#Musa Cerantonio

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Graeme Wood

Published: Mar 31, 2022

On February 7, 2016, Musa Cerantonio told a friend that his fame as Australia’s best-known ISIS supporter had become a burden. Fellow ISIS supporters felt mysteriously compelled to email or call him before committing crimes. “Why,” Cerantonio lamented, “does everyone, before they do stupid shit, get in contact with me?” In this case, the doer of stupid shit was Alo-Bridget Namoa, the “Bonnie” half of the terror couple she herself had dubbed “the jihadi Bonnie and Clyde.” She and Clyde, a.k.a. Sameh Bayda, were both later convicted of terror offenses. Namoa had contacted Cerantonio, the Australian authorities tapping his phone later revealed, because she needed to know where to get an ISIS flag in Sydney. ISIS supporters were treating him like a jihadist help desk. If you see her, Cerantonio told his friend, “slap her for me.” Later that year, Cerantonio was arrested for trying to travel by boat from Australia to ISIS territory in the southern Philippines. He has been in prison ever since, and he has 13 months left on his sentence.

But if you try dialing the help desk in 13 months, you might not get the encouragement you’d expect. Last year, Cerantonio wrote to me from Port Phillip Prison, in Melbourne, and told me that he had renounced ISIS.

In block letters—the Arabic transcriptions neatly bedecked with diacritical marks, all in the right places—he explained his journey back from jihad. “I have been wrong these last 17 years,” he wrote. “Seeing individuals dedicate themselves to tyrannical death cults led by suicidal maniacs is bad enough. Knowing that I may have contributed to their choices is terrible.” Perhaps he should be returned to the help desk before his sentence is up. “I hope that my experiences may be of help in drawing others away from the same mistakes.”

His rehabilitation, which he narrated in detail, is as bizarre as his career as an ISIS propagandist was. Born in 1985 to a middle-class Italian Australian family outside Melbourne, Cerantonio converted to Islam as a teenager. He showed an unusual inclination for linguistics and Islamic history, and within a few years a Saudi-funded satellite-TV channel, Iqraa, had hired him to preach on air, on subjects including Arabic philology and Islamic readings of The Wizard of Oz. Eventually his message grew too political and the channel fired him and, he said, attempted to administer a beating as part of his severance. When ISIS arose, this neofundamentalist autodidact had both the knowledge and the on-camera charisma necessary to influence thousands of fellow Muslims and help persuade many to immigrate to Syria and Iraq in order to fight and die for the new caliphate. If you seek out English translations of early ISIS documents, you may find his handiwork.

In prison, he began to study the Quran in greater detail, and focused on the aspects that most puzzled him. Among these was the figure called Dhu-l Qarnayn, “the two-horned one,” who appears in the Quran’s 18th chapter and is believed by many to refer to Alexander the Great. Cerantonio did not see a resemblance between Dhu-l Qarnayn and the Alexander of history—but he noted similarities between Dhu-l Qarnayn and a heavily fabulized version of Alexander’s story written in Aramaic. He considered that the Aramaic version may have plagiarized the Quran, but after acquiring a copy of the Aramaic and translating it for himself, he determined that the reverse was more likely. (“I always knew that being proficient in Aramaic would one day prove useful.���)

“Realizing that Dhu-l Qarnayn was not at all a real person but was rather based on a fictional account of Alexander the Great instantly left me with only one possible conclusion: The Quran was not divinely inspired,” he wrote. It had taken Alexander the Great fan fiction as fact. “Of course I would have preferred to have discovered all that 17 years ago and avoided much trouble.” He has therefore abandoned not only ISIS but Islam and religion as a whole. He is an atheist and admires the God Delusion author Richard Dawkins.

After the first letter, we traded correspondence and spoke by Skype. He now goes by his birth name, Robert, but when pressed on subjects related to ISIS doctrine will sometimes “answer your question as ‘Musa,’” channeling his former self to explain the ISIS view before recovering his “Rob” identity and speaking as his current self. He said he had been reluctant to go public about his apostasy—less because he feared being murdered by jihadists (apostasy is a capital offense in Islam) than because his detractors will say he’s just trying to get out of prison early.

He said his conversion was “not making my time any easier in here.” And if he wanted to feign rehabilitation, he would have done so years ago, at sentencing, and not in this roundabout and arcane way involving Syriac texts and Hellenistic historiography. I asked him why the Alexander stuff had convinced him that ISIS was wrong, whereas the group’s practices of mass murder and sex slavery had never tipped him off. He said the latter were consistent with the religion, while the Alexander plagiarism failed intellectual tests on their own terms.

