The cancellation of a passport may, in fact, interrupt a natural process in which a young hothead decides not to travel to the killing fields of the Middle East and just gets on with the good life in Australia. Instead, his cancelled passport automatically gives him the status among his peers of a jihadist hero, and a fixed identity, without his having taken the conscious step to leave his family and fly to a war zone. Young men full of bravado thus get the best of both worlds — they remain safely at home but fume that the only thing holding them back is ASIO. Their passions, now channelled into that affront, may otherwise have fizzled out in their own timidity. Who knows what went through 18-year-old Numan Haider’s mind when he took two knives and an Islamic State flag to the Endeavour Hills police station and ­attacked two officers, one so savagely he almost died. He must have been aware it was a suicide mission. We’ve heard he was upset about splitting up with a long-term girlfriend, and that he was at Hungry Jack’s with friends earlier in the evening expressing anger that police had searched his bedroom. We know he supported IS, posing in a balaclava with its black flag for selfies, and railing against the police and ASIO. We know that the day before, IS had issued a ­global order for its followers to kill Westerners “by any means”, to “strike police, security & intelligence members”. Whatever he was thinking, Haider’s aim was terrorism, and he was immediately praised by IS as the “first shaheed”, or Islamic martyr, on Australian soil. That final act defines him, so it is absurd for the Islamic Council of Victoria to claim he wasn’t a terrorist and for the ABC to portray him as a mere victim of a police shooting. However he was radicalised, by Tuesday night he had reached the point of no return. Whether he would have done so if his passport hadn’t been cancelled we’ll never know. But it’s worth asking the question. And many do. Belmore GP Dr Jamal Rifi describes cancelling the passports of radicals as nonsensical: “All this does is keep these individuals in the local community, where they are given a badge of honour to parade.” Curtin University academic Anne Aly also reportedly has warned the government that depriving radicals of the ­opportunity to go overseas to fight may cause them to carry out domestic attacks instead. This month alone the government has cancelled seven passports of Islamic ­extremists. That adds to at least 40 previously cancelled passports — and new legislation will further expand the government’s ­national security powers. Of course, international ­obligations require us to ­prevent our citizens going abroad to commit terrorism. But the government says the goal is to prevent home-grown jihadists from being further radicalised and trained overseas so they pose a lethal danger when they return. “When they go overseas, they get converted through the death cult into trained assassins,” warned Immigration Minister Scott Morrison. But what if the reality is more like New Zealand’s Mark Taylor, aka Abu Abdul Rahman, who proudly burned his passport when he arrived in Syria, then promptly changed his mind. Instead of dying a martyr, he wants to go home. If young Australian Muslims want to go to the Middle East to do “humanitarian” work or whatever they say it is, let them. Chances are most will be horrified; disillusioned by a reality bearing no resemblance to YouTube propaganda. There’s nothing like seeing with your own eyes the slaughter of fellow Muslims to understand that you can’t blame Australia for the barbarity of IS. A similar idea was used by the head nun at my old school when she found girls smoking. She’d shut them in her office with a packet of Camels — and something to vomit in — and make them smoke the lot. The allure of smoking was soon replaced by a reflex aversion to it. Jihad is far more ­serious but the idea is the same.