Let's become jihad-free zone

Chris Northover PHOTO/FILE

Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were a couple of nice looking young blokes of 27 and 20 who looked like those you see walking down Victoria Ave any day of the week and to whom you could smile and say "Hello" and they may have smiled shyly back.

The biggest problem you would think they faced would be the decision whether to play rugby or soccer this year, or whether Sally's mum would let them take her to the pictures.

But they had never been to New Zealand - being born in Kyrgyzstan of Chechen parents, their family sought political asylum in the United States.

The family was Muslim, committed but not in any sense radical. Then when the boys heard about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from TV, and saw lectures on the internet by the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, they became offended, and then "radicalised".

Again they returned to the internet and on the website of an al-Qaeda affiliate learned how to make a bomb out of various chemicals and a detonator placed into a pressure cooker. They also put in lots of nails, bolts and ball-bearings, so when they exploded it at the Boston Marathon, it killed three people, and caused terrible injuries to people's legs.

Now I am hardly an expert on Islam, but from my reading of published material I believe that, as radical Muslims, the boys believed that the only God is Allah, Muhammad was his messenger, and jihad (holy war) is the way to spread Muhammad's message. They believed that the whole world must be under submission to Allah and observe Sharia law, and that they must wage jihad until it is.

The Boston bombing was their contribution to jihad. If they had died in this "righteous battle", the Holy Qur'an assured them that, as soldiers of Allah, they would be transported straight to paradise.

But they were bunnies really, which is just as well, because if they had made a better bomb and placed it more strategically, they could have killed many more. Their enthusiasm couldn't make up for their lack of training and funding. And this is why I am worried.

There are two main streams to Islam - the Sunni and the Shiite - and evidently they hold different views on the succession of Muhammad and other matters. These matters are taken so seriously by Muslims that it could be said they hate the opposing stream almost as much as they hate Jews and Christians.

The revolution has been devastating Syria for over three years now, with at least 120,000 people killed to date. Young Muslim fighters have been flocking into Syria from all parts of the world, including Africa, the United States, Britain, Europe, Australia and, apparently, New Zealand.

They are fighting the Shiite regime of President Assad at the side of the Sunni Al-Qaeda trained fighters along with those of other radical Islamic organisations. Before and during the fighting they are being trained and further radicalised.

One day the war in Syria will be over and authorities in Europe are concerned that tens of thousands of trained, radicalised and, presumably, funded fighters will want to return to their home countries in Europe, primed and angry. What's the bet that the same thing won't happen to the Aussies and to us? Do you think that we ought to be concerned?

Perhaps we could put signs at the airports that say: "Give peace a chance, mate" or "Jihad-free zone". Might work ...

Chris Northover is a former Wanganui lawyer who has worked in the fields of aviation, tourism, health and the environment - as well as designing electric cars and importing photo-voltaic panels.