Before he railed against the West, self-styled sheik Harun Mehicevic rubbed up against authority at his local mosque.
When prayer sessions ended at the Noble Park mosque in Melbourne’s southeast, Mr Mehicevic and a group of young friends would often linger, wanting to debate Islam, philosophy and their own ideas.
More than once, Imam Ibrahim Omerdic firmly reminded Mr Mehicevic that it wasn’t his place to lead discussion.
“They like to be at the centre, for people to listen to them,” Sheik Omerdic recalled yesterday. “Here it is the imam who people listen to. No one can speak except with my permission, especially preaching.
“I said to them, it is no place to preach here, no place to give your ideas. They separated and ran to establish their own centre.”
Sheik Omerdic said that since that day about 10 years ago, he had not had cause to exchange more than a salam, salam greeting with Mr Mehicevic, who is the amir or leader of the al-Furqan Islamic centre raided two days ago by an anti-terrorism police taskforce.
But he has watched over the years as Muslim men, predominantly young men from the local neighbourhood, were drawn to Mr Mehicevic’s radical teachings. “People in my Friday sermon don’t know much about them,” he told The Australian. “It is only young people. They are attacking the young.”
Sheik Omerdic said he had no problem with police raiding the centre and the homes of people connected to it.
He is worried the raids and accompanying publicity will fuel support within the community for Mr Mehicevic and his teachings.
“Now there will be rising anger, not against Mehicevic, but against police,” he said.
“The general public will be against Harun but the Muslim public will be against police. For young people, it is easier of them to follow. They copy. They become angry. One by one.
“Because of one stupid man, everyone will be poisoned.”
Mr Mehicevic, also known as Abu Talha, lives at the back of a group of brown-brick units on the same suburban street where he established the al-Furqan Da’wah Centre and Bookshop.
Mr Mehicevic was not home when Australian Federal Police and Victoria Police knocked on his door on Wednesday. Sheik Omerdic said it was well known Mr Mehicevic had returned to his native Bosnia to visit his parents.
At about the time he helped establish al-Furqan, Mr Mehicevic was one of three directors who founded a company called Centre for International & Australian Affairs. The company operated between 2002 and 2004 and arranged lectures around Melbourne on conservative Islam.
Sheik Omerdic said no one involved in the breakaway group that formed al-Furqan was qualified to preach.
“They thought they had enough knowledge, enough people, enough money to establish their own centre,” he said. “No one was qualified to be a preacher so they invent themselves a preacher. I find them arrogant. I wish them go from here. Not long after, they went.”