toward social change.

This is jihad and this is Islam according to Ramadan. It is not just about the outer aspects of sunna or prophetic tradition. It is about implementing the simple principles of islam in a complex world. And it is about doing all this in a way that emphasises what we have in common with others.

Ramadan laments the fixation which Muslims in Europe and Australia have with being minorities. It’s as if we want to receive strange looks because we are dying to be different. Yet we simply are not strong enough to achieve the goals of jihad. Yes folks, our jihad is to be conducted WITH non-Muslims, NOT AGAINST non-Muslims.

So my jihad has to be conducted not just with Tariq Ramadan’s audience at the SOH but also with the thousands who joined Cardinal Pell at St Mary’s Cathedral at Midnight Mass.

Put another way, jihad is spiritual love. And love is not just some flimsy emotion from a Robbie Williams song. Love is a spiritual struggle against its opposite and all that resemble that opposite. Negativity is so easy. For many of us, it is our position of inertia. If you want to unite a large group, invent an enemy. Being Daniel Pipes is easy. Being Tariq Ramadan is very hard.

Being a true lover and a true mujahid means being prepared to move beyond hate and resentment and negativity. It means finding commonality with people. It means learning to work with people of all colors, sects, faiths, religions, nationalities, genders … and yes, I will say it … sexual orientations.

That means that I, as a socially conservative Muslim, should be prepared to work with a leftist Catholic and a politically neutral Jew if all three of us believe that certain proposed legislation will curtail civil liberties and human rights. And I should oppose this legislation if the first people whose human rights are affected are refugee animists from Papua.

But try getting most Muslims to understand this sort of thinking. Try getting them to understand that good citizenship is part of taqwa, that there is even an ecological jihad. I could lament and go on and on for fifty more paragraphs, and achieve nothing. I just hope that perhaps Dr Ramadan has the good sense to give the United States the flick and migrate to Australia instead.

© Irfan Yusuf 2008

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UPDATE: Stuff published elsewhere ...

An alternative view of the recently deceased Padraic McGuinness can be found at the ABC Unleashed portal by clicking here. Also on ABC Unleashed is a comment on why conservatives should be the first to apologise to the Stolen Generation.

There was a piece in The Age on the so-called jihad sheilas which can be found here. A slightly shorter version was published in the Sydney Morning Herald here.

© Irfan Yusuf 2008


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CRIKEY: ABC's Jihad Sheilas have only themselves to blame ...

The ABC documentary Jihadi Sheilas broadcast on the evening of 5 February 2007 profiled two very confused women from troubled backgrounds sucked into the whirlpool combining emotional trauma with jihadist politics.

These women were among many Muslim converts in the 1980s swept away in the hysteria of the US-backed Afghan war against the Soviets. That war was fought by a loose coalition of Afghan tribal militias and a more organised band of Arab fighters led by, amongst others, a man who should really be known as Usama bin Reagan.

Many Western converts left that conflict spiritually scarred and disillusioned with the so-called jihad which, following Soviet withdrawal, descended into brutal tribal civil war. But a small minority, including those with whom Rabiah Hutchinson and Raisa bint Alan Douglas associated, now turned their weapons toward their American ex-backers.

The documentary showed just how easy it is for the wrong set of dominoes to tumble in the lives of desperate converts with few support mechanisms outside the tiny paranoid radical fringe. I remember the period in which these women adopted Islam as one where mainstream Muslim religious institutions were most unwelcoming to converts. It was also a time when two competing forces of political Islam – the US-backed jihadi form of wahhabism and the Iranian revolutionary form of Shi’ism – competed with each other for the hearts and minds of zealous youth and converts.

Many converts I know went through the phase these two women are still afflicted by. However, the spread of mainstream Islam (and with even the Saudi government seeking an alternative to discredited jihadi-wahhabist neo-Conservative theology) has meant most converts have moved on.

Even after making allowances for unfriendly editing, the most damning statements were made not by the assortment of "experts" but by the women themselves. One claimed that Muslim women are attracted to men who carry the sword and espouse jihad. Yeah, right. Speak for yourself, honey. The same woman also claimed Usama bin Reagan took on a pure form of Islam. A bit like suggesting Opus Dei represent pure Catholicism.

