REPORTER: Julie Nimmo
JUSTIN: Australia has no business going to Iraq. Australia has to clean up its own backyard first.
SOLOMON: It's not our war, and we should stay out of it. And we shouldn't be going to other people's countries, taking over.
KHALID: This government has got people so warped - they're forgetting something out of the whole equation here. They're talking about Muslims, they're talking about Iraq, they're talking about Osama bin Laden, about Afghanistan. But that's all done deliberately to forget about the real problems that are happening here at home, and they will never ever be resolved, and they're not resolved.
These Aboriginal men are Muslims. They say they're fighting their own war on terror.
KHALID: The terrorist to me, as an indigenous Aboriginal person, is the people now in the government, not the people, but the government, that is occupying this land. We were invaded 217 years ago, and they want to talk about terrorists.
There's nothing new about Aboriginal claims for rights and land. What is new is that now these men have discovered a religion that they truly believe understands them.
KURANDA SEYIT, EDITOR, AUSTRALIAN MUSLIM NEWS: I really believe that the white Australian government's neglected them, no-one's helped them. And those people, I feel, need some spiritual guidance and I think that if Christianity is not willing to treat them like human beings, then I know Islam would.
Khalid discovered Islam over a decade ago in prison. Justin says "he saw the truth" while studying law at university. Shahzad, a solicitor, was born into it. Solomon's introduction was at the workplace. And Anthony Mundine converted after reading the words of African-American Muslim reformer Malcolm X. In a climate of escalating fear over Islam, all of these men proudly identify as Muslims. And as a result, they're exposed to a whole new world.
KURANDA SEYIT: The Koori reverts that I've come across, they tend to go towards Lakemba area and this Bankstown area, and the people they come under the influence of have a different culture, have a different background, and a different attitude, mentality. And obviously, Arabic people, Lebanese people, Palestinian people their country is the one that's being attacked and being oppressed, so they've got a stronger attitude and they support Osama bin Laden because he's their only hope, really. Otherwise, who else is going to help them? Society has marginalised these people and they look for support and strength in this sort of camaraderie.
Even though his messages are sporadic, Osama bin Laden's influence is seeping in to the suburbs of Sydney.
KHALID: You asked about Osama bin Laden before. Wherever you are, Osama bin Laden, I love you, brother, and I do do it for you and I pray for you, because to me you're just a spiritual warrior standing up for Islam and propagating freedom around the world. People like America and Britain, they've been running around too long as bullies standing over people, now they're getting a bit of their own medicine back and they don't know what to do about it.
REPORTER: Are you really serious about your support of Osama bin Laden or are you just being provocative?
KHALID: No, I'm not. There's a hundred thousand Osama bin Laden's around this country. The only difference is they're all rolling around drunk with needles out of their arms. So, I mean, let it be known there's thousands of Osama bin Ladens here and if they ever find Osama bin Laden there'll be another 1,000 more to pop up. Because it's not about the physical character, it's the spirit beyond the person, or the way of life. He's an activist for freedom, he's a Muslim, he's standing up to follow and fight against injustice.
So would this man, who's spent time in prison, use terrorism to fight the Aboriginal cause?
KHALID: It's not really relevant to our situation where we are, geographically, politically and population wise, no, but yes, I'd fight them back in a political way now because it's absurd and foolish to when you're at the bottom of it, you can't do nothing.
SOLOMON: I've sat with people that know bin Laden personally and I've spoken to many people that have seen the great things that bin Laden has done for their countries, so in that sense, yeah, I'm a supporter of bin Laden, but I'm not a supporter of terrorism, 'cause like I said, I don't believe bin Laden is a terrorist. If there's solid proof showing that bin Laden blew something up and killed innocent people then I wouldn't be a supporter of him, but I don't believe there is any solid proof of that. It's not a part of our religion to stand there and get stepped on - this is why Islam is so good for the Aboriginal people.
KHALID And there's nothing that they fear greater - the Muslims of this country, in the hierarchy, and the Government - is the Aboriginal people to convert to Islam and to become a Muslim state, because they know we've got the land to do it.
