7.30 report

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    ABC News Online
    Last Update: Thursday, August 4, 2005. 8:22pm (AEST)

    Australian Islamic leader defends jihad

    By Nick McKenzie for PM

    The leader of a fundamentalist Islamic group in Melbourne denies he poses a threat to Australia but says it is okay for Australian Muslims to travel to Iraq to fight.

    ASIO has confiscated the passport of Abdul Nacer Ben Brika, known as Abu Bakr, saying he is likely to prejudice the security of Australia or a foreign country if he goes overseas.

    A number of Abu Bakr's younger followers have attended militant training camps in central Asia and one is facing serious terrorism charges.

    Abu Bakr says he is opposed to the killing of innocent people but it would be against his religion to tell his students not to go to Iraq to fight against Australian soldiers.

    Abu Bakr says he rejects assessments that he poses a threat to Australia's security.

    "I am not involved in anything here," he told ABC Radio's PM program.

    "I am teaching my brothers here the Koran and the Sunna and I am trying my best to keep myself, my family, my kids and the Muslims close to this religion."

    Abu Bakr says he teaches his students that it is forbidden to kill innocent people but it is okay for Australian Muslims to fight coalition troops in Iraq.

    "According to my religion, jihad is part of my religion," he said.

    "What you have to understand is that anyone who fights on behalf of Allah, when he dies, the first drop of blood that comes out, all of his sins will be forgiven."

    The Prime Minister John Howard says Abu Bakr is obviously a person of interest to government agencies, so anything he says might prejudice his case.

    "The notion that you can be subject to two laws is a notion I reject, it goes against the very basis of our secular society," Mr Howard said.


    Terrorist training camps


    Abu Bakr is a dual Algerian and Australian citizen.

    Since 1989, he has lived in Melbourne's northern suburbs. He has a pregnant wife and six young children.

    He says he cannot discourage his students from going to Afghanistan or Pakistan to train in terrorist camps.

    "It will have nothing to do with me," he said. "Myself, I tell them what Allah said.

    "They don't ask me. When they do understand the religion, they don't ask me."

    Abu Bakr says he does not accept other religions.

    "I am telling you that my religion doesn't tolerate other religion. It doesn't tolerate," he said.

    "The only one law which needs to spread, it can be here or anywhere else, is Islam."


    Raids


    Abu Bakr says he does not know what ASIO was looking for when it raided his house twice this year.

    "This is my place, where I study, and they searched book by book," he said.

    Three months before the raids, Abu Bakr's passport was removed on the basis of an ASIO assessment that states he "supported the right of Australians to engage in militant jihad overseas".

    It also states that in January 2002 Abu Bakr told ASIO: "Australian authorities have no right to interfere with individuals who wished to dies as martyrs in another country."

    Abu Bakr has denied he is a member of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, an Algerian group banned by Australia as a terrorist organisation and which has links to Al Qaeda.

    But he freely admits he supports the group's aims.

    He also says Osama bin Laden is a great man.

    "Osama bin Laden, he is a great man," Abu Bakr said. "Osama was a great man before 11 September. They said he did it and until now nobody knows who did it."

    But Abu Bakr's views do not represent those of most Muslims. At least one prominent Melbourne Muslim leader told PM he had advised Abu Bakr to moderate his views.

    Sheikh Fehmi Naji el-Iman of Melbourne's Preston Mosque says if people want to support bin Laden, they should do it elsewhere, not in Australia.

    "We don't want things like that over here because this is not the one to do us justice, this is not the one to do us good at all," he told ABC TV's The 7.30 Report.

    "It's not the one to do us harmony which we are seeking between ourselves and between the community that we are with."





 
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