26th Nov 2018, 5:05 PM – Senate Motions - Radical Islam - Denounce

The majority voted against a motion introduced by Queensland Senator Barry O'Sullivan (Nationals), which means it failed.

Motion text

That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

(i) multiple Australian Islamic terrorists, including the Bourke Street terrorist, ISIS suicide bombers and would-be domestic terrorists, have links to the Hume Islamic Youth Centre,

(ii) ABC's 4 Corners journalist and executive producer, Ms Sally Neighbour, writing for The Australian in 2006, stated that Hume Islamic Youth Centre Emir Mohammed Omran is a leader of "...the fundamentalist Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jamaah Association – now regarded as the most radical Islamic group in Australia",

(iii) in the 2006 article, which reported on a meeting between Sheik Mohammed Omran and Abu Bakar Bashir, head of the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah, which was responsible for the 2002 Bali bombings, Ms Neighbour describes Sheik Omran as "...well-connected in international Salafist circles. A Jordanian-born migrant to Australia, his friends included the British-based al-Qa'ida luminary Abu Qatada, whom Omran hosted in Australia in 1994. Interviews with Osama bin Laden and Abu Qatada were among the items featured in the online magazine Nida'ul Islam (Call to Islam), published by Omran's acolytes in the Islamic Youth Movement and read widely in Australia",

(iv) despite repeated cases of radicalised lslamists attending the Hume Islamic Youth Centre, Sheik Omran this week criticised calls for imams to increase actions to combat extremism – with counterclaims that his greatest power was only to call Triple O when confronted with a threat – and instead accused Australia's police and security agencies of complacency over the movements of the Bourke Street Islamic terrorist, and

(v) Sheik Omran, who is regarded as arguably Australia's most senior Salafist cleric, would face significant punishment and hardship if he was to make comparable criticism of Jordanian security agencies, where it is a criminal offence to criticise the king and government officials; and

(b) calls on the Senate to:

(i) condemn radical Islam, whether in speech or deed,

(ii) call on the Islamic community in Australia to continue to condemn radical Islam in speech and deed, and reaffirm its commitment to working alongside Australian security agencies to address radicalisation in all its forms, and

(iii) call on Sheik Mohammed Omran to publically retract his criticism of police and intelligence services and denounce all radical Islamic speech and jihadism.