REPORTER: Are you worried about being accused of being a terrorist?
SOLOMON: When the fight starts within a man, a man knows he's worth something, and the world needs people like me because if there was no troublemakers, or what they want to say is a terrorist, or whatever, it'd be a pretty one-sided story, wouldn't it? The world needs people like the Osama bin Ladens, the world needs people like the Martin Luther Kings, the Malcolm Xs, the Bob Marleys, the whoever they are. It doesn't matter whatever way they express themselves in the world, there is a message there and the message was in this case to the West, America, the main person, was Pull up.
That's not the only controversial message that these Aboriginal men want Australia to hear. At the Australia Day Survival concert, there was much talk about "unfinished business".
SHAHZAD: Aboriginal people are the most oppressed people. You take minerals off our land, you get water off our land, you get agriculture off our land, yet we are the poorest people on this land. This is Aboriginal land, and you can't have justice on stolen land, it's like a false theory. It's saying "I am right." But how have you attained that righteousness?
These men already feel marginalised. But like others the world over, Islam is providing them with a feeling of empowerment.
JUSTIN: I feel that, in Australia, I don't have the right to exist as a human being and the fact that I identify myself as an Aboriginal I think symbolises that, in that whenever I walk around I'm thinking "I'm an Aboriginal, I'm an Aboriginal." I'm not thinking to myself "I'm a human being, I'm a man." So this is one of the things where the Muslim and the Islamic faith comes into it is that it gives me that strength to think "Yes, I am a man, I am a human being, you're no better than what I am and there's nothing you can do to me."
REPORTER: So it gives you faith on a day like today?
JUSTIN: It gives me faith on a day like today, it gives me strength to endure it and not to get angry and to just lash out at all the things that we've been through.
SOLOMON: Me and many other Aboriginals, leaving Islam out of it, but just as an Aboriginal man - none of us really feel like this is our country, because there's no solid reality that this is our country.
Shahzad's story embodies the history of Aborigines and migrants in Australia. His great-grandfather was an Afghan camel driver from Baluchistan, who married a Yamitji woman from remote Western Australia. They had four children.
SHAHZAD: A lot of the times they were on the fringes of white society so they weren't allowed to camp in town, as were Aboriginal people, they weren't allowed to come into town. I think a rapport, a relationship had built up. Back then, a lot of the Afghans and other people that came in that weren't considered Australian citizens, so obviously they couldn't marry anybody, a lot of these were single men, so they married into Aboriginal women.
When Shahzad's great-grandmother died, the family fled Australia to escape the policy of forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families.
SHAHZAD: My grandfather, he was 12 years old and he had younger siblings. The youngest was four years old when my great-grandmother passed away. The Chief Protector of Police or native welfare were going to take the kids away so my great-grandfather, knowing the struggle that he had to just marry an Aboriginal woman, that this was going to happen to the kids, so what he did, he put all those kids on a ship, sent them back to Baluchistan, so my grandfather got brought up in Baluchistan, but lucky for that is we maintained one strong culture, you know, being brought up over there, and people are Muslim, so they've been brought up as Muslims, so that's how it's come to me. As far as my Aboriginality goes, it fits nicely within that because it's all based on how Australia is an oppressive state. Like no matter what we may think with democracy, the lifestyle, and the quarter-acre block and all this stuff, it's still oppressive in many ways. And we, Aboriginal people, are at the bottom of that.
SOLOMON: It's just when you walk down the street - and this has happened since I was a kid - you know, I couldn't hurt a fly - and you get pulled over by police and questioned and taken in, you know, you think, "What for?", you know. And you can't say out loud, "It's 'cause I'm black," because people will go "Arrrgghh", you know, "Don't be such a whinger."
ANTHONY MUNDINE: Like I said, Aboriginals ain't supposed to mean anything, means shit - sorry for the French, but that's true - and Islam, we just terrorists and killers. Being indigenous and being a Muslim, you know, not really two good combinations, in this society.
It's a volatile mix. Muslim spiritual adviser Dr Mohsen Labban can understand the dangers.
