US embassy cable - 05CANBERRA1381

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 CANBERRA 001381 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR S/CT, EAP/ANP 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/11/2015 
TAGS: PTER, PGOV, PINR, ASEC, KCRM, AS 
SUBJECT: MUSLIM COMMUNITY'S RESPONSE TO LONDON BOMBINGS 
STIRS CONTROVERSY 
 
REF: PERTH 95 
 
Classified By: Political Counselor Woo Lee for reasons 1.4 (b/d). 
 
1.  (C) SUMMARY:  The London terrorist incidents of July 7 
and 21 have sparked a debate in Australia about the value and 
meaning of multiculturalism and about the need for the Muslim 
community to condemn more forthrightly violent extremist 
propaganda within its own ranks.  Australia's relatively 
small Islamic community of around 300,000 has been outspoken 
in the media about its views, both in support of and in 
protest against extremist behavior.  Several Muslim leaders 
have made controversial public statements asserting Osama bin 
Laden's greatness and seeking to vindicate Muslims who use 
extreme methods in (alleged) defense of their religion.  PM 
Howard has strongly denounced such statements, as have some 
Muslim organizations.  Even many "moderate" Australian 
Muslims, however, while renouncing violence, appear to blame 
the West for bringing terrorism upon itself.  END SUMMARY. 
 
EXTREMIST STATEMENTS FROM SOME MUSLIM LEADERS 
--------------------------------------------- 
2.  (SBU) Following the London bombings, a handful of 
Australian Muslim clerics ignited a storm of controversy when 
they asserted in the media that Muslims were not to blame for 
the bombings and that, in any case, this form of violent 
jihad was justified.  Sheikh Mohammed Omran, imam of a 
Melbourne mosque, claimed in a July 11 television interview 
that Osama bin Laden was a "great man" and that he did not 
believe that bin Laden or any Muslim had been responsible for 
the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. or the July attacks on 
London.  In yet another interview, Omran asserted that the 
mastermind behind 9/11 and the London bombings was "100%... 
from the U.S. government."  Meanwhile, Abdul Nacer Benbrika, 
also known as Abu Bakr, an Algerian-born Muslim cleric whose 
Australian passport was revoked earlier this year, told the 
press that he also considered bin Laden a great man, that 
Islam did not tolerate other religions, and that violent 
jihad was a part of Islam which vindicated anyone who fought 
for the sake of Allah.  Benbrika said he thought that it 
would be a "very bad" idea to compel Muslims in Australia to 
respect other religions.  He believed that Islamic law and 
Australian law were two distinct, mutually exclusive codes 
and that, for Muslims, Islamic law trumped all other doctrine 
and allowed them to break Australian laws if need be in the 
practice of their religion.  According to the Australian 
press, a small number of Benbrika's students have attended 
terrorist training camps in central Asia.  Benbrika stated in 
one interview that he would be betraying Islam if he were to 
instruct such students not to train or engage in violence. 
 
3.  (SBU) Both Omran and Benbrika claimed that Australian 
Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) officials 
interviewed them frequently.  The press reported that ASIO 
had raided Benbrika's home during a June operation and 
revoked his passport on the grounds that he was likely to 
threaten the security of Australia or a foreign country if he 
went overseas.  The media also reported on a liaison program 
ASIO had with leaders in the Muslim community to encourage 
Islamic leaders to dissuade young Muslims in Australia from 
engaging in terrorist activity, in addition to providing the 
agency with information on extremism in the community. 
 
