Efforts by well-meaning apologists to absolve Islam when Muslims in Australia turn to violence are ultimately futile, as the tragic case of Yacqub Khayre in the recent Brighton siege demonstrates.

As a refugee worker among Khayre's Somali community, I was among the many Melburnians who welcomed his family from the horrors of civil war. In that decade, I grew to deeply love the Somali people – including Khayre's family. My heart was continually rent by the stories of unimaginable pain and loss so many of my friends had suffered. It was rent again as refuge in Australia failed to break the cycle of violence for the troubled Khayre.

Police responding to the hostage crisis in Brighton. Credit:Luis Ascui

Khayre was clearly sending (yet another) salvo across the bows of the narrative that "this has nothing to do with Islam". Surely this has at least something to do with Islam.

I know this because I have discussed theology with the people Khayre hung out with; listened to the Islamic teachers Khayre was influenced by; been to the Islamic centres Khayre has been to; and read the theologians that outline the traditional Islamic approach to politics. In short, whatever social or personal factors drove Khayre's act it was, to some degree, also driven by a traditional Islamic political theology.