Islamic terrorism cited as number one risk

The head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, Mike Burgess (pictured), warned at the end of February this year that Islamic terror was the top threat facing the nation.

He said: ‘We have seen heightened community tensions that have translated into some incidents of violence connected to protest activity … Sunni violent extremism poses the greatest religiously motivated violent extremist threat in Australia.’

In May, a teen in the Western Australian city of Perth was shot dead by police after attempting to stab a number of men. He had claimed that he was doing this because of the Australian government’s support for Israel. The boy was a teenage convert to Islam. A group of parents had warned that a Muslim prayer group at the school was being used to spread extremist ideologies. The boy said: ‘I am going on the path of Jihad for the sake of Allah.’ He had already spent two years in a ‘deradicalisation’ programme.