Man Haron Monis a chameleon who donned wolf's clothing

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On a day when two innocent people are dead and a nation is struggling to absorb the shocking events in Martin Place, it is hard to care about who the person behind all this misery and terror was.

Man Haron Monis is still being described in some quarters as a "lone wolf". But in fact he was a lone chameleon who donned wolf's clothing once his long battle with the courts had ended in defeat - the last of a series of carefully assembled but ill-fitting costumes in his life's charade.

Martin Place siege gunman Man Haron Monis. Credit: Nick Ralston

When he first came to the attention of the nation's media over his vile, rambling letters to the families of slain servicemen, he appeared on television dressed up in the turban, robes and full beard of a Shiite Muslim cleric. At that time, his website claimed that he was an Iranian religious scholar of rank, issuing rulings or fatwas on all sorts of issues. It didn't take long for members of the Australian Muslim community to smell a rat. "Muslims never ask scholars about who to vote for (that's what anti-Muslim bigots imagine we do)," one wrote.

Years earlier, according to police, he had claimed expertise in "black magic" and numerology - fields that are both shunned by believing Muslims.

Having crossed this divide between mumbo-jumbo and established religion - and faced with a lengthening array of charges against him not only over the letters but also over the alleged murder of his ex-wife, and sexual assault - in recent months Monis changed disguises again.

With Sunni jihadists making headlines around the world since the fall of the Iraqi city of Mosul in June, he jumped across Islam's major sectarian divide and re-invented himself as an Islamist warrior, complete with black flag and headband proclaiming his allegiance.

In an entry on his revamped website dated this month, he declared: "I used to be a Rafidi ["rejecter" - a derogatory term for Shiite Muslims], but not any more. Now I am a [Sunni] Muslim, Alhamdu Lillah ['praise be to God']."

In this tragedy's sickening aftermath, it is not impossible that - just as he opportunistically attached himself to our fears of international terrorism in life - the global terrorist movements might seek to claim him as their own now that he is dead. But I wonder. It may be that a shapeshifter like Man Haron Monis is too slippery even for them to grasp.