GOVERNMENT RESPONSE: EXTREMIST SPEECH "UNACCEPTABLE" 
--------------------------------------------- ------- 
4.  (SBU) In the days following the July 7 attacks, PM Howard 
challenged Australia's Muslim leaders to speak out in their 
communities to condemn terrorism and extremism in their 
midst, noting that the London bombers had been British-born 
Muslims.  He called the statements by radical Muslim clerics 
in Australia "appalling" and "utterly unacceptable to the 
overwhelming majority of Australians."  In a July 29 radio 
interview, the PM said he personally believed that immigrants 
to Australia should "overwhelmingly seek to become an 
Australian...not abandoning in any way the heritage they have 
from another land, but they should imbibe Australian values 
and Australian beliefs."  Islamic community leaders had an 
obligation to "strenuously oppose both broadly and within 
their own communities expressions of support for terrorist 
behavior."  Winning the fight against terrorism, the PM said, 
required strong counterterrorism laws and good intelligence 
services.  But it also entailed excluding from Australia 
people who might pose a threat, having a society where no 
group was impenetrable, and putting an obligation on 
community leaders to "oppose, criticize, and disassociate" 
themselves from terrorist attitudes. 
5.  (SBU) Attorney-General Ruddock joined the debate, saying 
the Government would look into whether incendiary literature 
sold in Islamic bookstores in Sydney and Melbourne breached 
anti-terrorism laws by promoting jihad and justifying suicide 
bombings.  The inter-faith Australian National Dialogue of 
Christians, Muslims, and Jews issued a statement on July 22, 
following Ruddock's announcement, calling on the owners of 
the bookshops in Sydney and Melbourne to withdraw hate 
literature and "apologize for diminishing the culture of 
respect" in Australia.  The organization comprises the 
National Council of Churches in Australia, the Australian 
Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC), and the Executive 
Council of Australian Jewry.  The statement continued, "All 
fair-minded people will be dismayed to learn that notorious 
racist and vilifying texts printed overseas have found their 
way to Australia and have been made available for sale at 
bookshops patronized by customers seeking knowledge of Islam 
and Muslim life." 
 
MUSLIM MODERATES RESPOND TO CONTROVERSIAL STATEMENTS 
--------------------------------------------- ------- 
6.  (SBU) Clearly concerned with the damage being done to the 
image of the entire Australian Muslim community by Omran and 
Benbrika, on July 26 the Australian Federation of Islamic 
Councils (AFIC) sent letters to 200 Muslim clerics and 
community leaders calling on them to condemn terrorism and 
acknowledge that Muslims had been involved in attacks such as 
September 11.  The letter appealed to all Muslims "to disown 
and denounce terrorism and violence in no uncertain terms... 
to act and to win back the hearts and minds of (Muslim) 
youth, and to continue the ongoing efforts to build a culture 
of peace and harmony in Australia."  It quoted a verse from 
the Qur'an that "to take an innocent life is as if you have 
taken the lives of the whole of humanity ... and to save one 
life is as if you have saved the whole of humanity." 
Nonetheless, the letter also subtly attempted to validate the 
reasons behind the increasing radicalization of young 
Muslims: "The Muslim youth is no longer an ignorant group and 
is well aware of the global politics that has (sic) been 
taking place for the past fifty years." 
 
MIXED ATTITUDES EVEN AMONG "MODERATES" 
-------------------------------------- 
7.  (C) On August 1, we met with the President of the Islamic 
Society of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), Mohammed 
Berjaoui, to hear his views on the extremist statements 
recently publicized.  The Islamic Society is one of the 
Islamic councils under the umbrella of AFIC.  Berjaoui 
claimed that most Muslims thought extremist clerics such as 
Omran and Benbrika were "idiots."  He said they had no 
credibility in the Muslim community and that the media should 
ignore the more sensationalist statements and focus on the 
positive comments from Muslims such as AFIC's July 26 
condemnation of terrorism.  Berjaoui noted that his own 
organization had held a media event on July 26 to condemn 
terrorism, following AFIC's request.  He also believed, 
however, that U.S. involvement in Iraq had put America and 
its allies at greater risk for terrorist attacks and he 
blamed the U.S. alliance with Israel for many of the attacks 
the U.S. suffered in Iraq and elsewhere.  He argued that 9/11 
had been the fault of the U.S. insofar as it had trained 
Osama bin Laden to fight in Afghanistan in the 1980s, a 
sentiment also expressed by Sheikh Omran who claimed that 
"the West made (bin Laden) what he is." 
 
