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August 16, 2006

Australia: Jailed Aborigines Converting To Radical Islam

A report from the Australian states that Aborigines currently being detained in Australia's prisons are being converted to radical Islam during their detention.

Today, federal police had warned that the problems of criminals who convert whilst in prison could become "a significant issue in the future".

Some serious criminals in maximum-security prisons, including Aborigines, have already converted to Wahhabism. Their conversions came via radical clerics or from other inmates.

Rocky Davis, who heads the Aboriginal Youth Centre in Redfern, Sydney, said that on his visits to jails, he knows of about 40 Aborigine prisoners whom he believed had converted to Wahhabism.

40-year old Davis, who had been a former prisoner who became a convert himself in the 1990s, who was known as Shaheed Malik, also runs the Koori Muslim Association.He warned that Aboriginal Muslim converts were vulnerable to the attentions of radical Islam.

He said: "I've been to a few talks where imams have talked about jihad and violence and oppression and it's very, very simple to convince someone that's already oppressed to become an oppressor. If you're disenfranchised and you're oppressed and you've got no economy and you've always been discriminated against, you're the most likely to become a terrorist, you're the most likely to become a fanatic - and that's the thing that I have to worry about because my people are disenfranchised, they're oppressed."

He added "Wahabi clerics, they're already in prison recruiting. Most of the Muslims in prison now are Wahabi ... including the Aboriginals."

In Britain, France and the US, prisons are a recruiting ground for radical forms of Islam. The Australian Federal Police are aware of the potential problem. A spokeswoman said that "the experiences overseas show that there is a potential that it will become a significant issue in the future."

In a separate article in the Australian, members of John Howard's advisory board, the Muslim Community Reference Group, warned that there was a need to prevent people converting to Islam for the wrong reasons.

Yasser Soliman of the group said: "There's been cases where extremists from beforehand have converted to Islam, thinking that Islam offers them some outlet to their extremism. They could be Jewish-haters, they could be people who are militant to begin with, they could have all sorts of agendas and they'll be looking to fulfil those views within Islam."

The MCRG has compiled a 32-page report, in which it is recommended that there should be an "orientation pack for converts. This would give details of recommended Muslim mentors.

Michael Burge, a psychologist from Melbourne, said people from an abusive background were "prime pickings for cults and (religions) of any kind".

He said: "There's a natural psychological tendency for people who are in pain and strife to search for answers and if the institution or the family, the body that should be nurturing their upbringing, hasn't been what it should be ... they can become very disillusioned with society."

Ameer Ali, chairman of the MCRG, said that the danger of radicalizing of convert prisoners came from the fact that the prisoners had no other people as sources of information about Islam. He said: "They are susceptible because they are only listening to one source of information. We should be concerned about it."

One cleric from Sydney, Khalil Shami, who is authorised by the New South Wales Corrective Services to visit jails, said he was unaware of any radical clerics who were converting prisoners.

He said that the individuals who were regarded as having an antisocial outlook were always attended to by clerics while there was security surveillance.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at August 16, 2006 2:32 PM

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