SYDNEY: As police prepared to file charges against rioters who surrounded a Sydney church demanding retribution, a Muslim community leader stated on Wednesday that the father of a child accused of stabbing two Christian priests in Australia noticed no symptoms of his son’s extremism.
The 16-year-old teenager, who stabbed Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel and the Rev. Isaac Royel at a church service that was being webcast online on Monday night, talked about the Prophet Muhammad in Arabic. Neither clergyman suffered injuries that would have been fatal.
The Orthodox Assyrian congregation overcame the child, and on Wednesday he remained under police guard in an undisclosed hospital. In the scuffle, he cut his hands severely.
Gamel Kheir, the secretary of the Lebanese Muslim Association and an activist for the largest Muslim community in Sydney, reported that shortly after the incident, he spent two hours at the boy’s family home with his grieving father. Since then, the family has fled their house out of concern for reprisals.
Regarding the father, who has not been named, Kheir said, “He was in shock.”
Other than the fact that he was increasingly defying his father, he was unaware of any indications that he was growing more extreme. But that was all there was to it. He saw no red flags, so to speak,” Kheir continued.
Kheir is one of many local leaders who have charged that police prematurely declared on Tuesday that the attack at Christ unnecessarily heightened tensions in the community.
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