Islamism Down Under

In City Journal Dalrymple discusses the significance of a brutal attack on a fellow inmate by an imprisoned Islamist in Australia:

Against the interpretation of Hraiche’s attack on O’Keefe as a manifestation of purely personal sadism is his previously expressed support for the Islamic State (a case of elective affinity, no doubt), and also the fact that no one in the cells nearest to Hraiche called the guards on their emergency bells for fear of retaliation by Hraiche and his acolytes. In other words, there was a powerful group of prisoners in the jail who thought and felt as Hraiche did, or would at least obey his orders. The Islamists are thus a kind of prison Mafia, with their own version of omertà. This is far from the first time that anxieties have been raised about Islamism in Australian prisons; but the assessment of the scale and scope of the threat is far from straightforward. There is a tendency to oscillate between complacency and panic.

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