But equally important was his ability as a communicator. In short, Feiz is a dynamite performer. His talks, which you can see on the web, are an oratorical roller-coaster ride, jam-packed with pregnant pauses, repetition and radical gear shifts - serene to severe in a nanosecond - not to mention the hysterical hand gestures, elaborate syntax and, perhaps his signature device, the lingering, sibilant "s" "sinnerssss" Coupled with his glowering features - the beard, the brow, the thunderbolt eyes - Feiz's talks are rarely less than mesmerising, scouring admonitions on the perils of everything from illicit intercourse to the USA, or "the United Snakes of America", as he prefers to call it.
By , Feiz had set up another western Sydney musallah, the Global Islamic Youth Centre in Liverpool, which regularly hosted hundreds of his supporters, including former rugby league star Hazem El Masri and boxer Anthony Mundine.
Mundine would often visit Feiz's farm and ride his horses. El Masri, whom Feiz had met in Saudi Arabia while the footballer was on pilgrimage, was a particularly vocal supporter. Neither Mundine nor El Masri would comment for this story. Yet Feiz's sermons were, more often than not, pure invective. He would warn his flock to avoid the dreaded kuffar, or non-Muslims "They are evil, they are cunning, they desire to harm you severely" , as well as "filthy, disgusting" Jews.
One lecture told the story of the Jewish man who seduces and impregnates a Muslim virgin, only to then kill her and the baby. For some in the audience, such talk proved intoxicating.
He was released in By , Feiz's following was estimated at people - mostly impressionable, dispossessed, angry young men. They all came from a gangster background. And that was what attracted them to Feiz in the first place.
They thought, 'Cool, I get to keep my ways and I go to heaven. But Feiz's influence was not going unnoticed. In , defying his father's wishes, the year-old Elomar followed Feiz to Lebanon, where the sheikh had gone to care for his ailing father. All four were arrested in Tripoli a year later, when police uncovered a large cache of Kalashnikovs, rocket-propelled grenades and landmines in Hadba's garage. According to Lebanese police, the weapons were intended for Fatah al-Islam, a Salafi group fighting to replace the Lebanese government with an Islamic regime.
Basal and Elomar were released, but Hadba and Sabouh were convicted in Lebanese authorities also wanted to interview Feiz, but the sheikh had already left, this time for Malaysia. Boxing teaches you lots of things: how to attack, obviously, but also, perhaps more crucially, how to duck and weave.
Feiz understands this. Despite what one Islamic leader calls his "big mouth", the sheikh has remained adept at double moves, a master of the slip and feint. As early as , for example, at the same time he was comparing the West to a stinking toilet, Feiz was regularly updating ASIO on his own congregation. ASIO would return the favour, protecting him from what the sheikh alleged was police harassment. In , however, while still overseas, Feiz again ran into trouble, this time thanks to his Death Series, DVD lectures in which, among other things, he called for the killing of kuffar.
The series was a big hit; copies turned up for sale outside mosques in London. Back in Australia they were labelled "an incitement to terrorism"; Australian federal police even raided the Global Islamic Youth Centre. For a while, the sheikh seemed close to being charged with sedition. Yet by , Feiz was back. For a time he stayed quiet. He gave talks, he farmed, he raised funds for charity often this meant giving cash to the families of imprisoned Muslims.
He also performed marriage counselling. Before long, however, suffering perhaps from controversy cravings, Feiz had launched a veritable fatwa frenzy, issuing rulings on everything from Harry Potter "promotes paganism" to rugby league "the devil's game" and mixed-sex education. Some of his rulings were highly problematic, such as when he declared mortgages haram, or forbidden, since they involved paying interest, a concept prohibited under Islam.
In the end, some Muslims, desperate to buy their first homes, secretly sought individual fatwas from more experienced sheikhs, giving them permission to take out loans.
Now they felt like only they had the truth. They'd tell their mum, 'You are wrong! At the same time, Feiz's "boys" began earning a reputation as Islamic enforcers; in one instance they broke into a Muslim man's home in Silverwater and flogged him 40 times with a piece of electrical cord for drinking beer. Using Bukhari House, the Auburn bookstore and prayer hall, as a base, they would harass and intimidate local shopkeepers, particularly Shias, whom Salafis consider heretics.
Jamal Daoud, a local politician and outspoken Shia, believes Feiz's ultimate goal is to push moderate Muslims out of the area and buy up their properties on the cheap. Before long, anxious parents were sending their kids overseas, back to Turkey in many instances, to steer them away from Salafi influences. But it was the NSW state election that really brought matters to a head, when men from Bukhari House repeatedly tore down election posters from the local shops Salafis consider voting to be haram.
Jamal Daoud, whose posters were repeatedly targeted, followed one of the men, Milad Bin Ahmad Shah al-Ahmadzai, back to Bukhari House and confronted him. You are Muslim, and you're not supposed to take part in this election.
Feiz has since acknowledged that voting is a part of life in Australia. But his wife, for one, doesn't seem convinced. Her Facebook page features a photo of bullets all lined up in a row, with the tagline: "Voting: like being able to choose which bullet you'd prefer to be shot in the head with.
