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Steven Emerson,
Executive Director
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December 16, 2014
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The
Terrorist Attack in Australia: Coming to a Theater Near You
by Steven Emerson
IPT News
December 15, 2014
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This article originally was published by Foxnews.com.
 The violent
conclusion to the Australian hostage taking terrorist siege was inevitable.
The terrorist Man Haron Monis was killed as the Sydney police swat team
stormed the café. Even though two hostages were killed, the Sydney police
had no choice but to act. After a siege lasting nearly 17 hours, police had
good reason to believe that the self-anointed "Sheik" Haron Monis
was going to make good on his threat to detonate the bombs he claimed to
have unless his demands were met.
There had been an open line between a police hostage negotiator with the
terrorist for much of that time but with up to 10 hostages remaining
captive, it was feared that the terrorist was going to become a suicide
bomber and thus kill everyone in the café. The Sydney police are now
involved in investigating and reconstructing the time line of entire
incident. But there is no doubt that the Australian police saved the lives
of many more hostages.
There should be no doubt that this was a pure act of Islamic terrorism
despite ludicrous assertions by some commentators that his
"motivations" were unknown. We will see all sorts of
"explanations" that because his rap sheet included indictments
for sexual assault and murder, he was not really an Islamic terrorist but
someone who was simply mentally unstable. Well, the same rationale could be
said for all terrorists. After all, who in their right mind would want to
kill innocent civilians because of their religious beliefs?
Islamic extremists do. And to deny their radical Islamic motivation—as
our own government has done repeatedly in refusing to classify Islamic
terrorist attacks as such as in the case of the massacre carried out by
Major Nidal Hassan—is a guarantee that such acts will continue to be
perpetuated especially by lone wolf terrorists. Australian police are
investigating to determine if Monis acted alone or whether he acted in
concert with other Islamic extremists or even at the behest of ISIS itself.
Last month, Monis pledged his allegiance to ISIS and renounced his
Shiite heritage in an online posting that since has been taken down. Our
organization, the Investigative Project on Terrorism, retrieved the page
and translated it. Monis wrote:
"Pledge of allegiance [to ISIS] of Sheikh Haron"
"Allegiance with Allah and His Messenger, and the Commander of
the Faithful – I pledge allegiance to Allah and His Messenger and the
Caliph of the Muslims"
"Praise be to Allah and prayers and peace be upon our Prophet
Muhammad, his family and all his companions, and those who follow them and
peace be upon the Commander of the Faithful, the Caliph of the Muslims, the
Imam of our current era, and praise be to Allah, who made for us a Caliph
of the Earth and an imam who summons us to Islam and holds fast to the Rope
of Allah Almighty and praise be to Allah that I have had the honor to
pledge allegiance to the Imam of our time. Those who swear allegiance to
the Caliph of the Muslims are just swearing allegiance to Allah and His
Messenger…."
His website also contained rants against the Australian government for
their involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Australian intelligence was aware of Monis early on and had an extensive
file on him based on his prior radical Islamic activities in Australia and
electronic surveillance of his communications with Islamic terrorists
overseas.
The terrorist incident in Sydney certainly indicates parallels with the
calls for individually driven terrorist attacks by Islamic radicals
throughout the West. These calls grew in prominence with Inspire magazine,
put out by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) led by Anwar Al-Awlaki
until he was killed by a U.S. drone. In calling for Muslims living in
western countries to carry out lone wolf terrorist attacks, ISIS has copied
the same playbook as AQAP in calling for local attacks whenever and where
ever possible. These attacks are happening all over the world now,
especially fueled beyond the Internet by the rise of social media which has
pushed the message of Islamic terrorism virtually as fast as the speed of
light. In the past two years alone, there have been more than 100 attempted
or successful ISIS inspired Islamic terrorist attacks in Europe and the
United State From Belgium to France to Oklahoma City, no place is immune
from Islamic terrorism, whether it be from returning ISIS veterans or just
those radical Muslims living in the West who are motivated to carry out
attacks.
Moreover, it is a lethal mistake for western leaders to differentiate
ISIS from other Islamic terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hizballah, Boko
Haram, or Al Shabaab. Those Islamic terrorist groups are motivated by the
same underlying motivations behind ISIS: to kill as many of their infidel
enemies as possible and impose Islamic supremacy. The only difference is
that ISIS has declared itself to be a global caliphate; the other groups
are focused on becoming regional caliphates. But their genocidal agenda and
tactics are no different than those of ISIS. The only reason Hamas has not
been as successful as ISIS in killing its infidel enemies is that Israel
has been able to stop Hamas from carrying out acts of mass murder, even
though Hamas tried this past summer when it launched more than 6,000
rockets and missiles at Israel in an effort to kill as many civilians as
possible. Nigeria on the other hand has been unable to stop the horrific
successful attacks by Boko Haram in which more than 300 Nigerians have been
slaughtered in the past year alone.
Australian intelligence agencies probably had the best handle on the
domestic threat by Islamic extremists as evidenced by their successful
interruption of major plots in the past year. Those plots included a plan
to behead Australian civilians and a conspiracy to bomb Australian targets.
But those were plots planned by conspiracies of multiple extremists.
Today's incident, however, shows the difficulties of stopping lone wolf
attacks. What we are witnessing is not the rise of radical Islam. It is
only an extension of the rise of radical Islam unleashed by the 9/11
attacks. The difference is that this phase is not directed by centralized
organizations. Islamic terrorism has now become decentralized, creating a
new challenge for western intelligence agencies. It creates extraordinary
pressure to come up with new methods to monitor internal threats which are
also a technical challenge as it means monitoring meta data of social
media. But the most dangerous and counterproductive act would be to deny
that Islamic terrorist attacks are what they are: Islamic terrorist
attacks.
Steven Emerson is executive director of the Investigative
Project on Terrorism and the executive producer of a new documentary
about the Muslim Brotherhood in America "Jihad
in America: the Grand Deception."
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