Aus PM appeals to imams to help counter home-grown radicalisation after Melbourne stabbing incident

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Monday called on imams in the country to do more to counter the growing threats posed by home-grown Islamic radicals, a week after a deadly knife attack here carried out by a radicalised Somali-origin man.

Hassan Khalif Shire Ali stabbed three members of the public and attacked police officers in the Bourke Street on Friday before he was shot and killed by the police.

The 30-year-old, who was driving a utility vehicle, loaded with gas bottles, into the busy Bourke Street, allegedly set it alight and began stabbing members of the public.

''This bloke (the attacker), radicalised here in Australia with extreme Islam, took a knife and cut down a fellow Australian in Bourke Street," Morrison was quoted as saying by the Australian Broadcasting Company.

"He was a terrorist. He was a radical extremist terrorist who took a knife to another Australian because he had been radicalised in this country, he said while rejecting the claim made by the family of the attacker that he was mentally unstable.

Morrison dismissed the suggestion that mental health issues negated that primary cause as a "lame excuse".

"I am not going to make an excuse for that. Of course issues of mental health and all these other things are important,'' Morrison said.

The Prime Minister added "These other issues are relevant, don't get me wrong, but he was radicalised, and that's why he took a knife to people."
''I don't believe that is where the majority of decent, hard-working, respectable Australian Muslims are at. They want their community to be safer and there are people coming in to their community and they are infecting their young people and others with hatred and false teaching, which is taking them on the wrong path,'' he said adding ''Now, that has to be called out and it has to be stopped.''
"This happened because of an Australian citizen who was radicalised in Australia he didn't bring it from somewhere else, he learnt it all here."