Deconstructing the media's terror pin-up boys

If you thought Usama bin Ladin (or should that be Usama bin Reagan?) was the media pinup boy of international terrorism, think again.

Recently, the real pinup boy of international terrorism arrived in Australia. Dr Rohan Gunaratna is perhaps the most frequently quoted “expert” on fighting terrorism to appear in newspapers and on TV.

Dr Gunaratna made some newsworthy claims at a recent conference on terrorism held at Sydney’s Macquarie University. Dr Gunaratna claimed that there were literally hundreds of Muslim Australians ready to stage a terrorist attack of similar magnitude to Madrid in the next 2 years of so.

It was truly terrifying stuff. But then, Dr Gunaratna has made a living out of terrifying statements. His 2002 book Inside al-Qaeda – Global Network of Terror became a best seller. Its release coincided with elite Australian SAS troops moving into Afghanistan on the eve of the full-scale invasion.

But just how expert is this terror expert in his field? How does one become an expert on terror? And why does Dr Gunaratna have such an aversion to the maintenance of civil liberties in the international struggle against politically and religiously motivated violence?

Much emphasis of terror experts has been on the phenomenon of politicised Islam, referred to by Daniel Pipes (another terror expert of questionable credentials) as Islamism.

Pipes makes much of his knowledge of Arabic and his PhD from Harvard University. But which Arabic? Classical (what scholars of English might call Shakespearean) Arabic of the classical sources of Islamic theology? Or the various modern dialects spoken in countries from Mauritania in the west to Iraq in the east?

And what is Pipes really an expert in? His PhD thesis was on medieval European history. Pipes may know plenty about why feudalism may have ended or how the Ottomans may have conquered Belgrade. But of what relevance is this to understanding international terrorism and its Islamist variety?

Dr Gunaratna is unable to claim even a working knowledge of the Arabic language. But the fact is that so much Islamist literature is not even written in Arabic. The Islamist works that inspired the Iranian revolution were largely written in Farsi (Persian), a language spoken in Iran and large parts of Afghanistan.

Iranian Islamist literature is largely focussed on Shia theology. Saudi and other Arab Islamists associated with al-Qaeda regard Shiism as heresy. These Islamists tend to follow various forms of Wahhabi theology, the official theology sponsored by the Saudi government.

Further, many Islamists from the Arab world were inspired by writers beyond the borders of Arab League states. One such writer was Syed Qutb, an Egyptian writer who was sentenced to death during the 1960’s by then Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. Qutb frequently acknowledges and cites the works of Pakistani Islamist Syed Maududi, most of whose work was written in Urdu.

In other words, to understand the ideology of political Islam, one needs to have a mastery of at least Arabic (classical and modern), Farsi and Urdu. Most quoted experts do not have this knowledge.

Neither do I. But then, I am honest enough not to address the media as some kind of terrorism expert. Nor do I claim expertise on the subject of political Islam beyond what I have read of English translations of Islamist works.

On at least one occasion, Gunaratna has claimed that al-Qaeda and the Lebanese Shia Muslim group Hezbollah have formed an alliance to support terror in Iraq. Most Lebanese would scoff at such a claim. They know that forces inspired by al Qaeda would never work with a group representing a religious community vying with them for control over Iraq’s future governance.

So how seriously do intelligence people take these terror experts? Melbourne Age journalist Gary Hughes reported on the work of Dr Gunaratna in a piece published on July 20 2003. Hughes reported that most ASIO analysts dismiss many of Gunaratna’s fanciful claims, especially his claim that JI operative Hambali regularly visits Australia.

Veteran Australian journalist Brian Toohey, who rights regularly on intelligence and terrorism issues for the Australian Financial Review, has described Dr Gunaratna’s claims as “plain silly”.

One such fanciful claim was Gunaratna’s suggestion in the November 2001 edition of Review (published by the pro-Likud Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council) that terrorist groups may seek to influence Australian politicians by rallying "10,000 or 20,000 votes" in their electorates.

So how does Gunaratna dance between alleged al-Qaeda informants, marginal seats campaigning and compromising civil rights? One must remember that from 1984 to 1994, Gunaratna worked as an adviser to the Sri Lankan Government during the height of its war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE). The Sri Lankan government like many third world governments, had little hesitance in compromising civil rights of its Tamil citizens - at least what little rights they may have had.

During that period, Dr Gunaratna made the laughable suggestion that Australians of Tamil background were shipping weapons and even helicopters and light aircraft to the Tigers.

Gunaratna’s recent claims of some 300 locally-born Muslim extremists ready to wage a terrorist war on their country have been used to support the proposed Anti-Terrorism Bill currently before the Parliament. Given the fanciful nature of his previous claims and the scepticism of intelligence experts toward his work, supporters of the Bill would be well-advised not to use his claims unless these supporters wish to compromise the integrity of their cause.

Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney-based lawyer and occasional lecturer in the School of Politics at Macquarie University.

© Irfan Yusuf 2005

Why the Telegraph beats The Australian on terror

The News Limited terror circus continues in earnest – November 9 2005

I have just been told that today Australian Federal Police officials briefed select Muslim leaders in Sydney. The message they gave was quite clear. They had nothing to do with tipping off media about the raids.

AFP officials told the leaders that operations of such magnitude and sensitivity are generally conducted with the utmost secrecy and that AFP has specific protocols which must be followed in relation to media coverage.

Which raises the question – who told Channel 9 and the other crews? How did they know about the raids? How did the helicopters and infra-red equipment get involved?

The media circus raises the prospect that the accused persons may not get as fair a trial as they might otherwise expect.

In a strange twist, it seems that Sydney’s tabloid Daily Telegraph has been more sensible in its coverage today than its broadsheet brother The Australian. The DT’s editorial did not make a single reference to religion or ethnicity. Indeed, it went out of its way to stated:

“Even should it play out in court that the majority, even all, of the suspects are Islamic, that should not be misinterpreted. Fanaticism is not the sole preserve of Islam, as the evidence of terrorism attests.”

Piers Akerman, often accused of lashing out at anything resembling Islam, was restrained. The bulk of his venom was saved for the “fundamental naivety” of “the ABC and SBS and the Fairfax publications.”

Some of the DT’s stories on the issue were a little over-the-top and with added spice. As usual, they provided a phone number and website for witnesses of raids or acquaintances of the accused to contact the paper. And the linking of suspect Omar Baladjam to the Green Valley Mosque was also a little suspicious.

Yes, it may be true that Mr Baladjam was apprehended on Wilson Road. Yes, the Mosque is on Wilson Road. But then, so is the police station, the McDonalds, the shopping centre and the community centre used for many Hindu festivals. All within close proximity and all on Wilson Road.

I guess the reporters at the DT don’t know the area all that well. Still, on this occasion, notwithstanding the error, they did their job quite admirably.

Some of you may disagree. You might regard their front page headline of “Holy War On Australia” as being provocative. It wasn’t. It reflected the reality that there are people in this country who think it is OK to kill one’s self and others for the sake of some mythical jihad. Trust me. They exist.

It only takes a few of them to create havoc. The sort of havoc we saw in London. These raids were necessary. Now we let the courts decide. The prosecution will present their case. The accused will all have proper legal representation. Independent judges will ultimately decide.

In their relatively honest coverage, the DT have actually done an enormous favour to those who oppose the Government’s proposed Anti-Terror Bill. The DT, their reporters and columnists have praised the actions of police and investigators. They have vindicated the process. In doing so, they have vindicated the current law and shown it to be effective.

The Australian, on the other hand, are forced to tinker with the facts and present a distorted view of reality. They are forced into using the sort of headlines fit for the Daily Truth.

“Osama’s Aussie offspring”. “Cleric’s spiritual spiral”. Even mention of “Mother of Satan” (you have to read beyond the headline to realise this is the name of an explosive).

On page 2 is an article entitled: “Moderate Muslims welcome arrests”. The paper then went onto cite the words of the secretary of “a leading Muslim group”. And what was this group?

The Australian Arabic Council.

In case anyone didn’t know, the AAC is a non-sectarian organisation that seeks to represent Australians of Arab background. Generally that means Australians whose ethnic origins are from an Arab League nation.

In Australia, the majority of Arabs are not, in fact, Muslims. Further, Arab Muslims make up less than 20% of the world’s Muslim population.

The next group cited is the Islamic Charitable Projects Association which belongs to the al-Ahbash sect. This group is known to have close links to the Syrian Government. Some of the group’s leaders in Lebanon were named in the independent UN Investigative Report (the Mehlis Report) as being directly involved in the assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri.

The editorials were a fairly lame affair compared to previous days when opponents of the Anti-Terrorism Bill were described as “idiotic”. Paul Kelly, as always, was balanced and thinking outside the usual simplistic square and beyond the security –v- liberty spectrum. Even Janet Albrechtsen had a fairly reasonable (actually, I thought it was sensational) article on why feminists need to stand up for non-European women’s rights also.

Yes, the circus continues in earnest. But the animals seem to be calming down.

PS: Waleed Aly's op-ed piece in The Australian on 10 November 2005 was just sensational. Yep, The Australian can get it right sometimes. The message needs to get out there loud and clear. Thick-Sheiks don't represent the broader Aussie Mossie community. And media outlets should stop giving them so much attention.

