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'Preacher' posts support for Islamic state

Mohammed Junaid Thorne posts Islamic State support.

As leaders across the world denounced the barbarism of Islamic State terrorists, Perth's self-styled preacher Mohammed Junaid Thorne posted his support for the movement on social media yesterday.

Thorne, who has about a dozen followers in WA and is connected to extremist radicals in the Eastern States and overseas, postured that Islamic scholars who supported an Islamic State were "known for speaking the truth", were in prisons, on the front lines and "in the battlefields, backing their words with actions".

He ridiculed scholars who did not support an IS as "ones who spew the nonsense of 'patriotism', 'Australian Muslims', 'deradicalisation' and other terms for which Allah has sent down no authority".

The Facebook post was quickly "shared" within hours by online Islamic discussion groups in Melbourne and Sydney, with more than 20,000 members.

WA authorities have been aware of the 25-year-old, who was raised in Saudi Arabia, since he returned to Perth last year after his older brother's imprisonment there on terrorism charges.

The university student, who claims to have memorised the Koran by the age of six, has been ostracised and denounced by mainstream Muslim imams in Perth.

Last week, four imams told _The Weekend West _that Thorne's ideology was not welcome in their mosques. They said that outside Thorne's group there was little support for IS and that the black flag associated with the group was almost never seen.

They were concerned about the small group of young men who had attached themselves to him and begun supporting the Islamic State movement.

Curtin University terrorism expert Anne Aly said yesterday's post showed overt support for a banned terrorist organisation, which is against Federal laws, but Thorne was unlikely to be prosecuted.

"Nobody has been prosecuted for putting things out on Facebook or Twitter," she said. "It would have to be accompanied by some formal proof of recruiting activity. I don't think he's got the authority to be able to be a recruiter for a particular organisation, to be honest, but he does have connections."

Dr Aly said Thorne was being deliberately provocative.

She said recent mainstream media attention could be providing Thorne with "an opportunity to put himself out there and get a bit more of a following" but that media outlets should not be deterred from reporting on him and other radicals.

"While there's a fine line between giving him the exposure he's craving, my view is that we need to be exposing people like Thorne in the media so that we can challenge him," she said.

"A student told me that his friend heard one of Thorne's sermons and was impressed that he was knowledgeable because he could speak Arabic and everyone thought he was some learned sheik because he could speak Arabic well and he was very passionate and influential and charismatic.

"Now, if that's what people are saying about him and we don't stand up and challenge him and there's a group of young men who are looking at him as their sheik, following him, I couldn't sleep at night if I didn't do everything I could.

"Putting it out to mass media exposes him to a whole different audience who disagree with him and gives them an opportunity to say, 'Not in my name'.

"We need to give the people who are following him a different view of the world, to give them an informed, conscious and critical analysis of what Thorne is saying."

Dr Aly said there needed to be more policy dealing with social media and terrorism recruitment.

"I think that this is where policy is lacking because we haven't taken this social media stuff seriously in the past," she said.

"It's shifted on to social media, which is a public sphere, not regulated by the rules of society."