Opinion
Here’s a first: a Muslim prayer room used as a hotbed of extremism. I’m sure that’s never happened before!
I mean, it’s not as if places like Roselands Mosque in NSW have ever featured imams preaching, “Allah! Kill the Zionist Jews and purify al-Aqsa from Jewish abomination!” (That’s from a friend of Sonny Bill Williams, by the way: one Kamal Abu Mariam.)
Or that Muslim “Saturday schools” are run by “radical, terrorism-backing” clerics. Or that Muslim extremist “prayer groups” are indoctrinating young children even without their parents’ consent.
The problem is that too many people in positions of responsibilty apparently don’t want to hear about it.
Perth authorities were warned a Muslim prayer room at the school of the 16-year-old self-described “jihadi” shot dead by police was being used to spread extremist ideologies.
Parents at the prestigious Rossmoyne Senior High attended by extremist teen James Hollands have called for the school to close its Muslim prayer room amid fears it is being used to try to radicalise vulnerable students.
Previous warnings about the junior jihadi room appear to have fallen on deaf official ears.
The parents of a Rossmoyne student wrote to Western Australian education minister Tony Buti and several other elected officials flagging their fears about attempts by other students to radicalise their son just a month before Hollands stabbed a random passerby and was killed by police.
The father of the student is understood to have raised concerns that a group of Muslim converts at the school were using a dedicated prayer room as a meeting place in which to try to recruit more children.
The Australian understands Hollands was among the student cohort at the centre of concerns.
Of course, the question is, just what is a state school doing with a prayer room in the first place?
Frustrated by the lack of action from the school and the education department, he then started an online petition calling for the removal of prayer rooms from all state schools in Western Australia.
The petition, addressed to Dr Buti and launched on 29 April, said the presence of prayer rooms in state schools contravened ethical standards and infringes on regulations concerning the separation of religion and state within schools and could also facilitate radicalisation.
Well, as we see, there’s no “could” about it.
Neither the school nor the WA government seem to have learned from the weekend’s bloody violence.
One school parents said frustrated mothers and fathers had again called for the school to shut down the room in the wake of Saturday night’s incident, but had been told that the facility would remain.
Dr Buti on Tuesday confirmed that he had received a letter from the parents on April 3, in which they expressed concerns that another Rossmoyne student was attempting to radicalise their child. The boy attempting to recruit their son, Mr Buti said, was named Mohammed.
Well, that narrows it down.
The WA government is busily trying to cover its arse.
Dr Buti told ABC radio […] the letter was not directly concerned with the behaviour of Hollands.
“The issue was about radicalisation. The letter did not express concern about community safety, it was more concerned about their child being radicalised,” Dr Buti said.
Well, they didn’t know which budding jihadi at the school was the biggest threat, so why do anything at all?
Furious parents are understood to have expressed their anger over the school’s handling of Hollands and the broader cohort of students, as well as the school’s commitment to maintaining the prayer room.
Hollands was filmed in 2022 throwing a small homemade explosive device into a toilet block at the school. WA police commissioner Col Blanch on Tuesday morning confirmed that that incident was the catalyst for Hollands to be placed into a deradicalisation program, under which he was restricted to using a basic phone without internet connectivity.
However, parents from the school have said that Hollands still had access to a laptop and has been seen at school watching “ISIS material” that he carried on a thumb drive.
The Australian
So, this is how Anne Aly’s much-vaunted “de-radicalisation” works?
Face, meet palm.