More Terror Trash from The American?

Sometimes I cannot help wondering whether to continue referring to the national broadsheet as The Australian. Why?

Because after tracking its editorial and op-ed slant, it seems to me that the paper just isn’t. It spends so much of its editorial time defending the policies of George W Bush and his allies in the Coalition of the Killing. And that includes defending even the most crazy policies of the Howard Government.

Now, in speaking about The Australian, I am not in any way commenting on many of its fine journalists and columnists. I am talking about its editorial and its pet columnists. And its refusal to allow alternate voices on certain issues to be aired.

I have already shown in three pieces on this blog how The Australian uses all sorts of intellectually dishonest means to push its pet prejudices down the throats of its readers. But the editorial of November 7 2005 on why Aussie Mossies should support the proposed Anti-Terror Bill is a real classic.

I won’t waste my time or that of readers by going through the entire editorial. After all, I have a real job and a real life. I wish I could say the same for some of these responsible for editorials at The Australian.

“… since the Howard Government announced its tough new terror legislation, some of these leaders have drifted badly off message, claiming the laws will victimise Muslims.”

Er, no. The leaders didn’t say it. The President of the Police Federation of Australia said it. And thus far, he hasn’t been proven wrong.

“In fact, the laws do not mention any ethnic or religious minority. If they did target any minority, they would be anathema to Australians -- whose reservoir of tolerance, and commitment to civil liberties, runs deep.”

The laws don’t need to mention any ethno-religious minority. Because every single proscribed organisation listed in the laws is relate to Islam and Muslims. Every single one. Compare that to the US law in which over one-third of proscribed terrorist groups has no relation to Islam (apart from perhaps having Muslim victims, such as the Kahane Chai and the Tamil Tigers).

Yes, it is true that any targeting of minorities is an anathema to Australians. Which explains why I refuse to call that newspaper by its claimed name. And which also explains why that newspaper rarely seems to make much of a profit.

“Let's be clear, the threat to Islam in Australia comes from one direction, and one only: the fundamentalists who wish to hijack this great and dignified religion for their own lunatic ends.”

No, the threat to Islam in Australia also comes from the crazy pseudo-conservative lunatic fringe whose columns get published in The Oz. Fringe writers like Janet Albrechtsen who claims Muslim migrant cultures teach their sons to rape white women. Lunatics like John Stone who is allowed to publish not one but two columns calling for all migration of Muslims to cease. Lunatics like Messrs Steyn and Pipes who write stuff that deliberately incites hatred and venom toward Muslims.

And yes, I will say it. Lunatics that allow such hatred and venom to be printed on a broadsheet that insults the word “Australian”.

“By playing to unwarranted concerns within their community about the new laws, Muslim leaders risk bolstering the prestige of these radicals, whom they should be isolating. Their responsibility is to issue constant and unambiguous denunciations of those who foment sectarian hatred in Australia, or justify terrorist acts overseas.”

How on earth does exercising one’s democratic right in any way bolster the prestige of terrorists? Has the editorial writer gone completely mad? Muslim leaders (many of them lawyers) are repeating the same criticisms raised by prominent lawyers, judges and even former conservative Prime Ministers.

Further, who is really fomenting sectarian hatred in Australia? Which Muslim leader is suggesting their culture encourages boys to rape white women? Which mainstream Muslim newspaper spurts out anti-Christian and anti-Jewish in the same manner as some columnists for The Oz spurts out anti-Muslim hatred?

In a way, I hope the new laws do come into place. At least the ones on inciting sectarian hatred. Perhaps The Oz will have to re-consider before it allows its editorial space to be polluted by some of the trash we often read.

© Irfan Yusuf 2005

MEDIA: The Oz goes nuts against its Muslim alter-egos

I am no fan of the salafi thick-Sheiks of Sydney and Melbourne.

My first foray into journalism was to lambast Sheik Feiz Mohammad for his idiotic comments about sexual assault. I followed this up in the pages of the Daily Telegraph with an attack on Feiz and Omran in an article headlined “The loud minority grabs the Muslim limelight”.

But if the thick Sheiks and Mecca News had any equivalent in the mainstream Australian press, the closest thing would have to be The Australian.

Here is a paper that unashamedly prints the vilest and most feral attacks on Muslim Australians. It published not one but two pieces by former National Party Senator John Stone arguing that immigration of Muslims needed to be stopped as Muslim culture did not allow Muslim migrants to adapt to Australian values.

And who can forget the infantile performance of Janet Albrechtsen as she made the claim that Muslim migrants teach their sons to gang-rape White-skinned women. If anything could be worse than this, it was the pathetic defence of the paper’s editor of Albrechtsen’s racist slur.