DR MOHSEN LABBAN, SALIC AUSTRALIA: We have mistreated Aborigines for long, and they feel the pain, and the truth is now becoming quite clear. And they feel they have been neglected, and treated badly and laughed at, and what what...soever, so some of them who really cannot accept the status quo, would like to react towards that. And the way they do this reaction is by expressing stronger attitudes to you, but whether these attitudes are real and have an avenue to be applied, I have grave doubts about that.
KURANDA SEYIT: All they're doing is speaking up against injustice. You can oppress people for a long time, but eventually they're going to break - there's a breaking point. I think that's what we see in Palestine, for example - and all those people are not, by the way, Muslim, there's a lot of Christian Palestinians - but those people are fighting for their freedom and they're doing it any way they can and we sometimes see the negative aspect of that fight, that cause, and we label them as "terrorists". But I think that everyone has a right to speak up against injustice, and that's the beauty of this country - we can actually speak up about it and we have freedom of speech.
KHALID: I have as much right, more right then anyone else as Aboriginal people, to actually go down there and stand there and speak highly of people that they're trying to denigrate, because what are they going to do - what, chuck me in jail? For what? Calling me a terrorist - what, when you're the biggest terrorist walking.
SOLOMON: The Western way is every man for himself, dog eat dog. I look after mine and you look after your own, where the Aboriginal native way is we look after each other. And Islam is exactly the same - we look after for each other. So you combine those two together - mate, that's a big army to fight against. And that's an army with morals and God behind them.
REPORTER: Can you ever see that kind of revolution happening here?
SOLOMON: Definitely - it's so clear to me and the rest of my Aboriginal Muslim mates, it's that clear, when we talk about it we've all got the exact same thing... it's as clear as day.
They are well aware of the impact of their words and that speaking publicly like this is risky. Interrogation and imprisonment are a real possibility. But equally unnerving is the threat of a public backlash.
SHAHZAD: We have to be careful on how we're portrayed, simply because people manipulate situations, they manipulate footage, they manipulate a lot of things. And I don't want to be manipulated. I don't want to be turned into something that I'm not or we're not because that's bound to happen.
ANTHONY MUNDINE: I've been through the wars, man - the media has tried to, you know - I don't know anyone who has copped more heat as what I have.
SBS WORLD SPORTS NEWSREEL: Mundine, who's a Muslim, took the opportunity to once again speak his mind on matters outside the ring.
Anthony Mundine understands better then most the risks of speaking out. His comments post September 11 still haunt him today.
ANTHONY MUNDINE Channel 9 Today Show: It's not about terrorism, it's about fighting for God's laws, and Americas brought it upon themselves...
ANTHONY MUNDINE: The media try to pillage me and make out me to be the bad boy, the villain, to where I'm for killings, to where I'm for these types of things, when it's totally the opposite. Taking one life in Islam is like taking the whole of humanity - that's how much human life means to brotherhood and sisterhood.
REPORTER: So do you still stand by those comments?
ANTHONY MUNDINE: Yeah, I do. I mean, I said it raw at the time and probably that's why they could infringe on me the way they did, but I still stand by 'em. I'm not going to back down, because it's the truth. But I know I'm hitting a nerve, so that's why they're going on like that. If they aren't barking... "Truth is like a rock" - it's like Malcolm X said - "Truth is like a rock." And if you throw it into a pack of dogs the one that it hits will bark the loudest, and they're barking.
Anthony, or 'Choc' as he's known to his mates, maintains he just said publicly what many others were saying privately.
SOLOMON: "You brought it on yourself," that's what Choc said - "You bought it on yourself," that's all he said. You've done it for many years, America, gone to many different countries, bombed, ravished, pillaged, and now somebody has thought, "I'm going to get these people back because they've killed my whole family," and they do it, and you've got the hide to call them a terrorist. They're only defending themselves. In your law that's called self-defence. You're the terrorist. So whatever Choc said, I support 100%.
For Solomon, supporting the cause has come at a cost. Last year, ASIO caught up with him when he was planning a study trip to Africa. He says he wanted to learn Arabic so he could read the Koran in its original form. ASIO wasn't convinced. The trip was cancelled. And Solomon says he's been in a depression ever since.
