Farhad Jabar was not a lone wolf murderer - academic with $.5M grants used Curtis Cheng's murder to promote lone wolf theories
Thursday, 28 April 2016
Fifteen-year old Farhad Jabar was not a lone wolf murderer - 4 other men allegedly acted in concert with their 15 year old Muslim mate. They were all allegedly part of an Islamic State cell.
Here's the ABC today, an organisation not given to overstating Islamic links.
Curtis Cheng murder: Four alleged Islamic State terror cell members have bail denied
Posted
Four members of an alleged Islamic State terror cell who appeared at Goulburn Local Court over the shooting of a New South Wales Police employee have had their bail formally denied.
Milad Atai, Mustafa Dirani and Raban Alou all appeared in court via video link this morning.
None were legally represented and chose not to apply for bail.
A fourth man, Talal Alameddine, was represented in court but his lawyer also chose not to apply for bail.
During the brief appearance, Atai held up his index finger to the camera, a gesture associated with Islamic State.
Yesterday he became the fourth person charged in connection to the fatal shooting of police accountant Curtis Cheng at Sydney's Parramatta police headquarters last October.
Fifteen-year old Farhad Jabar was identified as the gunman who was shot dead by police after the attack.
ENDS
Curtis Cheng was allegedly murdered by 5 Islamic State terror cell members acting in concert to achieve their Muhammad inspired end. The idea of an Islamic State terror cell in Sydney is a shocking and frightening development. More frightening still is the inability of many in our community to face the facts and to call it for what it is.
Let's go back to the headlines when Mr Cheng was shot in the back of the head by an Islamic-gown wearing shooter shouting Allah uh-Akhbar.
At the time "responsible" commentators went out of their way to avoid mentioning Islam or to imply any connection to any group. Much of the early reporting took the "troubled youth" and lone-wolf angle.
But the cake is taken (and eaten) by this Dutchman, one of the world's master grant-getters and self-promoters.
Ramon Spaaij has his own website dedicated to promoting Ramon Spaaij
There are lots of photos of Ramon in a quick Google search
This is what Ramon's website says about Ramon,
"Ramón conducts internationally recognised research on violent extremism and lone wolf terrorism.
Ramón is a regular media contributor. He has contributed to a wide range of media including The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Boston Globe, The Irish Times, The Globe and Mail, El País, The Australian, BBC, ABC, SBS, and many others."
A day after Curtis Cheng was shot and killed to the chant of Allah uh-Akhbar, Ramon Speeij, a former Deputy Director of the La Trobe Refugee Research Centre leapt into print to use Mr Cheng's murder to draw attention to his lone wolf theorising.
The Conversation website was happy to carry this story along with this disclaimer about Mr Speeij's global business:
Disclosure statement
Ramon Spaaij receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Institute of Justice (USA).
Does he what! More on that shortly. Here is his discredited and disgraceful story theorising about the reasons Curtis Cheng was lying in the morgue - and all to suit his own grant funding.
In the latest attack, 15-year-old Farhad Khalil Mohammad Jabar shot dead police employee Curtis Cheng at close range outside the New South Wales police headquarters in Parramatta last Friday. Farhad continued to fire his handgun before being shot dead by officers who responded to the shooting. Police believe he acted alone and that his actions were politically motivated.
There is still much we do not know about lone-wolf terrorism. While this is a growing field of research, to date there are only a handful of empirically based academic studies. But this much we do know.
Mixing personal vendettas with political grievances
Much of the inquest into the Sydney siege has centred on the question of whether Man Haron Monis had a political grievance or was primarily motivated by personal issues. But this is a false dichotomy.

Lone wolves combine various political complaints with any number of highly personal vendettas in complex ways. This is a signature of lone-wolf terrorism that distinguishes loners from organised terrorists who share collective grievances. Sometimes politics is the dominant theme of the loner’s radicalisation; other times, politics is a submerged theme. The same seesaw applies to personal grievances.
For lone-wolf terrorists, assigning motives in clear-cut terms is therefore problematic.
Lone wolves see themselves as being enmeshed in greater struggles that give meaning to their actions and provide a sense of moral superiority and self-righteousness. “A soldier at war” is how Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph put it. The attack is the catalyst to achievement of their mission to force society to see the world from their perspective. Shelley Shannon described her attempted assassination of abortion provider George Tiller as:
The most holy, most righteous thing I’ve ever done.
