The boy’s father had also seen signs of increasing “disobedience”, according to an Islamic community leader who accommodated the father at Lakemba Mosque on Tuesday night.
The father had spent the night of the attack driving around western Sydney with a friend, too afraid to go home, before turning to Gamel Kheir, a lawyer and secretary of the Lebanese Muslim Association.
Police said a riot erupted outside the Christ The Good Shepherd Church at Wakeley after a large crowd gathered on Monday night. Credit: Wolter Peeters
“He truly was in shock, he broke my heart,” Kheir told this masthead.
“He said ‘I want to see my son’, he was distraught, in shock, too scared to go home.”
Kheir persuaded the man to spend the night at the mosque with himself and a number of other attendees, who had assembled to defend it against threats of firebombing made in the wake of the stabbing.
According to Kheir, while the boy had been disobedient, his father said there were no signs of him becoming radicalised. “There was nothing he could see that he had gone that far down,” he said.
Forensic police gather evidence at the Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley.Credit: Oscar Coleman
The Lebanese Muslim Association will undertake an investigation into online radicalisation and how to stop people from consuming radical content.
Police on Wednesday were processing arrest warrants for members of a crowd who rioted outside the Christ The Good Shepherd Church on Monday, following the stabbing. At 5:40pm, they made their first arrest, a 19-year-old man from Doonside in Sydney’s west.
Several officers were injured in the riot and paramedics took shelter inside the building as crowd members threw projectiles and damaged 51 police vehicles. Police and ambulance officers were eventually evacuated from the church in an armoured vehicle.
Police were also patrolling at mosques on the city’s western outskirts on Wednesday to provide extra security. Several worshippers told this masthead the mosques were quieter than usual.
Muhmood Wehbe leaves the Wednesday night prayer session at Bonnyrigg Mosque.Credit: Dean Sewell
Speaking through an Arabic translator, Muhmood Wehbe, who prayed at Bonnyrigg Mosque, said what happened at the church was “something we all condemn and are not satisfied with”.
“Islam is the religion of love and peace,” he said.
Muzzy Elsett, who attended the Othman Bin Affan mosque in Cabramatta West, said the stabbing at Christ the Good Shepherd Church was tragic, “like any attack”.
“We don’t preach harm on anyone,” he said.
Muzzy Elsett, a regular at the Othman Bin Affan Mosque in Cabramatta.Credit: Dean Sewell
“If anything, in our religion in Islam, even smiling to a person is an act of charity. You get rewarded for that.”
While not condoning the actions of the 16-year-old accused, who is a Muslim, Elsett said Bishop Emmanuel had appeared in several videos making disrespectful comments about the Prophet Muhammad.
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He said many in the Islamic community had been aware of these comments by the “TikTok priest” prior to the attack.
The bishop has acknowledged that an interview he gave last year on a US podcast had upset some Muslims, but also said he loved and prayed for his “beloved Muslim world”.
Following the fatal shooting of police accountant Curtis Cheng by 15-year-old Farhad Jabar in 2015, the NSW government announced a five-year $47 million program to counter violent extremism, which included schools initiative.
The schools program has since been superseded by another designed to support students including those who are vulnerable and at risk, focusing on wellbeing, attendance and behaviour.
Source Agencies