Whenever a prominent member of a terror group leaves it, he inspires a great deal of curiosity about how he was cured of his evil beliefs—which seem so durable when they are held that they may lead to violent death. So much of Cerantonio’s story is idiosyncratic that I am not sure what, if anything, can be used to deprogram others. Most ISIS supporters care little about the historical and linguistic minutiae that motivated Cerantonio. Teaching jihadists Aramaic is not a cure easily scaled up. Moreover, a rehab program that encourages patients to give up Islam (a religion practiced benignly by nearly all Muslims) instead of merely giving up terrorism is bound to be controversial.

Cerantonio himself said that the programs in prisons, in Australia and abroad, are almost all rubbish. They raise objections to jihadism that the jihadists can easily refute. He called the suggestion that jihadists be exposed to “true Islam,” such as the more moderate texts of medieval theologians, “idiotic.” “It doesn’t work,” he told me. “It has failed miserably time after time.” But he is equally withering about Dawkins’s polemics against Islam, even though he now shares Dawkins’s zero-calorie theology. “I’m no longer a Muslim,” he said, “but I still object to the things he’s saying. When he writes about Islam, he gets things wrong.” Dawkins quotes a scripture that claims martyrs will be given 72 virgins in paradise. “That hadith is not authentic!” Cerantonio said with frustration. “Dawkins! You’re smart. You do so much research. Why couldn’t you do just a little research on this?” Opponents of ISIS, even smart ones, suddenly make themselves stupid when combatting jihadism and assume—wrongly—that the jihadists themselves are stupid.

When Cerantonio now meets jihadists—he told me they are numerous, and unrepentant, in Australian prisons—he experiments with different approaches. “I can actually speak to hard-core jihadists on a level that they understand,” he said. At times, the approach that has worked is not even a coherent one. He described convincing two jihadists by explaining to them the mechanisms of evolution. In effect, he told me, he just “went at them hard” and outlined, without condescension, how a world without a divine Creator might look, how it made sense, and how it might be an alternative to their current beliefs.

“Both of them have drastically changed their lives,” he claimed. “They now denounce everything they were standing for before. I mean, they were planning to carry out a terrorist attack here in Melbourne—blow themselves up in a public square!” Now, he said, they’re not religious at all. “I thought, wow, I mean, surely, it can’t always be that easy. But who knows? Maybe it is.”

Last year in Saudi Arabia, I visited a prison that purported to deprogram jihadists by turning them into productive employees of a small business—complete with a CEO (himself a prisoner), an HR department, and a comptroller. I couldn’t tell how successful the prison’s strategy would be. All of the prisoners were still in jail, and subject to who knows what punishment if they lapsed. Beyond any doubt, however, is the failure of virtually every previous attempt to deprogram jihadists. So far, nothing seems to have worked better than defeating ISIS on the battlefield, reducing its caliphate to rubble, and inviting its followers to consider whether God might be sending them a message in the form of U.S. aerial bombardment. But drone strikes are expensive. Maybe Aramaic is worth a try.

==

I bet he was never a true Muslim, though, amirite?

"I asked him why the Alexander stuff had convinced him that ISIS was wrong, whereas the group’s practices of mass murder and sex slavery had never tipped him off. He said the latter were consistent with the religion, while the Alexander plagiarism failed intellectual tests on their own terms."

This is completely consistent with what I keep hearing from ex-Muslims. You can't temper Islam. You can't smooth over the (purported) literal word of god. You can't tell believers you're just going to massage out the pointy bits into a smoother shape... but it's still "perfect."

When a political-religious ideology sits atop the notion of the perfect word of a god, and the perfection of its human emissary, not to mention 1400 years of exegesis, the idea that maybe this god means something different and nicer and more akin to 21st century secular values isn't going to fly. Especially when he clearly doesn't.

You can't make it nicer. But maybe you can show that it's false.

[zaingo]

Liked on YouTube: أسترالي يرتد عن الإسلام ويلحد The Apostasy of Musa Cerantonio Refuting Acts17Apologetics David Wood https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhntVjWDxeA

[bishayy]

“Apostasy of ISIS jihadi Musa Cerantonio”

https://youtu.be/4VmNPqiO2R0

Why he left Islam ?