At the same time, lone-wolf terrorism is often also a deeply personal quest for belonging and a clamour for attention. As British nail bomberDavid Copeland famously stated:
If no-one remembers who you were, you never existed.
ENDS - the entire article is at The Conversation website.
The words lone-wolf or wolves appear 32 times in Mr Speeij's article. Islam, Islamic, Islamist and Muslim do not appear at all in relation to Farhad Khalil Mohammad Jabar, supposedly the subject of the story. This 15 year old alleged Islamic State terror cell member apparetly had more in common with Catholic abortion activists and neo-Nazi rapists who get off on the internet than anything to do with Islam.
Why would an apparently respected academic write one or two paragraphs about a man of whom he knows nothing, woven into a web of observations about unrelated people who acted alone to maim or murder?
Perhaps Mr Speeij thought he could use Mr Cheng's death to help promote this book on Lone Wolves. When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
The truly disturbing aspect is the government funding gleefully handed over to the Dutchman.
A simple Google search in the following terms brings up 10,500 hits.
The Victoria University website proclaims:
Research grants
2015: Victorian Department of Health and Human Services. Hemphill, D., Spaaij, R., Fry, C., Wilson-Evered, E., Stewart, B., Westerbeek, H., Payne, W. Victorian sport integrity capability analysis.
2015-2018: DST Group – VU Industry Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Program, Victoria University & Defense Science and Technology Group. Grossman, M., Spaaij, R., Agostino, K. Understanding the relationship between online and offline social influence in radicalisation leading to violent extremism.
2014-2017: Australian Research Council Linkage Project (LP130100366). Spaaij, R., Farquharson, K., Gorman, S., Jeanes, R., Lusher, D. Participation versus performance: Managing (dis)ability, gender and cultural diversity in junior sport.
2013-2015: Youth & Identity Major Grant Scheme, Utrecht University. Van Bottenburg, M., Spaaij, R., Van Aken, M., Van Hoof, A., Giesen, I., Rijnhout, R., Koster, M., Vermeulen, J., Claringbould, I. Violent behaviour among young people on the football field.
2012-2015: National Institute of Justice (USA) (2012-ZA-BX-0001). Hamm, M., Spaaij, R. Lone wolf terrorism in America: Using knowledge of radicalization pathways to forge prevention strategies.
Then there's this from La Trobe
Dr Ramon F Spaaij, awarded $200,000, is collaborating with Victorian Health Promotion Foundation, the Australian Football League and Centre for Multicultural Youth on the project Participation versus performance: Managing (dis)ability, gender and cultural diversity in junior sport.
Playing sport can benefit young people but by its nature is competitive. This research examines whether junior sports clubs manage the need for success alongside as well as providing an inclusive environment which welcomes people of all backgrounds and abilities.
And this from the United States
Dr Ramón Spaaij, Senior Research Fellow at La Trobe University is considered the world’s leading expert on lone wolf terrorism and recently published the book Understanding Lone Wolf Terrorism: Global Patterns, Motivations and Prevention.
With a $247,000 research grant from the National Institute of Justice, which is part of the US Department of Justice, he and Professor Mark Hamm, an internationally recognised professor of criminology at Indiana State University, will use the theoretical and methodological approach developed in the book to conduct a two-year study into the enablers and triggers of lone wolf terrorists.
That's $.5 million in just two grants. A lot of money for a man who could not see that the Islamist murderer was part of an Islamic State terror cell - even though he was dressed that way and yelled Allah uh-Akhbar during the killing.
Mr Speeij's own research distinguishes the lone wolf thus:
Lone wolves combine various political complaints with any number of highly personal vendettas in complex ways. This is a signature of lone-wolf terrorism that distinguishes loners from organised terrorists who share collective grievances.
Maybe you need to go back to school Ramon and spend a bit of time away from the media spotlight.
Your story is not only academically disappointing, it's also quite offensive. There is scant regard for the murder of a family man, a father and dedicated public servant. Curtis Cheng was still lying in the morgue when you used his killing to advance your genius.
The Islamic State has claimed an Australian victim, killed on Australian soil.
Mr Cheng was selected because of where he worked and who he worked for.
Us.
Rest in Peace Curtis Cheng.