SOLOMON: Someone made a claim that, because they didn't like me, I was going to become a terrorist, go to some terrorist camp. I was told that, because of these new terrorist laws, by the time I'd want to come back, I probably wouldn't be allowed to. They actually said they didn't want another John Walker.
REPORTER: Was there any truth in that allegation?
SOLOMON: Nah. Not at all - this is my country. But does Islam offer the solution or just another set of problems?
JUSTIN: I know of Aboriginal brothers who have converted who have been told by Aboriginal leaders that they're sell-outs, that they have no right being Muslim, and these are prominent leaders who have phoned them up and told them this. And I've found a few opportunities that I had prior to becoming Muslim disappear from me because of protocol allegiances that certain people had. But, overall, on a grassroots level, it was well embraced, because they saw that I'd given up alcohol, given up drugs, that I was living a cleaner life and that I had become more positive in my outlook on life.
KURANDA SEYIT: But one of the difficult issues is when you want to become a Muslim you want to say to everybody, "I'm a Muslim, and I want to be able to express it to everybody," And then suddenly you go to a mosque and they say, "Who are you? We don't want you here." That's really sad - and that's what I think a few Aboriginal Muslims have experienced.
Justin, an Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander, was born into a strong network of traditional culture and law, but he says it was this belief that was the biggest obstacle when converting.
JUSTIN: I felt that I was betraying my past and my ancestors if I became Muslim and that I'd be selling out the things that they fought for and that they stood for. Then one night, while contemplating it, I began praying to Malu, who is like a god figure in the Meriam belief. It came to me, a voice said to me, "Islam and Malu's law are one, this is the final lesson for your people." I hope that I never give it up and I pray to God I never give it up because it's such a beautiful gift which has been given to me. I don't know how I'd survive or how I'd live without it. It's sort of like having food and water. It's part of my sustenance now and something I need for my survival. In spite of all their difficulties, these men have staked everything on the word of God. With so much riding on it, it's yet to be seen whether Islam can deliver.
JUSTIN: Australia has no business going to Iraq. Australia has to clean up its own backyard first.
SOLOMON: It's not our war, and we should stay out of it. And we shouldn't be going to other people's countries, taking over.
KHALID: This government has got people so warped - they're forgetting something out of the whole equation here. They're talking about Muslims, they're talking about Iraq, they're talking about Osama bin Laden, about Afghanistan. But that's all done deliberately to forget about the real problems that are happening here at home, and they will never ever be resolved, and they're not resolved.
These Aboriginal men are Muslims. They say they're fighting their own war on terror.
KHALID: The terrorist to me, as an indigenous Aboriginal person, is the people now in the government, not the people, but the government, that is occupying this land. We were invaded 217 years ago, and they want to talk about terrorists.
There's nothing new about Aboriginal claims for rights and land. What is new is that now these men have discovered a religion that they truly believe understands them.
KURANDA SEYIT, EDITOR, AUSTRALIAN MUSLIM NEWS: I really believe that the white Australian government's neglected them, no-one's helped them. And those people, I feel, need some spiritual guidance and I think that if Christianity is not willing to treat them like human beings, then I know Islam would.
Khalid discovered Islam over a decade ago in prison. Justin says "he saw the truth" while studying law at university. Shahzad, a solicitor, was born into it. Solomon's introduction was at the workplace. And Anthony Mundine converted after reading the words of African-American Muslim reformer Malcolm X. In a climate of escalating fear over Islam, all of these men proudly identify as Muslims. And as a result, they're exposed to a whole new world.
KURANDA SEYIT: The Koori reverts that I've come across, they tend to go towards Lakemba area and this Bankstown area, and the people they come under the influence of have a different culture, have a different background, and a different attitude, mentality. And obviously, Arabic people, Lebanese people, Palestinian people their country is the one that's being attacked and being oppressed, so they've got a stronger attitude and they support Osama bin Laden because he's their only hope, really. Otherwise, who else is going to help them? Society has marginalised these people and they look for support and strength in this sort of camaraderie.