[ellegi53]

Articolo su estense.com con due miei commenti

[leobellicose]

Wanita guna media sosial latih pejuang Daesh ditangkap

Wanita guna media sosial latih pejuang Daesh ditangkap

MANILA, 28 Muharram 1439H, Rabu – Pasukan keselamatan Filipina menahan seorang wanita warga negara itu berusia 36 tahun yang disyaki menggunakan media sosial bagi melatih militan Daesh dari seluruh dunia.

Setiausaha Jabatan Keadilan, Vitaliano Aguirre mengumumkan Karen Aizha Hamidon ditangkap di Bandar Taguig pada 11 Oktober lalu.

“Karen merupakan bekas isteri Muhammad Shamin Mohamed Sidek, warga Singapura yang telah ditahan pada Ogos 2015 kerana merancang untuk menyertai Daesh dan menggunakan media sosial untuk menggalakkan keganasan.

“Karen kemudiannya berkahwin dengan Mohammad Jaafar Maguid, seorang warga Filipina, yang mengetuai Ansar al-Khilafah yang berkait rapat dengan Daesh sehinggalah dia dibunuh oleh polis Januari lalu,” kata Aguirre ketika sidang akhbar, pagi tadi.

Aguirre berkata, Karen merupakan sekutu rapat Musa Cerantonio, seorang pendakwah Islam Australia yang dikatakan giat melatih militan Daesh.

Penangkapan Karen berikutan 296 kenyataan menerusi media sosial yang dikaitkan dengannya. Ini menunjukkan pemberontakan dan usahanya untuk melatih pejuang Daesh di bandar selatan Marawi yang dilanda peperangan.

“Adalah amat jelas bahawa tindakannya berpakat dengan pemberontak. Ketika anggota lain bertempur di Marawi, dia ditugaskan untuk mencari militan yang boleh membantu dalam pengepungan Marawi oleh Daesh dan kumpulan Maute,” kata Aguirre.

The post Wanita guna media sosial latih pejuang Daesh ditangkap appeared first on Portal Islam dan Melayu.

Credit kepada admin sumber asal Artikel Portal Islam dan Melayu di Wanita guna media sosial latih pejuang Daesh ditangkap via Blogger http://sayupgema.blogspot.com/2017/10/wanita-guna-media-sosial-latih-pejuang.html

[la-ilaah-ila-allah-blog]

Free musa cerantonio free aafia siddique free nasir al fahad free anjem chaudhary #freeprisoners

[featurenews]

Australians planned to sail from Cape York to join Filipino militant group, court hears

The six men allegedly plotted to sail to the Philippines to fight with Abu Sayyaf, an extremist group linked to Islamic State Six Australian men accused of plotting to become foreign fighters allegedly wanted to join a violent militant group in the southern Philippines that is notorious for kidnappings and killing hostages. Robert “Musa” Cerantonio, Paul Dacre, Shayden Thorne, Kadir Kaya, Murat Kaya and Antonio Granata are fighting allegations they planned to sail from Cape York to join Filipino militant group Abu Sayyaf last year. Continue reading... https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/may/16/australians-planned-to-sail-from-cape-york-to-join-filipino-militant-group-court-hears?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr

[take30]

Stephen K. Bannon and Apocalyptic Race Wars

The “Judeo-Christian West” was at war, he said, but didn’t seem to understand it yet.

“There is a major war brewing, a war that’s already global,” Bannon said at the Vatican in 2014, at a time when the Islamic State was gaining territory. “Every day that we refuse to look at this as what it is — and the scale of it, and really the viciousness of it — will be a day where you will rue that we didn’t act.”

Bannon has given few details about the mechanics of the war he thinks the West should fight. But he has been clear that it is urgent enough to take priority over other rivalries and worries.

from a WaPo January 31, 2017 article by Frances Stead Sellers and David A. Fahrenthold ‘Why let ’em in?’ Understanding Bannon’s worldview and the policies that follow.

This caught my attention because it reminded me of another article-- Graeme Wood’s Atlantic piece What ISIS Really Wants, in which ISIS supporter Musa Cerantonio discusses ISIS’s belief in a fated apocalyptic battle between the armies of Islam and Rome. Not quite the same war as Bannon’s (ISIS’s hopes on that front were likely dimmed when the prophesied battle site was recaptured in October), but the Christians vs. Muslims conflict lines and the vibe of an apocalyptic war to end all wars vibe are both there.

Similarly, a quick google search of “apocalyptic race war” led me to the Helter Skelter race war that Charles Manson attempted to catalyze. It also reminded me of the film In Bruges, in which, during a drug and alcohol fueled late night chat, the character Jimmy predicts a forthcoming war between “the whites” and “the blacks” (Colin Farrell’s character Ray then picks at Jimmy’s theory to comic effect).

