Too alarmed to be alert

Let's not live in denial. A small number of Australians of Muslim faith and/or heritage believe they must attack Australian (and broader Western) interests. If the British experience is any indication, many are young second and third generation migrants, and the rest converts.

By and large, the intelligence and law enforcement community knows who these people are, and have reliable informants from within various Muslim communities. Indeed, virtually every arrest under anti-terrorism legislation has been the result of tip-offs from sources within Muslim communities, often the result of long and drawn-out investigations.

This hasn't always been the case. Concern about domestic or "home-grown" terrorism became particularly acute since the London bombings on July 7, 2005. Within weeks of the bombings, investigative journalist Brian Toohey wrote in the Weekend Financial Review that ASIO's budget for Muslim community informants had blown out, with much information deemed useless. Former Australian Security Intelligence Service chief Allan Taylor was called in to crack down on the amount of money wasted by ASIO.

An internal review revealed many part-time agents in Australia's Islamic community were being paid for information that had not been properly evaluated. The intelligence community soon learned what Muslims took for granted: Australia s Islamic community is riven by religious, political and personal rivalries, which often prompt informers to take advantage of ASIO's cash to make up damaging accusations against their opponents.

This simple fact underlies the work of seasoned law enforcement and intelligence professionals who show extreme caution to ensure they only act on the basis of accurate information, ensuring their processes are driven less by ideology and more by objective assessment of exactly where threats exist.

Sadly, our cultural warriors in the media and politics aren't always driven by such caution.

We are taught to be alert but not alarmed.

But some Muslim-baiting media outlets incite so much sectarian hysteria that we are left too alarmed to be alert. Recent reports in one newspaper in particular have bordered on the fanciful. Last week the paper declared all Australian Muslims supported the Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim party Hezbollah and opposed Israel. I've never been to Lebanon. Most of my Lebanese friends are either Sunni Muslims or Christians. Most of my Shi'ite Muslim friends fled Afghanistan and Iran to escape theocratic regimes.

Hardly people who'd support a theocratic party. My migrant mother's first Australian friend was Jewish. When I was young, my family used to buy our Indian spices from a Bondi spice shop owned by a Jewish family. My colleagues and friends include Jews, most of them avid supporters of Israel.

Yet according to The Australian, I support Hezbollah and oppose Israel. Why? Because The Australian spoke to a senior Shi'ite Muslim cleric who declared that all his community supported Hezbollah and opposed Israel. The newspaper then spoke to an oft-quoted Lebanese Muslim spokesman who declared Sunni Muslims agree with this position.

Before reading the article, I'd never even heard of the Shi'ite Muslim gentleman. I knew of the Lebanese Muslim spokesman as a former president of an ethno-religious organisation in Lakemba which barred full membership to all women and to men ineligible for Lebanese citizenship. Yet the national broadsheet attributes the opinions of these religious figures to 300,000 Australians who tick the "Muslim" box on their census forms. This same newspaper's editorials consistently patronises Muslims for allegedly not embracing democracy and gender equality.

Within 24 hours of the latest terrorist scares in London and Glasgow, the paper had a front-page report alleging some 2,000-3,000 "ideological sleeper cells" existed in Sydney ready to be "radicalised" into committing terrorist acts. The report relied on the "research" of one Mustapha Kara-Ali, of Sydney, giving credence to his sensational comments by claiming he was given a $200,000 grant by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship in June last year to investigate the radicalisation of young Muslims in Sydney 's south-west.

This must have been news to the department's officers overseeing the National Action Plan. The department website shows Kara-Ali hadn't received a single cent. Indeed, the grant of just over $150,000 was given to al-Amana College, an independent school managed by one of at least three rival Lebanese Sunni Muslim sects. Kara-Ali's role is allegedly to act as "project manager".

You'd expect research about trends in Muslim youth radicalism be managed by someone with qualifications in sociology, demography and/or anthropology. Kara-Ali holds no such qualifications. His research methodology consisted of focus groups and discussions with 200 young Muslims and a number of imams. How were these people chosen? Which ethnic, sectarian or other backgrounds were these people from? From which parts of Australia? With such questionable methodologies being used at taxpayer expense, it's little wonder Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty rejected Kara-Ali's claims.

Finally, Brian Toohey's words cited above should be heeded by journalists as much as by law enforcement and counter-terrorism professionals. Within Sydney's Lebanese Sunni Muslim community, a sectarian turf war is being waged between the Lebanese al-Ahbash sect (to which Kara-Ali belongs) and other Sunni sects. Each sect uses every opportunity to paint their opponents within the Lebanese Sunni community as terrorists or "Wahhabists".

Which Lebanese sect is truly radical? For Muslim outsiders like myself, they're all as bad as each other. Al-Ahbash spokesmen were gleeful when a handful of young Lebanese Australian men from a competing sect were recently rounded up by Lebanese police. Their sectarian opponents speak with glee of senior al-Ahbash leaders about to be tried for alleged involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

Meanwhile, self-serving polemical rants are made front-page news in the national broadsheet. Intelligence and law enforcement professionals are alert. Government wants us to be alert but not alarmed. Yet some media outlets make it their business to make us all very alarmed without themselves being too alert with facts and logic.