Low key, big impact Jihad

There's nothing new about forest fires, especially in Austrailia during the dry, hot summer. Or is there?

Last September, the Age reports on an Islamic Group called Al-Ikhlas Network that argued in arabic that lighting fires is an effective form of terrorism justified in Islamic law under the eye for an eye doctrine. You're damn right it's effective.

The forest fires we've witnessed with horror this week in Victoria, Australia, have left 181 people dead, 500 homes destroyed and devastated over 1000 square miles of of land.

And today, the Times reports that the Australian police have released a photo fit of the person they are looking for in connection with the fires. Let's have a look shall we?

Hmm, I'm no racial profiler but I would say the photo depicts someone who is quite Asian in appearance, no? Of course, you can't ignore Austrailia's indigenous Aborigines who are distinctive in appearance with dark hair, eyes, and skin however one redeeming feature that is missing from this photofit is the wide nose that is common Aboriginal facial feature.

Of course, neither can you discount the fact that not all Asians are Muslims. It's just as likely that a fundamentalist Christian group is....no wait...scrap that, it's not likely at all is it, let's just get down to business. In all likelihood, what has transpired in Austrailia is a new flavour of terrorism. A low key, low effort, low sophistication type of terrorism that even the stupidest of Jihadi's can figure out how to carry out. Stupid or not, the death toll and destruction cannot be ignored and doesn't bode well for Western countries that could potentially be exposed to this threat as detering another attack would be nigh on impossible.

One saving grace is that this happened in Austrailia, the one country that is most likely to take drastic action against Islam/Muslims if they are caught and indeed turn out to be so. Let's hope they catch them whilst the world remains interested.

19/02/09 - Update
Austrailian police arrested Brendan Sokaluk as the suspected arsonist. I have only seen a scrambled picture from his MySpace page but he looks caucasian to me and not as depicted in the above photofit. Interestingly he has also been charged with possessing child pornography and it's well known for Jihadi's to use such sites for communicating because of their high security to protect their identities. It could be coincidence of course.