A prominent moderate Muslim leader has raised concerns that a prayer room at a Sydney university may be being used to radicalise students.
Imam Afroz Ali visited the Islamic prayer room in the University of Technology in Sydney this week after being told of a message instructing students to look for extremist preachers on YouTube.
He took a photograph of a whiteboard which had the names of a number of radical Islamic preachers including Anwar al-Awlaki - a senior Al Qadea recruiter.
‘This is the seed towards radicalisation, particularly if people get this information out of a whiteboard or leaflet and then go and watch the YouTube clips,’ Imam Afroz told The Australian.
‘If people get answers to their questions about religiosity from these lectures, they’ll be shaped by that, and so much radicalisation has been occurring through these YouTube or social media platforms.’
The message left on the whiteboard at the Islamic prayer rooms directed students to a YouTube series called ‘Light Revelations’.
Radical sheiks Abdullah Faisal, Anwar al-Awlaki and Ahmad Musa Jibril are all listed in the message.
Anwar al-Awlaki was a senior Al Qaeda recruiter who used social media to radicalise youth before he was killed in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011, the first American to be killed by a U.S. attack.
Abdullah Faisal is a Sunni Muslim clerk who was jailed for preaching in the United Kingdom, urging people to murder Jews, Hindus, Christians, and Americans.
Meantime Ahmad Musa Jibril is an Islamic scholar based in Michigan who preaches in YouTube videos as part of ‘classes’ for his ‘students’.
Imam Afroz - who runs the al-Ghazzali Centre in Riverwood, said he went to UTS to try and get an idea about who was behind the messages left, as he understands a similar incident occurred earlier in the year.
‘What I’m trying to do first and foremost is get to the bottom of who’s doing it, but I also want to make sure the university knows about this,’ he told The Australian.
UTS Strategic Communications deputy director Greg Welsh told the publication he had not been aware of the messages but said the university had a ‘good relationship’ with the Muslim society.
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Imam Afroz Ali, the UTS Muslim Society, the UTS Multi-Faith Chaplaincy Office and the UTS Strategic Communication unit for comment.