Actual wars across religious and ethnic dividing lines have taken place countless times in human history. But prophesy of a climactic religious or ethnic war seems often to be touted by minds that are either delusional, or are using the prophesied war as justification for horrific violence. In the cases of Manson and ISIS, the effects are catastrophic, as the oracles attempt to turn their prediction into reality.

It is troubling to say the least that a similar voice is directing American policy.

[dewarereligie]

Musa Cerantonio zal na uitlevering aan Australië niet worden vastgezet

De islamitische prediker Musa Cerantonio zal na uitlevering aan Australië niet worden vastgezet. Dat zegt de The Sidney Morning Herald. Volgens de krant kan Musa vandaag al worden uitgezet naar Australië, maar zal hij daar niet worden vastgezet omdat er in Australië geen arrestatiebevel tegen hem is uitgevaardigd. Musa kan er wel op rekenen dat hij flink in de gaten gehouden zal worden.

Klik de link om verder te lezen..

http://dewarereligie.net/2014/07/19/actueel/musa-cerantonio-zal-na-uitlevering-aan-australie-niet-worden-vastgezet/

[therakyatpost]

New Post has been published on The Rakyat Post BM Version

New Post has been published on http://bm.therakyatpost.com/global/2014/07/13/pendakwah-australia-ditahan/

Pendakwah Australia ditahan

CEBU, 13 Julai:

Joan Montayre, wanita yang ditahan dengan suspek pendakwah jihad Australia, Robert Edward atau Musa Cerantonio, menafikan suaminya terlibat dalam aktiviti pengganas.

Dia hanya mengaku suaminya memuat naik video di Internet untuk menyebarkan agama Islam.

Joan menegaskan suaminya seorang lelaki yang baik dan mereka harmoni sejak mendirikan rumah tangga tahun lalu. Mereka bertemu di Cebu, Filipina.

Joan sebelum ini beragama Roman Katolik dan memeluk agama Islam pada 2007, lapor Sky News.

Walau bagaimanapun, Joan mengaku tidak tahu bahawa suaminya tinggal lebih masa di negara itu kerana dia sibuk dengan perniagaan fesyennya.

Musa ditahan di Cebu, Filipina pada Jumaat selepas waran untuk penghantaran pulang ke negaranya dikeluarkan.

Biro Imigresen berkata pasport Robert dibatalkan 7 Julai lepas, selepas polis perisik Australia mengenal pasti dia sebagai seorang yang memberi pesanan kepada suspek pengganas dan menggalakkan pelampau.

Joan ditahan kerana bersubahat.

[featurenews]

Men accused of trying to join Isis by boat first reported to police by jogger, court told

Witness says he saw large group of men near Flemington racecourse carrying flag and chanting passages from the Qur’an A group of men arrested while allegedly trying to join an Islamic State faction by boat were first reported to police by a jogger who heard them chanting passages from the Qur’an and saw them carrying an Isis flag near Melbourne’s Flemington racecourse, a court has heard. Robert “Musa” Cerantonio, Paul Dacre, Shayden Thorne, Kadir Kaya, Murat Kaya and Antonio Granata are fighting allegations they planned to sail from Cape York to the Philippines to join Isis sympathisers last year. Continue reading... https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/may/15/men-accused-of-trying-to-join-isis-by-boat-first-reported-to-police-by-jogger-court-told?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr

[dewarereligie]

Musa Cerantonio gearresteerd op Filipijnen

De  vooraanstaande islamitische prediker Musa Cerantonio is vanochtend rond half 6 lokale tijd gearresteerd in de stad lapu Lapu op de  Filipijnen. Bij de arrestatie werden o.a. zijn paspoort, een aantal documenten, een aantal multimedia apparaten en kleine hoeveelheden losgeld in beslag genomen. Er circuleert een filmpje op internet waarin te zien is dat de prediker in boeien is geslagen, ook zijn Filipijnse vrouw zou zijn gearresteerd.  Filipijnse en Australische bronnen melden dat Cerantonio al bijna een jaar woonachtig was in de Filipijnen.  De Australische autoriteiten waren al een tijdje op zoek naar de prediker. Hij zou volgens hen een invloedrijk figuur zijn voor potentiële mujahidien, die vervolgens in Syrië en Irak te werk konden gaan.

Klik de link om verder te lezen..

http://dewarereligie.net/2014/07/11/actueel/musa-cerantonio-gearresteerd-in-filipijnen/