By Daniel Stacey
SYDNEY--After police raided homes in September to stop what they
described as a plot by Islamic extremists to behead people here,
Dr. Jamal Rifi, a Muslim community leader, organized a barbecue at
which he and some friends wore T-shirts that read "Proud
Australian."
The following week, Dr. Rifi found his family in tears.
Commentators linked to hard-line Islamic groups had bombarded his
Facebook page with abusive messages accusing him of denying his
religion by supporting Australia's government. The attacks
escalated after an Afghan-born 18-year-old was shot dead in
Melbourne after he had stabbed two officers.
One message, which he said came from an account linked to the
Islamic State extremist group, featured a picture of slain U.S.
journalist James Foley with his severed head and a warning: "That
is your destiny."
Dr. Rifi and other moderate Muslims in Australia say they are
facing a community backlash for supporting the government's
clampdown on Islamic State recruits and other perceived terror
threats.
Keysar Trad, the Muslim founder of the Islamic Friendship
Association, an interfaith group, said he got blasted when he
criticized Islamic State on Twitter.
"Why would you put yourself and family at risk? Wrong move,"
read one message from an Australia-raised, Islamic State militant,
according to Mr. Trad.
Australia is home to about 476,000 Muslims, many of whom fled
the violence in Lebanon in the 1970s and '80s. Many built
prosperous lives and worked to promote assimilation in mosques and
community centers, inviting politicians to speak and holding open
houses for people of other faiths.
After migrating from Lebanon in 1984, Dr. Rifi became a
general-practice doctor and was elected to a state commission
promoting multiculturalism. He helped found the groups Muslim
Doctors Against Violence and the Christian Muslim Friendship
Society.
While many in his generation adapted well, some of their
offspring have found life here more alienating. Muslim youth
unemployment runs at twice the national average. Studies have shown
that roughly half of Australians hold anti-Muslim sentiments.
Security agencies estimate more than 100 Australians have traveled
to the Middle East to join jihadist groups.
Australia's older Muslims believe it is better to "keep your
head down, build your mosques, do the basics--but lie low," said
Uthman Badar, an Australian spokesman for Hizb ut-Tahrir, an
Islamic political movement. "The new generation is not like
that."
The group's members include some who Dr. Rifi says bullied him
online; Mr. Badar said his group doesn't encourage members to
attack moderate Muslims.
The pressure moderate Muslims face is mounting elsewhere, too.
In August, Canadian media reported that a moderate imam received
death threats through Facebook from an Ottawa-raised Islamic State
fighter in Iraq. Weeks earlier, Islamic State released a video
slamming a number of Moroccan preachers who had warned young people
off joining the extremists.
Tensions have been exacerbated in Australia, some Muslim leaders
say, by the government's crackdown on perceived terror threats.
Australian legislators are pushing for tough new antiterror laws
and plan to block radical Islamic preachers from entering the
country. On Oct. 2, the government proposed banning women from
wearing burqas in public viewing galleries in Parliament. Lawmakers
rejected the plan after the national security service warned the
measure could fuel further extremist recruitment.
Mr. Trad and Dr. Rifi said at least some of the online threats
they've received came from a person identifying himself as Mohammed
Elomar, an Australian who is believed to be fighting with Islamic
State in Syria. The 30-year-old, who was raised in Sydney, achieved
notoriety, along with another Australian, for posting images of
themselves on Twitter this year holding severed heads.
Mr. Elomar's father, Mamdouh, is a Muslim businessman who
travels in some of the same circles as Dr. Rifi and attended the
Sydney barbecue.
"I'm very shamed. I'm not proud of what he's doing," Mr. Elomar
was quoted by local media as saying of his son in September. He
couldn't be reached for comment.
Samier Dandan, president of the Lebanese Muslim Association,
said he has largely given up using social media because of abuse
from people in the Muslim community calling him a traitor to his
religion, as well as attacks from racist and Islamophobic groups.
His association is widely regarded as a moderate group with events
that feature government speakers.
The Australian Attorney General's office said it is working with
social media platforms to block Islamic State accounts. A Twitter
spokesman said the company reviews all accounts reported to violate
its rules against "unlawful use and violent threats." A Facebook
spokeswoman said terrorist organizations and "the promotion or
celebration of terrorism" aren't allowed on the site.
Dr. Rifi and other Muslim leaders trace today's extremism in
part to December 2005, when a fight between young Muslim men and
two white lifeguards on a suburban beach near Sydney led to a
demonstration that drew some 5,000 whites, some of whom chanted
racist slogans and viciously attacked dark-skinned beachgoers. In
the days the followed, gangs of youths, mainly of Arab descent,
rampaged across Sydney's predominantly white suburbs, smashing
windows with machetes, baseball bats and other weapons.
Afterward, Dr. Rifi helped start a program called "On the Same
Wave" that trained young Muslims to be lifeguards. But he noticed a
change.
"It gave them a taste of revenge, and the pleasure which comes
with it," Dr. Rifi said. "They said: 'We restored the community's
honor by retaliating.' And that's where the danger, to me, started
to happen."
Some younger Muslims started forming their own groups outside of
mainstream mosques and stepped up their confrontational
tactics.
"The young people start to think that we are just appeasing,
pacifying, or hiding the reality," said Mr. Trad. "That's what some
of the young hotheads start to think: That we're too weak to tell
the truth."
At one recent event organized by the Lebanese Muslim
Association, a young Hizb ut-Tahrir member disrupted a speech by
Scott Morrison, the immigration minister, shouting "Liar, you're a
liar," according to a post on the young man's Facebook page and Mr.
Badar, the Hizb ut-Tahrir spokesman.
"They say we're not their leaders and shouldn't be speaking on
behalf of the community," said Mr. Dandan, the association
president.
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