When the police took my statement, they also contacted Leader 1 for a statement. Initially he agreed to provide a statement, but kept delaying the matter with excuses that he was travelling or busy. Almost eight months later, in October 2017, he decided to inform the police investigators that he would not be providing a witness statement. It is unfortunate that this is the type of trouble and headache our police officers have to put up with, having to manage such bothersome and radical individuals who operate mosques and believe they are above the law. I withdrew my request to file charges, out of respect for police time and money. I however await the perfect day to release the audio file and, on that day, I will be hitting more than just two birds with one stone.
The Price of Reason and Moderation
My sudden and very frequent appearance in international media came as a surprise to many people. For the first time in Australia’s history, an Australian Muslim imam had taken a stand to call for reform, while exposing and denouncing Islamic extremists in the country. Throughout my television appearances, I began to reveal the plots of the fundamentalist Muslim community against the interests of Australia.
Some fundamentalist Muslims tried to silence me by targeting the journalists who covered my stories and activism. That attempt to silence me failed because of my large online audience, as I am able to get my message across through social media. Therefore, instead of inviting me on a panel to challenge my message and give me an equal opportunity to speak my mind, they resorted to attempts to assassinate my character.
I have encouraged my tens of thousands of online followers to engage in the debate against extremism, and by contacting their leaders and opinion makers to express concerns about the spread of intolerant Islamism within their areas. I have focused on issues of national security and not on myself, and I believe that it is only fair that you be informed of the difficulties I have endured throughout this time. Here is a brief history of the tactics I have encountered, which you too may expect when you speak out against the infiltration of extremists in the media and government departments.
First, they try to discredit the messenger. In my case, this took the form of being called a “fake shaikh.” This tactic lasted only until I had my qualifications independently confirmed. My critics had failed to mention my challenge to any qualified imam to debate me, if I was misrepresenting the words in religious books. I might add that, to this date, no Muslim cleric has accepted the challenge. I leave to you to decide what inferences can be drawn from this failure to debate me.
Secondly, they provided platforms for supposed “moderates” to rail against me, and tried to use them to support the current discredited narrative. They made the mistake of trying to create debates where the narrative would be the centerpiece and not the actual issues I had raised. Among the charges levelled at me was that I was trying to create one world religion. I would not cooperate with these attempts to smother unpleasant truths, and after a couple of failed attempts that tactic was quickly abandoned.
Thirdly, they attacked me at a personal level. While recognizing that defamation could lead to legal action on my part, they passed their accusations behind the security of quotation marks as well as sly inferences about my motivations and dark allusions to my past. As I would not lower myself to engaging with such absurdity, this approach was left to their internet trolls.
Fourth was what is known as the guilt trip. I was told that I was putting moderate Muslims or the broader community at risk. The guilt trip option is mostly used when no rational argument can be raised against your position. My stance is well known, many Muslims are good people, and my advocacy is always against the extremists who hide within the Muslim community.
Fifth, they have used actual force. I have personally been subjected to physical abuse, both in public and private. These include death threats, damage to my car and home, and actual assault. These are the actions of those who have no defense against truth except for intimidation. These attacks on me have come largely from members of the Muslim community. I would say that these actions prove my point that there is indeed a fanatical and violent element within our Muslim community.
Sixth, they have tried blacklisting the messenger. A large media organization made the effort to contact other media outlets, to try to deny me access to any public forum. This of course was reported to me by these other agencies, who were themselves quite surprised by this tactic. The only result was to give my message more credibility.
Seventh, they use outright distortion. This tactic is becoming quite prominent, and it takes two main forms at the moment. Firstly, when the media reports a terror incident, it is reluctant to admit early on that the perpetrator(s) are Muslim when that is in fact the case, and secondarily there is a recent trend of saying that “this person had mental health issues.” It seems too hard for the deluded to address the fact that we are dealing with Muslim extremists. One example was when the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) described me as an extremist, when it is obvious to any reasonable person that I am simply a peace advocate.
These are the kinds of attacks that I have personally experienced; no doubt others will be developed from time to time. All we can do is stay alert to the various twists and turns of our opponents. I say opponents because that is what they are. Our enemies are extremists who want to drag the world into a dark medieval pit of ignorance, bigotry, and death. Our opponents are largely well meaning but deluded folk who think that appeasement will buy them security. They would be wise to heed the old warning: “Those who feed the tiger only gain the privilege of becoming its last meal.”
Once the “far left” and Islamic extremists had united to discredit me, I decided to approach the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, the world’s oldest think tank on international defense and security, of which Queen Elizabeth II is the patron of the parent branch in England, to conduct an investigation into my credentials and qualifications. RUSI agreed and released the following statement on 20/12/2017, making me the only imam with an examination into his credentials by a royal institute.
Revealing the Hidden Realities
I wasn’t born a reformist, and the thought of liberating Muslim communities from the corruption that has been introduced by Islamist clerics didn’t strike me until 2014. Before then, I was a typical Islamist cleric who preached violent Sharia Law, even though I never implemented it. My sermons were infested by corrupt ideas and teachings such as wife beating, as it was part of my educational programming which had prepared me to pursue a career as an apologist missionary for the governing Islamic body in Iran.
The Iranian regime had sent me on trips to western countries to preach the ideology of its Islamic revolution as well as to invite Muslim youth to study within their seminaries. In 2017, I submitted a full report to the governments and intelligence agencies of these countries, exposing Iranian regime affiliates and informing them of everything they needed to know.
Within the Islamic seminaries of Iran, students and aspiring scholars are taught concepts which influence their identities and characters. Being a victim of these corrupt teachings, I found myself living a backward life, drowning in a morally bankrupt ideology. Most Islamic students’ lines of thinking are extremely narrow, as there is very little room for dialogue regarding the essential matters of faith. I knew that I had to be careful about what questions I asked, to avoid giving my extremist teachers the impression that my faith and level of belief were inferior to theirs, or that I might be doubting some of the Islamic rulings. We were taught useless knowledge as though it was beneficial science – and we had to accept it because “it came from God.”
An important question people ask me regularly is: If you speak about the corruption and extremism that has infested the Islamic religion, why can’t every other imam and Islamic scholar do the same? In reality, during previous years, I was concealing the truth; and the majority of Muslim scholars today are also concealing the truth about certain aspects of Islam. This