“Fear Allah Alone.” During orientation week this year, the traditional welcome to university was replaced with the Koranic command to monotheism on the University of Melbourne Islamic Society’s Facebook page.

The Sydney University Muslim Students’ Association planned to celebrate September 11, the memorial day for the 2996 victims of al-Qa’ida’s attack on the World Trade Centre, with an event featuring the Islamist terrorist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. The University of Western Australia’s Muslim Students Association invited the same Hizb ut-Tahrir spokesman, Utham Badar, to speak on campus this year.

Muslim student associations have emerged as a central pivot for the dissemination of radical Islam across the West. British Prime Minister David Cameron’s advice to federal parliament that countering jihadism demands a battle against Islamist ideology is a message he should take home. The newly released report Learning Jihad documents Islamists’ extensive use of English universities to propagate jihadist ideology.

There has not been an in-depth investigation of Islamic extremism in Australian universities. The silence should not be taken as proof that all is quiet on the Western front.

Sheik Shady Alsuleiman, a popular Islamic preacher in Sydney, appeared recently at the University of Sydney Law School and the University of Melbourne’s National Centre of Excellence for ­Islamic Studies Australia. Al­sul­eiman is the founder of Sydney Islamic College, which provides diplomas in Shariah (Islamic Studies). He is also a prominent community leader, serving as the Imam of United Muslims of Australia. The Daily Telegraph reports that the UMA has raised over $3 million for a new mosque which will feature educational facilities.

In his capacity as secretary to the Australian National Imams Council, the sheik met with ­Attorney-General George Brandis in July to discuss proposed anti-terror legislation. Alsuleiman is, by formal education and popular demand, one of the most highly regarded scholars and religious leaders of Islam in Australia. In a series of lectures available through Islamic networks online, Sheikh Alsuleiman engages in questionable preaching. During a podcast entitled “A Path to Knowledge”, he praises jihadists, shouting: “If you’re going to struggle or sacrifice or go in the jihad, make sure this is for the sake of Allah! … Don’t you ever think, don’t you ever imagine, that the ones that fight and die in the path of Allah are dead! They are with Allah, alive … They are so happy with what Allah has granted them”. Alsuleiman then describes in detail the Paradise that awaits jihadists.

The promise of Paradise is a stock standard lure to jihadists, which entices them to enact suicide and homicide without guilt and often, with enthusiasm for the utopia that awaits. The four brothers who recently left Australia to enlist in Islamic State sent their distraught mother a text message: “We will see you in Paradise.”

In another lecture, “Extremism in Jihad”, Alsuleiman proffers a conspiratorial analysis of Islamist terrorist attacks in the West. Apparently, we enjoy being victims of violence: “You know these attacks that take place in the Western world? Walahi, I believe that our enemies love it so much because it gives them an excuse to attack Islam … They want us to do this … They want this to happen. Believe me, they want it to happen …. They are dying for you to do these actions … they can’t wait for the moment that so-called terrorist attacks take place in a country like this.” Motion to dissent.No one loves to be a victim of violence and if Islamic State’s genocidal jihadists have a post-mortem destination, it won’t be Paradise.

For decades, Western university leaders have indulged the ideology of Islamism, censoring speech that offends its advocates, turning a blind eye to the barbarity of life in Islamist states, and entertaining the vastly destructive fiction that the West is to blame for its violently inhumane rule of law. In fact, it is the ideology of neo-Marxism, whose latter-day prophets espouse postcolonialism and critical race theory, that has produced fertile ground for Islamism on campus.

The academic hard Left and Islamists share a voracious hatred of Western civilisation, her culture, creed and citizens. A report on jihadism commissioned by the Danish Ministry of Justice recognised the similitude: “typical European left-wing terrorists in the 1970-80s were males who had a higher education or were dropouts from university … analysts find that the concept of Umma (caliphate) now plays a similar role to that of the proletariat for leftist groups in the 1960s”.

Victim-blaming or blame-shifting is one of the most common tactics used to deflect critical analysis of Islamist ideology on campus. There is no better weapon in the blame-shifting game than the term “Islamophobia”.

When the Sydney University board intervened to prevent Hizb ut-Tahrir speaking on campus, the Muslims Students’ Association penned a letter dropping the I-bomb repeatedly. Several Muslim community organisations have claimed anti-terror legislation causes Islamophobia. Humanities academics regularly research the supposed prevalence of Islamophobia as a corollary of 21st century thought crimes such as patriotism.

Former president of the Muslim Student Association of Victoria and public commentator Yassir Morsi remarked on Channel 10’s The Project that Islamophobia causes jihadists to join Islamic State. In a Guardian article criticising the cancellation of Utham Badar’s talk at the University of Sydney, Morsi wrote: “Islamophobia is not just bigotry or fear. It’s a frenzy that fills the gaps in our social imagination.”

Like most devotees of post-­colonialism and critical race ­theory, Morsi finds no friend in empirical reality. His theory that Islamophobia drives Western Muslims to jihad is undone by the fact that between 90-96 per cent of foreign jihadists in Islamic State are from Muslim countries, where Islamophilia is all the rage.

