Because we cannot immediately stop the terror that killed Sisto Malaspina. Allow me a moment’s digression to add to Melbourne’s monument of grief for this beautiful man. I wandered into Pellegrini’s about a year ago, ordered a long macchiato, then realised I had no cash in my wallet. “No problem bella,” Sisto sang. “You pay me back later.” I never paid you back, Sisto. We cannot magically arrest the dark mania that propelled the trio found guilty of plotting a Christmas Day massacre in Melbourne’s CBD in 2016. But must the rest of us keep spinning in the vortex of terror’s toxic energy? Scott Morrison said some Muslim leaders “clearly” don’t know enough about radical “infiltrators” in their fold and urged them not to “look the other way”. Can you turn a blind eye to something you don’t really know is there? He did not name the allegedly incurious imams or community leaders citing the “cone of silence of the investigation.”

Let me stress only some: local Somali leaders called Shire Ali’s actions terrorism, as did a number of Islamic groups I’d never heard of. Still, the “some” includes prominent Islamic spokespeople. Prime Minister Scott Morrison visits Pellegrini's cafe in the wake of the Bourke Street attacks. Credit:The Age I can almost excuse Shire Ali’s grieving family for coming out with the obscenity that his knifing passersby and igniting gas cylinders in his car on Bourke Street during Friday rush hour was a “cry for help”. I cannot excuse otherwise intelligent commentators promoting the tired and disingenuous argument that lone-wolf terrorists must be of sound mind to be worthy of the label. Since declaring the caliphate in 2014, Islamic State chiefs have called on Muslims in the West to “kill the infidels” by whatever means possible – a small number of foot soldiers responded to the call, the common denominator between them not good mental health but what Morrison accurately described as “the radical and dangerous ideology of extremist Islam".

Loading Yet some insist Shire Ali was just a troubled soul and not an Islamic extremist. “There is no evidence that this individual’s religious beliefs were a causal factor (in the violence),” said the Islamic Council of Victoria, described on its website as “the peak Muslim body representing an estimated 200,000 Victorian Muslims and over 60 member societies”. That’s “no evidence”, apart from Shire Ali chatting to convicted terrorists, having relatives known to counter-terrorism authorities, being placed on a terror watchlist and seeing his passport cancelled on concerns he’d join Islamic State in Syria. Other facts about his associations are reportedly subject to court suppression orders.

It’s hard to tell how many people the presumptuously named Muslims Australia actually represents, but they too lamented “that when a Muslim commits such acts then all other possible factors are either downplayed or ignored. This is a privilege that is extended in most other incidents to such perpetrators.” This is nonsense. A Muslim with a knife – and even with a car packed with gas bottles – does not a terrorist make. A Muslim with a knife and gas bottles with Shire Ali’s security profile probably does a terrorist make, just as the white supremacists who have acted out their hateful ideology in various countries shooting up mosques, synagogues, multicultural gatherings and black churches are unambiguously terrorists. In an interview with SBS Arabic24, Grand Mufti Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohamed rightly pointed out that religious leaders like himself are targets for extremists. He also said: “Linking crime to religion is what frustrates us the most and the duty of politicians is to defuse conflicts rather than inflame them. We should not use the word ‘terror’ to intimidate people the way other dictatorships do to oppress their own people.”

Loading While some defensiveness on the Grand Mufti’s part is understandable, his insistence that Shire Ali’s actions are entirely severable from religion, however warped the Somali’s interpretation of religion, can be read as negating the Islamist threat. “Terror” is not just a word but a reality. Not just a tool dictators use to intimidate their own people, but a weapon of intimidation religious zealots use against free societies. I’m not implying these imams or Muslim advocates detect troubled individuals in their orbit and choose not to inform the authorities about those ticking bombs, or that they condone terrorism. I share their indignation at the veiled suggestion that the community is collectively responsible for the actions of depraved individuals.