Australia / Israel Review

Below is some material from our ongoing coverage of extremist voices within the largely law-abiding and peaceful fabric of Australian society.

Hizb ut-Tahrir Australia

Evidence accumulated over recent months has again called attention to the urgent need to rein in the activities in Australia of the extremist Hizb ut-Tahrir Islamist movement – which has repeatedly engaged in antisemitism and incitement to violence.

On Nov. 19, 2021, the Facebook page of the Australian branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT Australia) posted a message from the movement’s central media office regarding recent Palestinian casualties in clashes with the IDF. The statement, titled “Zionists and the West’s ‘shared values’ of Genocide”, is full of extreme vilification against Israel. “This Jewish entity is defiling and desecrating the graves of Muslims in Palestine,” it said. “The Jewish entity slaughters Palestinian children with impunity.”

Employing Holocaust distortion, Hizb ut-Tahrir refers to the recent trial of an alleged German Nazi war criminal, Irmgard Furchner, accused of being an accessory to the murder of more than 11,000 Jews. “In Germany, a 96-year-old woman is on trial for ‘contributing to murder’ – she was a typist at Stutthof concentration camp – over 76 years ago.” Her crimes of allegedly having helped murder thousands are unimportant according to Hizb ut Tahrir, since “the Jewish entity forces have murdered over 100,000 Palestinians since 1948; 3,000 children over the past 20 years alone. Will any Zionist be held accountable? Or any of the Western leaders with ‘shared values’ who facilitated and armed them and prevented the Muslims even from the right of defence? Or indeed will any 96-year-old female office assistants be hauled to court from their retirement homes?”

Wartime history is also rewritten by Hizb ut-Tahrir, which falsely claims that “these Jews [Holocaust survivors] were initially welcomed and given refuge in Palestine, which makes the treachery all the uglier.” In fact, the British Mandate prevented many survivors from reaching Palestine, sending them to camps and into exile, while the Arabs of course launched a war against the Jews in general, and the best-known Palestinian leader of the time, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, openly allied himself with Hitler and supported the Holocaust.

On Dec. 28, HuT Australia’s Facebook page shared a press release by the Pakistani branch of the movement urging Arab soldiers to attack and destroy Israel. Addressing a joint Pakistani-Saudi Arabian military exercise, the post called on Muslim armies to defeat the Jewish state: “these exercises are not to dispose of the shackles that have prevented the Muslim forces from liberating the First Qibla [the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem] and occupied Kashmir. These shackles are none other than the agents of the kuffar [infidels] that are currently ruling the Muslim World. Indeed, had the Pak-Saudi military manoeuvres cleansed and disposed of the Jewish occupation of the First Qibla and the Hindu State occupation of Kashmir, there would have been a real cause for announcement, celebration and rejoicing.

“In 1967, the Jewish occupation thrust the dagger in deeper, seizing Al-Quds and Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa,” the message says. “Yet, more than a hundred years since the kuffar occupation of Palestine began, none of the Muslim rulers have made any effort to liberate Palestine, eradicating the Jewish entity, which works actively to demolish the First Qiblah until now.”

The post finishes with what can be understood as a call to use nuclear weapons against Israel, noting that the Pakistani army has in its arsenals “nuclear weaponry and are the seventh largest in the world, whilst the power of Iman makes them supremely brave and capable on the battlefield.”

On his personal Facebook page, HuT Australia leader Ismail al-Wahwah (Abu Anas) echoes the messages of his movement. On Jan. 3, he shared the video of a Friday sermon by Sheikh Yusouf Mukharara (Dec. 31, 2021) given at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque. Al-Wahwah commented on the video: “A word of truth from the heart of Palestine.”

In the sermon, Mukharara harshly attacks the Palestinian Authority (PA) over the meeting between PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Defence Minister, Benny Gantz that took place on Dec. 28, 2021.

The preacher also does not mince words when it comes to “Jews” (not bothering with euphemisms such as “Zionists” or “Israel”).