Even though his messages are sporadic, Osama bin Laden's influence is seeping in to the suburbs of Sydney.
KHALID: You asked about Osama bin Laden before. Wherever you are, Osama bin Laden, I love you, brother, and I do do it for you and I pray for you, because to me you're just a spiritual warrior standing up for Islam and propagating freedom around the world. People like America and Britain, they've been running around too long as bullies standing over people, now they're getting a bit of their own medicine back and they don't know what to do about it.
REPORTER: Are you really serious about your support of Osama bin Laden or are you just being provocative?
KHALID: No, I'm not. There's a hundred thousand Osama bin Laden's around this country. The only difference is they're all rolling around drunk with needles out of their arms. So, I mean, let it be known there's thousands of Osama bin Ladens here and if they ever find Osama bin Laden there'll be another 1,000 more to pop up. Because it's not about the physical character, it's the spirit beyond the person, or the way of life. He's an activist for freedom, he's a Muslim, he's standing up to follow and fight against injustice.
So would this man, who's spent time in prison, use terrorism to fight the Aboriginal cause?
KHALID: It's not really relevant to our situation where we are, geographically, politically and population wise, no, but yes, I'd fight them back in a political way now because it's absurd and foolish to when you're at the bottom of it, you can't do nothing.
SOLOMON: I've sat with people that know bin Laden personally and I've spoken to many people that have seen the great things that bin Laden has done for their countries, so in that sense, yeah, I'm a supporter of bin Laden, but I'm not a supporter of terrorism, 'cause like I said, I don't believe bin Laden is a terrorist. If there's solid proof showing that bin Laden blew something up and killed innocent people then I wouldn't be a supporter of him, but I don't believe there is any solid proof of that. It's not a part of our religion to stand there and get stepped on - this is why Islam is so good for the Aboriginal people.
KHALID And there's nothing that they fear greater - the Muslims of this country, in the hierarchy, and the Government - is the Aboriginal people to convert to Islam and to become a Muslim state, because they know we've got the land to do it.
REPORTER: Are you worried about being accused of being a terrorist?
SOLOMON: When the fight starts within a man, a man knows he's worth something, and the world needs people like me because if there was no troublemakers, or what they want to say is a terrorist, or whatever, it'd be a pretty one-sided story, wouldn't it? The world needs people like the Osama bin Ladens, the world needs people like the Martin Luther Kings, the Malcolm Xs, the Bob Marleys, the whoever they are. It doesn't matter whatever way they express themselves in the world, there is a message there and the message was in this case to the West, America, the main person, was Pull up.
That's not the only controversial message that these Aboriginal men want Australia to hear. At the Australia Day Survival concert, there was much talk about "unfinished business".
SHAHZAD: Aboriginal people are the most oppressed people. You take minerals off our land, you get water off our land, you get agriculture off our land, yet we are the poorest people on this land. This is Aboriginal land, and you can't have justice on stolen land, it's like a false theory. It's saying "I am right." But how have you attained that righteousness?
These men already feel marginalised. But like others the world over, Islam is providing them with a feeling of empowerment.
JUSTIN: I feel that, in Australia, I don't have the right to exist as a human being and the fact that I identify myself as an Aboriginal I think symbolises that, in that whenever I walk around I'm thinking "I'm an Aboriginal, I'm an Aboriginal." I'm not thinking to myself "I'm a human being, I'm a man." So this is one of the things where the Muslim and the Islamic faith comes into it is that it gives me that strength to think "Yes, I am a man, I am a human being, you're no better than what I am and there's nothing you can do to me."
REPORTER: So it gives you faith on a day like today?
JUSTIN: It gives me faith on a day like today, it gives me strength to endure it and not to get angry and to just lash out at all the things that we've been through.
SOLOMON: Me and many other Aboriginals, leaving Islam out of it, but just as an Aboriginal man - none of us really feel like this is our country, because there's no solid reality that this is our country.
Shahzad's story embodies the history of Aborigines and migrants in Australia. His great-grandfather was an Afghan camel driver from Baluchistan, who married a Yamitji woman from remote Western Australia. They had four children.