Thomas Hegghammer, director of terrorism research at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, has exposed the harm produced by the Islamophobia narrative in the West. He explains that following 9/11, Western intelligence on militant Islam was undermined because “Middle East scholars on both sides of the Atlantic had long shunned the study of Islamist militancy for fear of promoting Islamophobia”.

Islamophobia is the first line of defence for jihadist ideology in the West — not by chance, but by design. The term was invented in the 1990s by The International Institute for Islamic Thought, a front group for the terrorist organisation Muslim Brotherhood.

Abdur-Rahman Muhammad, a former member of the Islamic Institute, witnessed the invention of the word Islamophobia and later described it as a “loathsome term … nothing more than a thought-terminating cliche conceived in the bowels of Muslim think tanks for the purpose of beating down critics”.

I cannot think of two word pairs less well suited to marriage than Western university and political Islam. But for decades, universities have played host to purveyors of Islamism on campus while academics have defended the illiberal ideology that commands the conscience of genocidal groups such as Islamic State.

If universities want to be recognised as a public good, it is time they made good on the promise.

Jennifer Oriel is a political scientist and commentator.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/universities-prove-fertile-ground-for-islamist-propaganda/story-e6frgcjx-1227134648036

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Suhan Rahman posing with a silver-plated AK-47.

A ROXBURGH Park university student is today unmasked as an Islamic extremist who is fighting in Syria and threatening to “spill blood” back in Australia.

Suhan Rahman, 23, has posted pictures of himself holding a silver-plated AK47 and posing with notorious Sydney extremist Mohamed Elomar.

The Australian Federal Police counter-terrorism squad has spoken to Rahman’s family and is monitoring his activity overseas.

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His distraught father said Rahman had brought “shame” on the family.

“We hoped he would never get into this type of thing,” Lutfur Rahman said.

“It is very sad.”

Victoria Police is also investigating a threat Rahman made over social media on Monday. TheHerald Sun has chosen not to detail its specific nature.

Suhan Rahman and Mohamed Elomar.

Rahman is linked to a well-known Melbourne crime family and has a criminal past.

The Herald Sun has been told Rahman left Melbourne with three other men from the northern suburbs.

Yesterday he continued his hateful social media postings, urging others to “let the heads fly and blood flow”.

“Spill blood young aussies. Dont be humiliated especially if u cant b here in sham (Syria),” one post read.

In a Facebook posting he is seen posing with a silver-plated AK47, which he claims was a gift from the Islamic State “government”, beside playboy-turned-terrorist Mahmoud Abdullatif.

Rahman has also posted a picture of himself holding a handgun while posing with former Sydney-based extremist Elomar. Elomar is infamous for being pictured holding two severed heads.

Rahman’s Facebook page and Twitter accounts are littered with photos too graphic to be published.

Suhan Rahman posing with a weapon.

Rahman has come to police attention before.

In 2013 he was sentenced to 12 months’ community service after standing over a witness in an armed robbery case against members of the well-known Tiba crime family.

In his sentencing remarks Judge Mark Dean described Rahman’s prospect of rehabilitation as “excellent.”

Last night, Rahman’s dad, Lutfur, told the Herald Sun he had alerted authorities and begged his son to return.

“Everything was OK, then suddenly he just left the country. It is very upsetting but it was nothing in our control and we have discussed many times with federal police.

“It is a matter of shame that we have been put in this position and this type of offence,” he said.

Mr Rahman said he had received a few messages from his son via text messaging service Viber to let his family know he was safe and well.

His father said Rahman was always very religious, but he did not know how he had become radicalised.

Suhan Rahman.

The son of professional Bangladeshi migrants, Rahman grew up playing Aussie Rules and was months away from finishing an RMIT building management course.

At his court appearance a lecturer provided a glowing reference “about his performance at the university and contribution to student life”.

A source said Rahman went back to football after his 2011 arrest.

“I think he wanted to get some stability back in his life, but he didn’t last at the club long,’’ the source said.

He was engaged, but suddenly fled overseas last year.

In the past few months Rahman’s social media has taken a chilling turn of constantly posted pictures of him holding weapons and gruesome photos of dead bodies.

He has praised the French terrorists who killed 17 in massacres at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Kosher grocery store.

He praised the Kouachi brothers, who carried out the magazine killings, as martyrs.

“May allah accept the french brothers who terrorised france. Allahu akbar. Day by day we will bring the war home to you,” he said.

And he is now urging others to carry out similar attacks in Australia.

“Wallah (I swear to God) theres no good left in u if none of u do something about the australian newspaper mocking our prophet pbuh. Dont be cowards. Wheres the honour whrres the courage. Let the heads fly and blood flow,” he said.

“They say were all charlie. I say that means uze all deserve death and worse. I say stuf the peaceful protests. Spill blood young aussies. Dont be humiliated especially if u cant b here in sham.”

Monash University Global Terrorism Research Centre director Greg Barton said Islamic State encouraged Western fighters to spread propaganda on social media.

But he said Rahman’s “juvenile postings” were also an attempt to seek affirmation from his peers.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/aussie-traitor-wants-to-spill-blood-in-extremist-fight/story-fni0fiyv-1227186345523?sv=94a241996181391c37f3362881cb1975&utm_source=Herald%20Sun&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&net_sub_uid=91928926