I am regularly pulled aside at airports for ''random checks''. It is a source of amusement for my wife. I am a young Muslim doctor of South Asian ancestry; it makes more sense than searching little old ladies or stray toddlers, which would occur if the searches were truly random.
As the spate of recent foiled attacks demonstrates, terrorism remains a potent threat to Western countries, including Australia. Would-be terrorists are almost always tertiary educated and from middle-class backgrounds. The aspiring attackers are increasingly of African ancestry. Yemen is becoming the incubator of most concern, and not Pakistan.
There does not appear to be a palpable fear among the public, possibly due to a confidence in security personnel who have been competent in preventing attacks as well as the clumsy and desperate nature of some of the would-be terrorists.
Australia, like the US, has felt less vulnerable to home-grown attacks because of what is outwardly a better integrated and successful Muslim population, unlike say Britain, where unemployment among Bangladeshi and Pakistani youth approaches 30 per cent. But the events of the past year give cause for more concern.
Last week the would-be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was undone by a combination of his own incompetence and the courage of his fellow passengers. He was the world's first underwear bomber, having laced explosives through his jocks.
Locally, astute security services averted a planned attack by Somali youth on Holsworthy army base. Recent attacks suggest home-grown terrorism is a reality in all Western countries with significant Muslim populations. They also dispel the idea that poverty has much to do with attacks aimed at the West. None of the aspirants were poor, and Abdulmutallab was the son of a prominent Nigerian banker and educated at University College London. The Somalis arrested in Australia were also tertiary educated. Their version of jihad had more to do with the immature romanticism of revolution.
A dissection of Abdulmutallab's online blogging reveals a young man struggling with loneliness and agonising over gaining entry to major American universities. He failed and attended a specialist Islamic school in Yemen instead. There he was influenced by the same religious academic linked to the army psychiatrist, Malik Nadal Hasan, who committed mass murder at Fort Hood army base.
The attackers are lonely outcasts whose social disconnection is preyed on and invested with meaning by groups such as al-Qaeda. They are reactions to wider society and often the backward traditionalism of their ethnic communities. Focusing entirely on the battle of ideas argument implies the actors' actions are rational and not rooted in a yearning for belonging and meaning.
This kind of expatriate or home-grown terrorism also needs to be differentiated from suicide attacks in places like Pakistan, Iraq or Palestine. While there is some ideological overlap, in that perpetrators often conflate local or personal grievances into global themes of victimhood, the suicide mission in Pakistan or Palestine is more likely to be conducted by someone relatively impoverished with relatives killed in attacks by either Israelis, Americans or the Pakistani state.
The lone bomber arrested after the Mumbai attacks was sold to Lashkar-e-Taiba by his father to raise his other children. While we call all these various forms of violence terrorism, their origins are different.
There is a specific profile of the radical who may attack the West. The proportion who may do so is very small. But as part of a broader response, it makes sense that they, like me, are subjected to closer attention.
Tanveer Ahmed is a psychiatry registrar.
37 comments so far
Well said... but, why can you not - like all other Muslims, come out and just say.." IT IS THE RELIGION OF ISLAM which is the problem"? In whatever form it is preached...
desert dweller- interpretations of the religion are certainly part of the problem and i have said it many times.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/tanveer-ahmed-islam-must-face-its-uncomfortable-truths/story-e6frg6zo-1111113871804
Some other key points that didn't make the edit are that the London bombers also were linked to the Yemeni scholar and that at the same time Aussie Somalis were arrested the first home grown terrorists in the US also surfaced- also Somali! When the Somalis were arrested a few African leaders in Melbourne suggested it was because our integration policies with them were poor but interestingly the group referred did quite well at school and were tertiary educated.
Mate you're obviously not one of the Politically Correct and are prepared to call a spade a spade. There seems to be a universal ban on the use of the term "Muslim Terrorist"! As you rightly say it's Muslims causing the security concerns and so it should be Muslims who bear the brunt of the increased security checks.
It wasn't that long ago that if you were Irish, especially in UK, you were immediately picked out for interrogation and body searches. People were even convicted for no other reason than they were Irish, hence the term that sprung up for UK justice "innocent until proven Irish".
Mate very pleasing to read an article telling it like it is and how it should be!
Interesting article mate, I advocate a deeper scrutiny of suspicious characters, but racial stereotyping only ends up creating more harm than good and perpetuates ignorance and intolerance. If it is to be as written by Dundee, that muslims are causing the security concerns therefore muslims should bear the brunt of the security checks, does it not follow that christians and jews responsible for creating the fabric of disillusionment that terrorists operate under should not be targeted, whomever they may be. The logic of the article does not provide a solution. Why perpetuate it?
Further, I'm not Muslim. I'm Hindu. Like you Tanveer, I'm well educated, family orientated and go about my business with little concern. I'm proudly Australian. Yet I am stopped and searched at airports. While you may be happy to cope it. I'm not. This country has nothing to fear from me, yet it chooses to because of my appearance and to appease the concerns of those who don't know better.
@d_d.... why can you not - like all other isolated minds that dwell in an intellectual desert, STOP coming out and just saying that broad, simplistic nonsense 'its the religion of Islam....' etc. Ahmed has just given a a cogent, insightful 'psychoanalysis' of the would-be suicide bomber. He, along with the vast majority of Muslims, is as appalled by terrorism as any pseudo-Christian westerner. He points out that it is a small school of thought within Islam which promotes a false interpretation of Islam to capture potential bombers, etc. Sectarian differences between Sunni, Shiite, Islamists and who knows what else are also employed. (Heaven knows, false interpretations of Christianity fuelled the sectarian Catholic-Protestant terrorism which so devastated Ireland and England for so many years, and for some die-hards has not abated). It would be good for moderate Muslim clerics to preach strongly, employing the theology of the Koran, to present a more accurate picture of Islam to their young and impressionable members. Simplistic generalisations of the reactive kind on the part of the West only add fuel to the fire.
Mr Ahmed;
I am sorry we are living through such times. I am grateful for your sane comments and greatly respect your tolerance of what is unfair treatment.
Yes, as someone said, interesting column Ahmed.
"..Focusing entirely on the battle of ideas argument implies the actors' actions are rational and not rooted in a yearning for belonging and meaning...."
This may be true for the actual bombers.... but what about their sponsors and organisers? How much do thinkers like Maududi, Qutb, Azzam and el Banna have an influence on this phenomenon?
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