The other woman claimed Afghan people want Islam (by which she meant Taliban rule). I encourage her to tell that to Afghan Hazara refugees whose family members were tortured and murdered by the Taliban and whose villages were destroyed because they were Shia. Presumably, like most followers of the jihadist version of wahhabism, she regards Shia Muslims as infidels who can be legitimately put to the sword.

With so much material emerging from the horses’ mouths, one wonders why the documentary makers would compromise the credibility of their work by citing discredited neo-Conservative cultural warriors like Steven Emerson.

One chap named Sheuer, allegedly a CIA operative, claimed Yemen was "a place where radical Islam is taught". It is also a place where Western students go to learn Arabic and classical Islamic sciences such as Sufism which are shunned by jihadi-wahhabis. You won’t see mainstream Yemeni Islamic scholars like these guys spouting terror.

What many Muslims will find grossly insulting was the constant replay of the Islamic call to ritual worship (known as the adhaan) and the images of the Koran’s Arabic text. Repeatedly these two universal symbols of Islam accompanied images of the burning Twin Towers and other acts of terror. Were the producers trying to send a message that the adhaan is a call to arms? That the Koran was a terrorist training manual?

After watching the women rant on about the boob-jobs of female ASIO agents and claim their fringe version of Islam is truer than all others, I concluded that the Prophet Muhammad was right when he said (more or less):

The best of people inside Islam were once the best of people outside Islam.

Which implies that dysfunctional people outside Islam rarely change after adopting the faith.

These women weren’t made dysfunctional by Islamic theology. Sadly, many viewers will now see all Muslim converts through the prism of the Jihad Sheilas.

(A version of this piece was first published in the Crikey daily alert for Wednesday 6 February 2008.)

UPDATE 1: A colleague of mine sent me the following response to this piece ...

Fantastic response. Hit the nail on the spot. The documentary made me feel physically ill. The two women pissed me off so much and i'm afraid it wasn't a case of 'misquoted'. Crass, vulgar, stupid, brainwashed and misinformed don't change, no matter how long the hijab or how many 'ya Allahs' sprinkled into the conversation. The one who had married 5 men- been a 2nd wife to 2, annoyed me the most. Kids to different dads, with 4 divorces. Felt strangely like a run-of-the-mill trailer-trash story except lo and behold she's converted to Islam and simply whacked on the abaya.

UPDATE 2: Another colleague sent this message ...

Thanks for writing this piece. I couldn’t bring myself to watch this garbage last night – I need to watch my blood pressure. Several of my colleagues were concerned about what they had seen on the ABC last night but thankfully, talked about their concerns... with me and another Muslim in the team. I’ll be forwarding your article to them also.

© Irfan Yusuf 2008

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COMMENT: A rather unconservative use of inkjet printers ...

Earlier this year, Crikey reported of how columnist Gerard Henderson went all the way to the United Kingdom to publish a monograph about Australian Muslims, doing so without interviewing a single Australian Muslim.

The publisher of his report was the allegedly conservative (I say allegedly because there’s nothing conservative about sectarian bigotry) thinktank Policy Exchange. The tank describes itself as being

... committed to an evidence-based approach to policy development … in partnership with academics and other experts.

Since that time, PE has published another report about how a fair proportion of UK mosques were distributing allegedly extremist literature. Yet an investigation into the research methodology used in the report shows a substantial amount of fabricated evidence.

It’s interesting to note that the volunteers who allegedly visited the mosques on behalf of PE are apparently from an organisation called the "Sufi Muslim Council” which was recently endorsed by the UK government. The chairman of that council is a Sufi "teacher" named Sheik Muhammad Hisham Kabbani.

Sheik Kabbani follows a line of Turkish sufis known as “Naqshbandi”. This order of sufis was described in an article in the most recent issue of Quadrant as promoting jihadist political ideology and of being “Islam’s Trojan horse” in the West.

So there you have it. One conservative think tank uses to expose jihadist literature members of a group which another set of conservatives describes as themselves being jihadists. Go figure.

As for Gerard Henderson, methinks he should think twice before allowing his name to be tarnished by association with groups exposed as fabricators of evidence.

UPDATE I: Here is how an anthropologist critiqued the report.

UPDATE II: The anthropologist writes to the PE report author here, and receives a response here.

UPDATE III: A somewhat flippant response here.

Words © 2007 Irfan Yusuf


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