“The Jews took our homes… They killed our children, imprisoned many of them, and displaced most of us. There is no country on earth that does not have a brother, son, uncle or sister with people [Palestinians] dispersed into the horizons. And the Jews settled our home and slayed our roots.”

Speaking about the Oslo Accords, Mukharara claims the Jews were cheap and greedy: “the Jews were stingy with crumbs. And they divided her [the land] into scattered pieces – this is A and B and C [areas] so there is nothing left of the land under the hands of the people of this country.”

Mukharara ridicules security cooperation between Israel and the PA, arguing the Jews see all of Islam as their enemy: “Their common enemy is terrorism, and what is terrorism? It is the rest of Islam in the hearts of people. The enemy of the Jews is Islam. If the Jews agree to a war with them on terrorism, he [Mahmoud Abbas] agrees with them on the war against Islam.”

Mukharara’s sermon finishes with a declaration that anyone who negotiates with Israel is a traitor in God’s eyes: “I bear witness to God, Lord of the Worlds, who put souls into muzzled bodies, that whoever goes along with this [talks with Israel], fills, defends, promotes and justifies it, is a traitor to God and Muslims. Anyone who defends this shameful and abhorrent image is a traitor to God, his messenger [prophet Muhammad], and the believers. […] God bears witness to those whom my word has reached in all parts of the Earth, that whoever accepts this of the people, their money and their fear, and remains silent about it and its harm, is one of the criminal traitors.”

ASWJ

Ahl As-Sunnah wal-Jama’ah (ASWJ – “the family of the way of the Prophet and the community”) is regarded as one of the most radical Muslim groups in Australia, and is an Australian branch of an international fundamentalist Salafi organisation. In 2018, AIJAC exposed the antisemitism, calls for jihad against Israel and general radicalism of ASWJ.

In May 2021 ASWJ held a conference titled “Al-Quds: Past, Present and Future”, at the Al-Azhar Mosque in Belmore, a suburb of Sydney.

One of the speakers at the conference was ASWJ preacher Mohammad Doar. In 2017, Doar told followers that the Muslims today “are disgraced by the most disgraced nation, the Jews.” He also taught followers that “the doors of Al-Aqsa become closed by those who illegally occupy its land.” According to Doar, Al-Aqsa was Muslim “since the beginning of creation” – promoting the false historical revisionist narrative that rejects any connection between Judaism and Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.

ASWJ preacher Mohammad Doar

In the 2021 conference, hinting at Israel, Doar told the audience that “No matter what the enemies plot, no matter what the enemies spend, from wealth, from artillery, from ammunition – no matter what! […Islam will remain in the areas of Palestine and Syria] until the day of judgement.”

He then discusses the notoriously controversial Islamic Hadith (traditional story attributed to the prophet Muhammad and his followers) Sahih Muslim and Sahih Bukhari, which prophesises that Muslims will kill all the Jews on Judgment Day, and the rocks and trees will tell Muslims where Jews are hiding so they can be murdered. “The last hour [Judgement Day] will not happen unless the Muslims engage in battle against the Yahud [Jews]”, said Doar. At the end of time, “the Muslims will defeat them until the Yahud begin to hide themselves and the rocks begin to speak, and the trees begin to speak, and everything from the creation begins to speak to inform the believers.”

Discussing interpretations by Muslim scholars of that story and of some verses from the Qur’an “which speak about the Yahud causing corruption on earth,” Doar noted that “it never came to their [the scholars’] imagination that the Muslims will reach a weakness again in the future. And that Bani Isra’il [‘the sons of Israel’, meaning the Jews] will have an authority over the Muslims again.”

He suggests that current conflicts over the Temple Mount presage the day when this murderous prophecy will come true.

“These texts”, explained Doar, “show that the battles which take place is at a time where the Yahud have strength and authority, and then the trees, they begin to speak: ‘oh slave of Allah’, and ‘oh Muslim’ [the trees say:] ‘He is a Yahudi behind me.’”

Dr. Ran Porat is an AIJAC Research Associate. He is also a Research Associate at the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation at Monash University and a Research Fellow at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Centre in Herzliya.