There are many words Sheikh Feiz Mohammed can't abide, but chief among them is the phrase "non-Muslim". Like all fundamentalists, the sheikh is not given to notions like nuance or compromise. The world is essentially, unavoidably Manichean - a never-ending spiritual battle, a zero-sum struggle where enemies abound. The subsequent clannishness of his followers, their almost fanatical secrecy and defensiveness, is one of the hallmarks of Salafism, which is now thought to be the fastest-growing Muslim movement in the world.
In Australia, the great majority of Muslims are mainstream moderates, and just 10 per cent are Salafis. But the Salafis' rapid spread, not to mention their unblinking fervour, makes them something to behold. One morning, for instance, while visiting Bukhari House, I get talking to a young man behind the counter. He is wearing a black robe and the signature Salafi beard. He asks me if I have read the Koran. I say I have not. He says he is currently in the process of memorising it.
That's why scientists have taken all their stuff from the Koran. Life isn't easy as a Muslim, though. The beard makes it hard to get a job. But it doesn't matter, since he is "put here on earth for one reason - to worship Allah. And if we don't worship him, he has the right to put us in hellfire. They are loyal, yes, but their loyalty demands a constant diet of hardline rhetoric.
This change is often too hard to accept for some of their followers and I sense this may have happened with Sheikh Feiz. He seems to have mellowed out over the years, but the price of this is rejection by some of his followers who have moved on to other sheikhs more in keeping with their hard-hearted approach.
According to Kilani, Feiz lost credibility with some of his followers after the Sydney protest riot. In the notoriously fractious ecosystem that is Islam in Sydney, Feiz's former followers would have no shortage of alternative sheikhs to choose from, including the increasingly voluble clerics at al-Risalah, an Islamic bookstore in Bankstown.
Perhaps Feiz isn't bothered by this. Perhaps he is. Perhaps, as one Muslim community leader suggests, he is simply plotting his next move, into a more political role. Attorney-General of Australia Mark Dreyfus said that Mohammad "condemned the use of violence" and has "changed his attitude", supporting a community program to prevent the radicalisation of Australian youth. Dutch politician Geert Wilders wrote: "Dreyfus has great faith in the conversion of the hate-preacher.
But I do not share this optimism I have not heard the sheik recall his demand for my beheading. Nor did the Tsarnaev brothers hear Sheik Mohammed declare that the Islam he preached earlier is not the true Islam.
Mohammed later apologized in an interview for referring to Jews as pigs, and said that his reference to jihad was misunderstood. In September , speaking of his record controversial statements, Mohammad said: "So, not that I retract what I have said in the past, but I now am wiser than I was in the past. In March , Mohammad returned to Australia after a six-year absence. It has a number of other locations in Sydney and elsewhere in Australia.
He is associated with and supported by the Islamic organization Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah, and has delivered sermons at their centre in Auburn. His last known residence as of September was in the Southern Highlands. He called Feiz Mohammad dangerous, and insisted that he be banned from delivering sermons to young Muslims.
He said his preaching "can lead young people to move away from their family and community [and] to distance and isolate themselves. I haven't seen a change in him. In an internet chat room, Mohammad incited Muslim followers to behead Dutch politician Geert Wilders , it became known in September His rationale was his accusation that Wilders had "denigrat[ed]" Islam, and that anyone who "mocks, laughs or degrades Islam" as Wilders had must be killed "by chopping off his head".
The Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf released an excerpt of the talk, after Dutch intelligence officials received a tip about the threat. Sheikh Fedaa Majzoub, the vice president of the NSW branch of the National Imams Council, said that the comments were "completely rejected by us as Islamic authorities". Sheikh Taj el-Din al Hilaly, former mufti of Australia and imam of the Lakemba mosque, also spoke out against the remarks.
A Centre spokesman said that the Centre was "for all those kids out there who are lost," and would "encourage them to try to follow the right path. In late a site he created called Faith Over Fear had links to the Centre. Its primary video showed Mohammad calling on Muslims to sacrifice their lives to wage war against the West.
It says the children should be taught that there is "nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a Muhajid [holy warrior]," and that the parents should "put in their soft, tender heart the zeal of jihad and the love of martyrdom", preach jihad. He said: "Kaffir non-Muslim is the worst word ever written, a sign of infidelity, disbelief, filth, a sign of dirt".
He also calls Jews "pigs," and laughs about killing them, as he makes snorting noises. The Australian Federal Police and Australia's Attorney-General investigated whether Mohammed's sermons broke laws against sedition, racial vilification, and inciting violence and terrorism.
In July , federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock , referring to the DVDs, said that Australia needed better laws to deal with items that encourage people to commit terrorist attacks, and that "Waiting for a terrorist attack to happen is unacceptable. Mohammad fled to Tripoli, Lebanon, in November and was believed to have lived there from through at least December He relocated to Malaysia to continue Islamic studies, and returned to Australia, likely in , to open a new prayer hall in Auburn.
In Australia, Mohammad and others founded the Global Islamic Youth Centre in the Sydney suburb of Liverpool in to "cater for the physical, social, educational and religious needs, especially for the youth and the children, in accordance with the teachings of the Quran". He was its head in , and in was still active at the centre. Even after he left Australia for Lebanon, he continued to direct the centre from abroad.
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