Australia’s first female Muslim federal lawmaker is defending deradicalization programs after the police shot dead a teenager who stabbed a man at the weekend.
Authorities in Western Australia say the 16-year-old boy had been part of a program to counter online radicalization since he was 14.
The teenage assailant had told associates in a text message that he was going “on the path of jihad tonight for the sake of Allah.”
Later, in the car park of a hardware store in the Western Australian city of Perth, he used a kitchen knife to stab a man. The 16-year-old boy was killed by police. His victim was wounded.
Authorities said the boy had voluntarily taken part in the government funded Countering Violent Extremism program since 2022 after he caused an explosion in a toilet at his high school.
He had received treatment for mental health issues as well as extremist tendencies.
Western Australia Police Commissioner Col Blanch told reporters the deradicalization program was “highly successful but, sadly, it’s not perfect.”
The project includes working with families, counselling, the involvement of religious leaders, and mental health components.
The program is based on the work of Youth Minister Anne Aly, the first female Muslim lawmaker to be elected to federal Parliament in Canberra.
She told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that despite the death of the teenager she believes the deradicalization program is effective.
“We are always reviewing, as we should, practice in this space. But I will say that these programs work because I have seen them work," she said. "I do not think that we should be going, ‘Oh, these programs do not work,’ and walking away from them, but for the vast majority they do work.”
Investigators have had found no connection between the boy shot dead in Perth and an alleged network of teenage extremists in Sydney, on the other side of the Australian continent.
There, a 16-year-old boy was charged with committing a terrorist act after a bishop and three other people were stabbed at a Sydney church on April 15.
In the investigation that followed, six more teenagers were charged with terror-related offenses.
Australia has worked with the United States to build deradicalization programs in Indonesia for those convicted of terrorism-related crimes.
However, critics have said that some convicted militants have refused to take part in the voluntary schemes.
In Britain, there are several deradicalization initiatives for people who have been involved in extremist activity.
Programs designed to steer individuals away from militant ideology have been set up in other countries, including Pakistan, Germany and the United States.
