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The reality of religiously-motivated terrorism in Australia

By Laurence Maher - posted Friday, 30 December 2016


MHK also gave indications of what he was planning in private messages. On 7 May 2015, in the course of a Facebook exchange with a user identified as AW, MHK said that he had deleted his Facebook account permanently. AW responded, "If you leave permanently I will surely miss you." MHK replied that he would miss AW too but, in a signification of martyrdom, MHK said they would meet as birds in Paradise.

Justice Lasry sentenced MHK on the following bases:

  • The only reason the bombs were not fully completed and not then activated by MHK in a public place was because the police intervened and arrested MHK. His intention to use them, as he had been urged to do by JH, knowing their potential consequences, persisted until the intervention of the police;
  • This was not a case involving a mental illness with an identifiable cause and treatment. What was of concern was MHK's "adherence to ideas";
  • The risk of MHK engaging in general criminal conduct was low. The only substantial risk of his re-offending was associated with violence inspired by religious belief or a perversion of religious belief. The evidence did not identify strong emotion associated with remorse for what MHK had done, and for whatever it was worth, Justice Lasry could not discount a reversion to his previous position, though he regarded MHK's position as being that such a thing was less likely the more progress MHK made.
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MHK was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment and directed to serve at least a minimum period of 75% of the head sentence which was fixed as five years and three months before being eligible for release on parole. The 579 days MHK spent in custody awaiting trial was to be reckoned as pre-sentence detention and recorded as time already served under the sentence. But for MHK's plea of guilty and all of the matters associated with that plea, Justice Lasry would have sentenced him to 11 years' imprisonment with a minimum of eight years and three months before being eligible to apply for release on parole.

Among the strong recommendations made by Justice Lasry was, first, that the Adult Parole Board of Victoria consider transferring MHK to a Youth Justice Centre so as to avoid him being held in an adult prison and, secondly, that he not be incarcerated with any other person serving a sentence for a similar offence where extreme and violent Islamic views were at the basis of the offending.

Every case has to be treated on its own distinctive facts. It should be beyond controversy that the murderous religious ideas which drove MHK to embark on a proposed terrorist attack and the circumstances which led him to embrace and put them into effect so swiftly should be a matter of full and frank public discussion.

Nevertheless, one abiding curiosity of the response of some observers in secular democracies to the ongoing pattern of global terrorist activity in the past two decades has been the inclination to suppress all public discussion of religious motivation of terrorist violence.

The curiosity is not because religious motivation and violence are incompatible. Rather, it arises because of a sectarian determination of censors to insulate one specific set of Abrahamic religious ideas, beliefs and practices from critical inquiry. Another feature of the reality of that contemporary terrorist denialism is that the more the urge is given voice, the more the debate about religious ideas has intensified.

One clue to what is driving that denialism was given on 23 December 2016, when the Victorian Premier, Mr Daniel Andrews, spoke at a media conference concerning the arrest of several young men in suburban Melbourne that day. Some of them have since been charged with preparatory terrorism offences.

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The Premier concluded his remarks at the media conference with the following emphatic declaration:

What was planned here; what it will be alleged was going to occur, if not for the professionalism and hard work of our police, were not acts of faith. They were in their planning acts of evil, it will be alleged criminal acts, crimes, nothing more and nothing less. And all of us particularly at this special time of the year should remember that and understand that. Our values, our multiculturalism, our diversity is a great strength, a great strength – perhaps our greatest strength. And we should always remember that even when confronted by these sorts of challenges, challenges that so many in the world are facing.

If the Premier considers that "diversity" is a great strength, what is there to fear in diversity of opinion about religious ideas? Ideas about "faith" are no different than any other ideas. They stand or fall on their merits.

A wiser Premier, one informed, for example, by Justice Lasry's sentencing remarks in the MHK case, would have resisted the temptation to rush to judgment and to stifle public debate about religious ideas, beliefs and practices.

And, if such a person had entertained lingering doubts, she or he might have then considered the remarks of Justice Michael Croucher in Melbourne on 5 September 2016 in sentencing an 18 year old man (with "a mind corrupted by lunatic clerics") who had pleaded guilty to a charge of doing acts in preparation for, or planning, a terrorist act.

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About the Author

L W Maher is a Melbourne barrister with a special interest in defamation and other free speech-related disputes. He has written extensively on Australian Cold War legal history.

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