Q&A host Tony Jones ruled Zaky Mallah's comment "out of order". Credit:ABC The media outlet most interested in the matter, the ABC itself, has been silenced, as its managing director, Mark Scott, cowers before the onslaught. Q&A has not been permitted to defend itself. No ABC program has been permitted to allow Mallah to explain himself: I understand that an interview with Mallah recorded on Tuesday was not broadcast, by order of the managing director. [A spokesman for the ABC confirmed that an interview was recorded and not broadcast, but denied it was withheld on the directions of Scott.] Regardless, quite early on Tuesday morning, the ABC surrendered the pass to its opponents by admitting to "an error in judgment" – and since then has said virtually nothing. No one would argue that the decision to allow Mallah to ask a question on the program went swimmingly well. No one would deny that in including him, Q&A was taking a risk. As the ABC's statement rightly says, "there is always risk in undertaking live television… circumstances will happen that are not anticipated". But despite what the prime minister and so many others appear to believe, the producers were not offering a pulpit to an advocate for Islamic State. Turnbull's portrayal of Zaky Mallah and his views is profoundly misleading. "He had served a term of imprisonment for threatening to kill ASIO officers," he said.

Malcolm Turnbull's portrayal of Mallah is misleading. Credit:Louise Kennerley Well actually, he served two years in solitary in the Goulburn super-max a decade ago, awaiting trial on terrorism charges for which he was acquitted. He pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of threatening Commonwealth officers and was sentenced to time already served. Which is not, of course, to say that he was not at the time a seriously deluded and dangerous young man. He was 19. More recently, Turnbull continued, as though Mallah had not changed his spots in the least, "he had travelled to Syria in the pursuit of what he described as 'jihad' ". Fear-mongering: The impact of the government's interventions is that Zaky Mallah's Q&A appearance will now live forever on YouTube. Mallah did travel to Syria in 2012. The "jihad" he was interested in joining was the fight against the tyrannical government of Bashar al-Assad, and the outfit he joined for a few days – without engaging in any combat, he insists – was the Free Syrian Army. This is the force which the United States is now training and which Australia supports.

As The Australian's Adam Shand reported at the time, the former would-be suicide bomber realised "how misguided his anger towards Australian society had been...'Go to Syria where your brothers are dying for freedom, democracy and the true Islamic way, rights guaranteed in this lucky country,' he says…. 'We Muslims have so much freedom here (in Australia) yet we are causing so much trouble'." Illustration: John Spooner You need to condemn those who are brainwashing our youth into believing that a group like ISIS is fighting for jihad. Zaky Mallah Since then, Mallah has been outspoken in his condemnation of Islamic State. On Channel Ten's The Project last October he said: "I'm on this program this evening to distance myself from the actions of these individuals, these idiots, these wankers, who are giving Islam and the Muslim world and the Islamic community in Australia a bad name and for those who are considering to join ISIS I hope ASIO is onto you, I hope your passport is refused and I hope you are arrested and locked up." In one of numerous video blogs on YouTube, Mallah calls on Australia's Salafist imams to join the fight against extremism: "You need to condemn terrorism. You need to condemn fundamentalism. You need to condemn those who are brainwashing our youth into believing that a group like ISIS is fighting for jihad. They are not fighting for jihad. They are fighting for bulls---."

Zaky Mallah has always been an attention seeker and a loose cannon. He was guilty of publishing appalling and inexcusable tweets about News Corp columnists Rita Panahi and Miranda Devine some months ago, and again today. But there was no reason at all for Q&A's producers to suspect that he would suddenly become an advocate for Islamic State. And nor did he. His final, notorious comment was not a call to arms – although it's easy to see how many viewers took it that way. It was, if you watch it again, the comment of an angry young man, a born and bred Australian with no other nationality, who has been trying for some years to counter the lure of Islamic State in his own community, and who had just been told by a member of the government that ideally he should be expelled from the country by ministerial decree. A few weeks ago the government convened a conference of experts in de-radicalisation from around the world to advise it how to counter the propaganda pull of IS. Two of those experts appeared on the ABC's Lateline. It's worth reading or watching what they had to say - in particular, Britain's Abdul-Rehman Malik on the increasingly draconian legislation being passed in his country and in ours: "I think some of that language - the death cult language, the language of taking away citizenship - I think it's headed in the wrong direction. And remember there's going to be kids - and it's already happening - who've gone out there, who survived, and who want to come back. Don't take their citizenship away. They could be our best allies…. They're going to be the best ambassadors to say, 'You think you're creating a utopian society out there? You're not. I've seen it, its hell; let's not go down that route'. " Zaky Mallah never joined IS but, more than a decade ago, he was a radicalised would-be terrorist. He has since become an ally – or a potential ally – in the fight against IS. But he's condemned because of his record and the ABC is excoriated for daring to give him a voice.

The ABC has apologised for its temerity – and closed down the right of its program-makers to say a word in their own defence. Thus does the politics of fear divide us all, and conquer our fundamental liberties. Jonathan Holmes is an Age columnist and a former presenter of the ABC's Media Watch program.