World-wide web of terrorist treachery

IT would seem a huge fetch to tie accused underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, US-born terrorist recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki, al-Qaeda propagandist Samir Khan and a renegade US army major in a web with a Sydney mosque, but there is a clear link.

All are connected through the lethal tentacles of terrorism's international reach. Abdulmutallab achieved some notoriety for becoming arguably the first terrorist in history to attempt to bring down a Northwest Airlines aircraft by exploding his underpants on Christmas Day in 2009. He was a follower of Awlaki, as was Khan (a US citizen born in Saudi Arabia) who was the editor of Inspire, al-Qaeda's journal. Another devotee was Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people at Fort Hood two years ago. Last, but by no means forgotten, are the young members of the mosque who enthusiastically arranged for Awlaki to address them by a live hook-up two years ago. Fortunately, Awlaki and Khan were killed in Yemen last Friday when their car was hit by an AGM-114 Hellfire missile fired from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) believed to be a General Atomics MQ-1 Predator. It was a calculated follow-up to the daring strike that eliminated Osama bin Laden at his compound in Pakistan on May 2. The underpants bomber, Abdulmutallab, a 24-year-old, well educated Nigerian from a well-to-do family, is about to go on trial in Detroit. During a preliminary jury selection hearing this week he bizarrely proclaimed that Awlaki was still alive. That seems most improbable but anyone who sets fire to their own underpants as they are wearing them is unlikely to ever be accused of having completely rational thought. While the young Nigerian may have seriously overestimated his mentor's survival abilities, there is no doubting Awlaki's skill at recruiting willing followers. American-born Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the US army psychiatrist charged with killing 13 people at Fort Hood in November, 2009, is understood to have attended Awlaki's sermons when he was an imam in the US and to have received religious advice from Awlaki by e-mail. Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistan-born naturalised US citizen who attempted to explode a bomb in New York's Times Square last year, was also a follower of Awlaki's fiery anti-Western rhetoric. Even earlier, Awlaki had preached to three of the 9/11 hijackers at a mosque in San Diego, according to US anti-terrorist officers. Unsurprisingly, no one has taken credit for organising his address to the Sydney mosque group but here is how it was promoted in an online forum: "You have heard his lectures on iPods, you have heard his lectures in your car, now you have the opportunity to hear him LIVE! "This coming Monday, 9th Jan (2009) Imam Anwar Al Awlaki will be giving a LIVE talk via phone to our brothers and sisters in Australia. "Don't miss out on this excellent opportunity. "Monday 9th February, 9:30pm @ [the"> Mosque." The forum records posts from an enthusiastic audience who awaited the lecture with appalling eagerness. After the event, Sheik Taj el-Dene Elhilaly, to his credit, condemned the episode in an interview with the Fairfax press. "Anwar al Awlaki is like a virus produced by the body wanting to fight a microbe," he said. "They are like fast food who give no substance and no spiritual nutrition. "Our young people these days like loud voices. They seem to like Rambo and Schwarzenegger and the imam who raises his voice and appears tough." Unfortunately viruses survive extreme conditions and reappear in mutant forms, no doubt there is another radical Anglophone somewhere in the blogosphere practising his lines and preparing to make YouTube or the other social networks his platform. Awlaki's best hope of any resurrection form of life now seems to lie with the internet, where his videos remain in cyberspace. His messages were interpretations of the Koran and the surah and other associated writings which Muslims rely on to guide them. Nabila Ramadani, an expert on Islamist movements interviewed by the Al Arabiya network, said his fluent English and mastery of modern communications technologies made Awlaki the epitome of the modern terrorist. He was even seen as a potential successor to Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 mastermind was killed in Pakistan. So glib was he, that he was sought as a commentator on Islamic affairs by The New York Times and other publications after the 9/11 attacks, and was presented as a person who could possibly bridge the gulf between extremist Islamists and the West - at least that was what the liberal US media believed at the time. It almost goes without saying that he condemned the attacks and denied that true Muslims could have been responsible, and presented so plausibly that he was invited to be the first imam to deliver a sermon at the US Capitol. Less than a year later he published an essay titled Why Muslims Love Death on the Islam Today website. Duplicity was not the only trait he shared with the 9/11 murderers, he was also arrested twice for soliciting prostitutes when he was living in California and was about to be arrested again for prostitution-related offences when he fled to the UK, where he continued to preach the virtues of martyrdom. Awlaki was a murdering corrupter of youth. A sleazy fantasist who promised his followers martyrdom as he procured whores. Still, there remain some among the Left who believe that the US should have put its soldiers' lives at risk and attempted to capture Awlaki alive rather than summarily execute him. Truly, stupidity knows no boundaries but as his followers are killed or brought before the courts after their failed attacks it is to be hoped that those who cheered his speeches in Lakemba are critically re-examining Awlaki's deceitful personality and rethinking his depraved message.