Today I discus a true story taken from BBC NEWS
"In the middle of
2012, a friend of Neil Prakash asked the young Australian if he was religious?
Prakash: "I'm a Buddhist but I believe
there is a god, a deity".
Friend repliend:"You are not a
Buddhist then, you are confused".
The simple exchange
marked the beginning of a journey, literal and spiritual, that took Prakash
from his home town of Melbourne to the heartland of the so-called Islamic
State.
Neil
Prakash, Buddhist and sometime wannabe rapper, became Abu Khaled al-Cambodi,
dedicated jihadist and top IS recruiter.
Now,
in the latest twist in that journey, Prakash is reportedly in custody - and
back from the dead. In May 2015, US officials announced that he had been killed
in an air strike in the Iraqi city of Mosul, but according to a report in the
New York Times he was arrested recently in an unidentified Middle Eastern
country.
Australian
media reports say that Prakash handed himself in to Turkish authorities several
weeks ago.
'Land of jihad'
Born in Australia to a Fijian father and Cambodian
mother, Prakash travelled to Cambodia for the first time in 2012, at the age of
20. It was a confusing trip for a young man already uncertain in his faith.
What he saw of Buddhism in Cambodia "didn't make any sense", he said
later, in a slick IS recruitment video.
Prakash
returned to Australia, tempted to convert to Islam but knowing little about the
religion. He began spending time with a group of Muslim friends and learning
about Islam. He decided he wanted to recite the Shahada - a pledge of faith in Allah.
He
made the pledge at a local leisure centre used for Friday prayers. It was, he
said in the IS video, "one of the best feelings I had in my life".
The trip resulted in a chance meeting with Harun Mehicevic, an alleged
extremist from Bosnia who had settled in Melbourne.
Prakash began spending time at Melbourne's Al Furqan Islamic
Centre and bookshop, where he was radicalised by Mehicevic and others, but for
more than a year after his conversion he did not substantially change his way
of life. He grew frustrated and ashamed.
"I
thought to myself, what am I doing? I have a job, I have an income, a car, a
house, what sacrifice have I made? What have I done for the sake of Allah? All
those nights I slept in comfort, I thought about the people overseas in the
Muslim lands that are suffering."
So
Prakash began to dedicate himself unsparingly to Islam. He sold his possessions
and prepared to undertake the Hijrah - a journey overseas for the cause of
Islam. In 2013, he travelled via Malaysia to Raqqa in Syria, the de-facto
capital of IS and, in his own words, "the land of jihad".
'Most dangerous Australian'
Once in Syria, Prakash was invited
by an IS fighter to "come to Dawlah", forcing the young convert to
confess he did not know the Arabic name for the group.
"I
was thinking 'Dawlah? What's Dawlah?' ... I only knew the English name, Islamic
State."
But
IS brought him into the fold. "There are a lot of brothers from Australia
that want to meet you," the fighter said.
Prakash
has since been linked to several terror plots on his home soil, including a
knife attack against two policemen by 18-year-old Numan Haider, who was shot
dead, and a foiled plan to attack police on Anzac Day, Australia's war memorial
day.
In April 2015, a
12-minute IS propaganda video surfaced in which Prakash praises Haider for
carrying out an attack. He also tells the story of his conversion and, with
increasing fervour, calls on others to follow him.
"If
anyone was to tell me three years ago I would be living under Sharia, among
Muslims, I would tell them they were crazy," he says. "But look at
the mercy of Allah, look what he has planned for me, and he can plan this for
you too. All you have to do is believe!"
Announcing
Prakash's death last year, Australian attorney general George Brandis called
the IS fighter the "most dangerous Australian" and said the country
should be "gladdened" by the news, but he warned against complacency.
In hindsight, his statement was both premature and prophetic.
Michael
Keenan, an Australian counter-terror
official, said the government could not comment on the reports that Prakash
was alive.
"The
government reported Prakash's death in May on the basis of advice from the US
government that he had been killed in an air strike," he said in a
statement.
"But
as we have said previously, the government's capacity to confirm reports of
deaths in either Syria or Iraq is
limited. These places are war zones, with many ungoverned spaces."
Todayworldtopnews.blogspot
Comments
Post a Comment