Remembering Australia’s first Jihadist attack on 1 January 1915

Eerily reminiscent of Man Haron Monis and his numerous brushes with the legal system:

He (Abdullah) was not trained as a priest, but he had priests in his family. In the absence of a religious leader, he had begun to take on that role in “Ghantown”, as the North Broken Hill camel camp was known.

As well as acting as imam, he served as the butcher of his community, slaughtering animals in the manner stipulated by Islamic law. The fact that he was not a member of the butchers’ union in the most unionist town in the country brought him into conflict with those who needed little excuse to treat a Pathan from north-west India as an enemy alien. The most aggressive of his persecutors was the local sanitary inspector, a short, mournful-looking Irishman called Cornelius Brosnan.

Broken Hill’s current mayor Winston Cuy, acknowledges there are sensitive issues in the incident such as religion and civilian deaths.

Broken Hill will be recognising it. What are the words you use and how do you commemorate it?

Christine Adams – Curator of the Broken Hill Sulphide St Railway and Historical Museum – provides a sensible pointer:

We think that it needs to be treated with a certain amount of tact. It was two people, what they did was a terrible terrible thing, it wasn't a nation.