Just this week, the Op-Ed pages were filled with the hate-filled words of Mark Steyn. Anyone familiar with Steyn’s work would agree with me when I say that, were he to replace “Islam” with “Judaism” and “Muslim” with “Jew”, his articles would read like some of the worst examples of anti-Semitic literature. Steyn just cannot find a nice word to say about Muslims.

Of course, there are some good things one can say about The Australian’s editorial slant. Phillip Adams tries his best to slant things a little the other way. Paul Kelly provides some semblance of balance. Greg Sheridan is OK on Turkey, though not much else.

So when I read The Australian report on “Clerics still preaching hatred of the West” on November 3 2005, I wondered what all the fuss was about. Reading the quotes from the thick-Sheiks reminded me of the sort of stuff Janet Albrechtsen or Mark Steyn might pen on a bad day.

Let’s make a few comparisons. The reporter, Richard Kerbaj, provided single sentence quotes from sermons that probably took a good 40 minutes to deliver. And that time length is a conservative estimate. Given that a fair proportion of people in their congregation don’t work, and given their love of hearing themselves scream until the speakers and ear drums nearly burst, it isn’t unusual to find these guys taking at least a good hour.

The reports had us believe that the thick-Sheiks were attacking the West. Really? Let’s have a selection.

In the sixth paragraph of the article, Harun Abu Talha was quoted as speaking of ...

... the criminal government of Israel that has been hurting our brothers and sisters in Palestine for so many years.

I have not checked my atlas for a while. But I do recall that Israel is not exactly located anywhere near London or Madrid. And I doubt the Jewish state will be entering the European Union in a hurry.

Of course, one admission the reporter was honest enough to make was hidden in the story.

The message the fundamentalist clerics are delivering to their supporters - mostly in Arabic - is in dramatic contrast to their public statements.

In other words, the quotes were not only out of context but were in fact translations from sermons delivered in Arabic. Further, The Australian has not bothered to inform us as to whether the sermons were recorded and who provided the translations.

At one place in the article, Sheik Zoud is quoted as saying:

No victory (for Islam's brothers and sisters) can be stopped by George Bush or Tony Blair or John Howard.

Now I am no Arabic scholar, but I think it would be highly unlikely for a speech in Arabic to have stuff appearing in brackets. I could be wrong, of course. But unless the sermon went with subtitles, the brackets and their contents perhaps may not have been present.

Many of the phrases and prayers quoted by The Australian are phrases that even the most moderate sheiks declare. Take this quote from Sheik Zoud:

God grant victory to the mujaheddin in Kashmir and Chechnya, and Palestine and Afghanistan.

The term “mujaheddin” is a generic term that refers to any person engaged in an armed conflict as part of a just war. Who knows which mujaheddin these Sheiks are referring to.

Then again, I have to admit that these thick-Sheiks do bring such attention upon themselves. And I myself have been witness to some of the most frightening prayers being recited by these fringe-dwellers.

But in what way is their speech different to the Steyns and Pipes that feature so frequently on the Opinion pages of The Australian? True, the words are not so blatant. But the messages don’t exactly encourage readers to embrace their Muslim neighbours.

…given the radicalisation of the Arab world, and the Arabification of the Islamic world, and the Islamification of much of the rest of the world, in the end you have to fix the problem at source. (The Australian, October 18 2005)

There are many trouble spots across the world but, as a general rule, even if one gives no more than a cursory glance at the foreign pages, it's easy to guess at least one of the sides: Muslims v Jews in Palestine, Muslims v Hindus in Kashmir, Muslims v Christians in Nigeria, Muslims v Buddhists in southern Thailand, Muslims v (your team here). Whatever one's views of the merits on a case by case basis, the ubiquitousness of one team is a fact. … That's why they blew up Bali in 2002, and last weekend, and why they'll
keep blowing it up. It's not about Bush or Blair or Iraq or Palestine. It's about a world where everything other than Islamism lies in ruins. (The Australian, October 4, 2005)

OK, one thought just occurred to me. Perhaps the paper is only referring to just some imams. Perhaps the paper acknowledges that not all imams preach hatred of the West or anyone else for that matter.

But I might as well dispel that thought. Why? Read the opening sentence of the story.

MUSLIM clerics in Sydney and Melbourne - led by radicals Sheik Mohammed Omran
and Sheik Abdul Salam Mohammed Zoud - are still preaching hatred against the West …

So Muslim “clerics” are led by Omran and Zoud. A bit like saying Adolf Hitler was the leading figure in modern European politics.

Once again, a very uninformed Australian.

Words © 2005 Irfan Yusuf


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