Sydney siege gunman Man Haron Monis praised in Isis publication | World news | The GuardianSydney siege gunman Man Haron Monis praised in Isis publication | World news | The Guardian










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Islamic State (Isis)



Sydney siege gunman Man Haron Monis praised in Isis publication









English-language magazine Dabiq encourages followers to undertake similar lone-wolf style attacks on behalf of Islamic State in western countries














Man Haron Monis pictured in Islamic State’s magazine Dabiq.




Michael Safi






@safimichael





Monday 29 December 2014 22.52 EST







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Sydney siege gunman Man Haron Monis has been posthumously embraced by the militant group Islamic State in the latest issue of its slick propaganda magazine.
A glowing account of the 16-hour standoff in Martin Place, in the sixth edition of the militia’s English-language publication, Dabiq, draws on Monis’s actions to encourage similar lone-wolf style attacks in western countries.
“This month, an attack was carried out in Sydney by Man Haron Monis, a Muslim who resolved to join the mujāhidīn of the Islamic State in their war against the crusader coalition,” the story reads.
“He did not do so by undertaking the journey to the lands of the Khilāfah [caliphate] and fighting side-by-side with his brothers but rather, by acting alone and striking the kuffār [non-believers] where it would hurt them most – in their own lands and on the very streets that they presumptively walk in safety.”
The article is geared at encouraging western supporters to carry out similar attacks. “It didn’t take much. He got hold of a gun and stormed a cafe taking everyone inside hostage,” the author writes of the siege.
“Yet in doing so, he prompted mass panic, brought terror to the entire nation, and triggered an evacuation of parts of Sydney’s central business district.”
Monis’s actions are framed as redemptive, cleansing the fringe, self-styled peace activist of a past that included allegations of fraud, accessory to murder and numerous sexual assaults. “Any allegations leveled against a person concerning their past are irrelevant as long as they hope for Allah’s mercy and sincerely repent from any previous misguidance,” the article says.



Quotes from Man Haron Monis featured in Dabiq.


Days before the siege, on his website, Monis pledged his allegiance to the “caliph of the Muslims”, and announced he had ceased to be a “rejectionist”, which was interpreted to mean he was converting from Shia Islam to the Sunni doctrine Islamic State claims to follow.
A radicalisation specialist at Curtin University, associate professor Anne Aly, said the idea that martyrdom could redeem past sins harked back to the crusades. “In the crusades it was all about redemption. Young men were told that by fighting, their sins would be washed away,” she said.
Aly said the theme was emerging among fighters in Syria and Iraq, some of who had begun to refer to themselves online as “born again”.
“The way they’re framing this whole thing is that [fighting for Islamic State] is not just an obligation, it’s the only real pass to absolute cleansing of all your sins,” she said.
Joining Islamic State was also being compared to doing the Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, she said. “In Islam, once you do the pilgrimage to Mecca, that’s sort of a way of starting again.”
She said western recruits to Islamic State often harboured guilt about their lifestyle. “You see this with young boys, where they’re into hip hop culture, girls, nightclubs, gangs; and then the pendulum swings the other way, and there’s a certain feeling of guilt about that culture.”



Issue 6 of Dabiq begins with news of the Sydney siege leads. 


“So this idea that becoming martyred and having all of that washed away is very compelling,” she said.
Pushing Islamic State supporters to commit terrorist attacks in the west has become a key strategy of the militant group, as its territorial advance falters in the face of coalition airstrikes and defeats on the ground.
A senior Islamic State spokesman, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, called in September for supporters of Islamic State to “rise and defend your state from wherever you may be”.
He called on western-based adherents to “strike the soldiers, patrons, and troops of the tawaghit [those who cross the boundaries set by Allah]. Strike their police, security, and intelligence members, as well as their treacherous agents. Destroy their beds. Embitter their lives for them and busy them with themselves.”
Adnani singled out Americans, Europeans (“especially the spiteful and filthy French”), Australians and Canadians as targets in the September speech.
Seventeen-year-old Abdul Numan Haider, who was shot dead after stabbing two police in Melbourne in September, was also claimed by the group as a successful example of a lone wolf.
Monis also featured in the latest edition of al-Qaeda’s propaganda magazine, Inspire, which claimed the gunman was driven to take hostages after his “peaceful protests” failed. A fuller embrace of Monis is a more difficult proposition for al-Qaeda, as relations between its senior leadership and Islamic State remain strained.



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Islamic State (Isis)




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Crime - Australia








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