SHAHZAD: A lot of the times they were on the fringes of white society so they weren't allowed to camp in town, as were Aboriginal people, they weren't allowed to come into town. I think a rapport, a relationship had built up. Back then, a lot of the Afghans and other people that came in that weren't considered Australian citizens, so obviously they couldn't marry anybody, a lot of these were single men, so they married into Aboriginal women.
When Shahzad's great-grandmother died, the family fled Australia to escape the policy of forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families.
SHAHZAD: My grandfather, he was 12 years old and he had younger siblings. The youngest was four years old when my great-grandmother passed away. The Chief Protector of Police or native welfare were going to take the kids away so my great-grandfather, knowing the struggle that he had to just marry an Aboriginal woman, that this was going to happen to the kids, so what he did, he put all those kids on a ship, sent them back to Baluchistan, so my grandfather got brought up in Baluchistan, but lucky for that is we maintained one strong culture, you know, being brought up over there, and people are Muslim, so they've been brought up as Muslims, so that's how it's come to me. As far as my Aboriginality goes, it fits nicely within that because it's all based on how Australia is an oppressive state. Like no matter what we may think with democracy, the lifestyle, and the quarter-acre block and all this stuff, it's still oppressive in many ways. And we, Aboriginal people, are at the bottom of that.
SOLOMON: It's just when you walk down the street - and this has happened since I was a kid - you know, I couldn't hurt a fly - and you get pulled over by police and questioned and taken in, you know, you think, "What for?", you know. And you can't say out loud, "It's 'cause I'm black," because people will go "Arrrgghh", you know, "Don't be such a whinger."
ANTHONY MUNDINE: Like I said, Aboriginals ain't supposed to mean anything, means shit - sorry for the French, but that's true - and Islam, we just terrorists and killers. Being indigenous and being a Muslim, you know, not really two good combinations, in this society.
It's a volatile mix. Muslim spiritual adviser Dr Mohsen Labban can understand the dangers.
DR MOHSEN LABBAN, SALIC AUSTRALIA: We have mistreated Aborigines for long, and they feel the pain, and the truth is now becoming quite clear. And they feel they have been neglected, and treated badly and laughed at, and what what...soever, so some of them who really cannot accept the status quo, would like to react towards that. And the way they do this reaction is by expressing stronger attitudes to you, but whether these attitudes are real and have an avenue to be applied, I have grave doubts about that.
KURANDA SEYIT: All they're doing is speaking up against injustice. You can oppress people for a long time, but eventually they're going to break - there's a breaking point. I think that's what we see in Palestine, for example - and all those people are not, by the way, Muslim, there's a lot of Christian Palestinians - but those people are fighting for their freedom and they're doing it any way they can and we sometimes see the negative aspect of that fight, that cause, and we label them as "terrorists". But I think that everyone has a right to speak up against injustice, and that's the beauty of this country - we can actually speak up about it and we have freedom of speech.
KHALID: I have as much right, more right then anyone else as Aboriginal people, to actually go down there and stand there and speak highly of people that they're trying to denigrate, because what are they going to do - what, chuck me in jail? For what? Calling me a terrorist - what, when you're the biggest terrorist walking.
SOLOMON: The Western way is every man for himself, dog eat dog. I look after mine and you look after your own, where the Aboriginal native way is we look after each other. And Islam is exactly the same - we look after for each other. So you combine those two together - mate, that's a big army to fight against. And that's an army with morals and God behind them.
REPORTER: Can you ever see that kind of revolution happening here?
SOLOMON: Definitely - it's so clear to me and the rest of my Aboriginal Muslim mates, it's that clear, when we talk about it we've all got the exact same thing... it's as clear as day.
They are well aware of the impact of their words and that speaking publicly like this is risky. Interrogation and imprisonment are a real possibility. But equally unnerving is the threat of a public backlash.
SHAHZAD: We have to be careful on how we're portrayed, simply because people manipulate situations, they manipulate footage, they manipulate a lot of things. And I don't want to be manipulated. I don't want to be turned into something that I'm not or we're not because that's bound to happen.