8.  (C) The President of AFIC, Dr. Ameer Ali, recently stated 
that he wanted all of Australia's twenty-three Islamic 
secondary schools registered by AFIC in order to "maintain 
standards."  In an August 8 conversation in Perth, Ali told 
us that he wanted the GOA to give AFIC the power to grant 
authority to imams to teach Islam and to approve the visits 
of foreign imams, and that the time had come for Australia, 
like France, to train its own Muslim clergy.  Most of 
Australia's imams were foreign born and trained, Ali said, 
and had "no idea" how to live in Western society.  Ali hoped 
to gain GOA support for his ideas at the Prime Minister's 
upcoming summit with Islamic leaders (septel).  (Comment: Not 
surprisingly, given Ali's views on the need for AFIC control, 
some in Australia's Muslim community have criticized his 
proposals as a power grab.  Even if well-intentioned, 
however, without the power of the GOA behind it, AFIC 
probably would not have the authority to implement its plan. 
Reflecting Islam's lack of hierarchy, at this time AFIC is 
effectively a loosely organized body of Islamic councils 
across the country.  The Islamic Society of the ACT's 
Berjaoui told us AFIC had "no input into (his) work."  AFIC 
could issue advisory statements, but member councils were not 
obliged to follow them.  End comment.) 
 
DEBATE EXTENDS TO MULTICULTURALISM 
---------------------------------- 
9.  (C) In the wake of the UK bombings and the extremist 
statements by some Australian clerics, the media has begun to 
debate the viability of multiculturalism in Australia and 
whether it was inadvertently culpable for extremist thinking. 
 One journalist asserted that a big problem for Australian 
multiculturalism was that it "failed to anticipate that 
immigrants might one day be opposed to the central tenets of 
Western society."  In discussing how young Australian Muslims 
reconciled their faith with growing up in Western society, a 
Muslim journalist wrote in "The Age" newspaper, "Torn between 
trying to respect their parent's cultural norms and being 
attracted to freedoms enjoyed by their peers, the resulting 
internal turmoil is a constant riot in the head."  Some 
editorials argued that Australia's increasingly multicultural 
society allowed space for terrorists to disseminate their 
radical ideas.  Others responded that tolerance should not 
become a casualty of Australia's CT policies and that 
multiculturalism cannot be a scapegoat for all the views that 
Australians dislike.  This latter view, however, has 
distinctly been on the defensive in the wake of the July 
bombings. 
 
PROFILE OF MUSLIMS IN AUSTRALIA 
------------------------------- 
10.  (U) The most recent Australian Census in 2001 listed 
281,576 Muslims in Australia, an increase of forty percent in 
five years.  There are now Muslim communities in all 
Australian States and Territories, with the largest 
population in Sydney, followed by Melbourne.  More than 
one-third of Australian Muslims are born in Australia. 
Australia's Muslim community is drawn from more than seventy 
different countries.  The Census also reported that Arabic is 
the fifth most commonly spoken language in Australia. 
 
COMMENT 
------- 
11.  (C) Some Muslim clerics in Australia have been publicly 
promoting extremist ideas for years without provoking a 
public outcry.  The London bombings and the GOA's aggressive 
response in reevaluating Australia's counterterrorism posture 
have awakened the Australian public to the threat of domestic 
Muslim extremism.  Australia's Islamic community may only 
number around 300,000, but its vocal leaders and their 
agendas are now being more closely monitored by the 
Australian intelligence services, the media, and the general 
public.  While Muslim moderates have publicly opposed 
extremist statements, privately, their views are more 
complicated and may even share aspects of the anti-Western 
ideology that breeds terrorism.  The fact that AFIC, 
Australia's largest and arguably most influential national 
Islamic body, views many Western policies as "attacks on 
Muslims" indicates that Australia still has a long way to go 
in explaining the West to its Muslim community. 
STANTON