ANTHONY MUNDINE: I've been through the wars, man - the media has tried to, you know - I don't know anyone who has copped more heat as what I have.
SBS WORLD SPORTS NEWSREEL: Mundine, who's a Muslim, took the opportunity to once again speak his mind on matters outside the ring.
Anthony Mundine understands better then most the risks of speaking out. His comments post September 11 still haunt him today.
ANTHONY MUNDINE Channel 9 Today Show: It's not about terrorism, it's about fighting for God's laws, and Americas brought it upon themselves...
ANTHONY MUNDINE: The media try to pillage me and make out me to be the bad boy, the villain, to where I'm for killings, to where I'm for these types of things, when it's totally the opposite. Taking one life in Islam is like taking the whole of humanity - that's how much human life means to brotherhood and sisterhood.
REPORTER: So do you still stand by those comments?
ANTHONY MUNDINE: Yeah, I do. I mean, I said it raw at the time and probably that's why they could infringe on me the way they did, but I still stand by 'em. I'm not going to back down, because it's the truth. But I know I'm hitting a nerve, so that's why they're going on like that. If they aren't barking... "Truth is like a rock" - it's like Malcolm X said - "Truth is like a rock." And if you throw it into a pack of dogs the one that it hits will bark the loudest, and they're barking.
Anthony, or 'Choc' as he's known to his mates, maintains he just said publicly what many others were saying privately.
SOLOMON: "You brought it on yourself," that's what Choc said - "You bought it on yourself," that's all he said. You've done it for many years, America, gone to many different countries, bombed, ravished, pillaged, and now somebody has thought, "I'm going to get these people back because they've killed my whole family," and they do it, and you've got the hide to call them a terrorist. They're only defending themselves. In your law that's called self-defence. You're the terrorist. So whatever Choc said, I support 100%.
For Solomon, supporting the cause has come at a cost. Last year, ASIO caught up with him when he was planning a study trip to Africa. He says he wanted to learn Arabic so he could read the Koran in its original form. ASIO wasn't convinced. The trip was cancelled. And Solomon says he's been in a depression ever since.
SOLOMON: Someone made a claim that, because they didn't like me, I was going to become a terrorist, go to some terrorist camp. I was told that, because of these new terrorist laws, by the time I'd want to come back, I probably wouldn't be allowed to. They actually said they didn't want another John Walker.
REPORTER: Was there any truth in that allegation?
SOLOMON: Nah. Not at all - this is my country. But does Islam offer the solution or just another set of problems?
JUSTIN: I know of Aboriginal brothers who have converted who have been told by Aboriginal leaders that they're sell-outs, that they have no right being Muslim, and these are prominent leaders who have phoned them up and told them this. And I've found a few opportunities that I had prior to becoming Muslim disappear from me because of protocol allegiances that certain people had. But, overall, on a grassroots level, it was well embraced, because they saw that I'd given up alcohol, given up drugs, that I was living a cleaner life and that I had become more positive in my outlook on life.
KURANDA SEYIT: But one of the difficult issues is when you want to become a Muslim you want to say to everybody, "I'm a Muslim, and I want to be able to express it to everybody," And then suddenly you go to a mosque and they say, "Who are you? We don't want you here." That's really sad - and that's what I think a few Aboriginal Muslims have experienced.
Justin, an Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander, was born into a strong network of traditional culture and law, but he says it was this belief that was the biggest obstacle when converting.
JUSTIN: I felt that I was betraying my past and my ancestors if I became Muslim and that I'd be selling out the things that they fought for and that they stood for. Then one night, while contemplating it, I began praying to Malu, who is like a god figure in the Meriam belief. It came to me, a voice said to me, "Islam and Malu's law are one, this is the final lesson for your people." I hope that I never give it up and I pray to God I never give it up because it's such a beautiful gift which has been given to me. I don't know how I'd survive or how I'd live without it. It's sort of like having food and water. It's part of my sustenance now and something I need for my survival. In spite of all their difficulties, these men have staked everything on the word of God. With so much riding on it, it's yet to be seen whether Islam can deliver.