suggesting there were no good Muslims.<\/a><\/p>\nOn Saturday, the Imam of the Perth mosque, Mohammed Shakib, said \u201cdivisive rhetoric has to stop\u201d in politics.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow on earth can you have a certain politician that demonises an entire faith group? 1.8bn [people]. That\u2019s a quarter of humanity,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI voiced my concerns to the premier that had anyone of us said something similar, that I don\u2019t think there are any good Christians, for example, no one of any sound mind would say that.<\/p>\n
\u201cImagine the legal repercussions. Imagine the outrage. But yet, Islamophobia has become so normalised, it\u2019s become mainstream.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked by a journalist if he had been referring to Hanson\u2019s comments, Shakib said: \u201cI think it\u2019s not rocket science, I was referring to this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cook said terrorism was \u201can act of hatred, of division \u2026 making us afraid to be who we are\u201d and said his government would do \u201ceverything we can to ensure that we stamp it out in WA\u201d.<\/p>\n
The WA police commissioner, Col Blanch, on Saturday said white supremacy was not \u201cprevalent\u201d in the community, but there was a \u201cvery, very small minority\u201d of people who sought to do harm.<\/p>\n
Police have alleged Michaels was involved in a group chat with other Australians and people overseas on the encrypted messaging service Telegram.<\/p>\n
Blanch said counter-terrorism police were continuing to go through the messages, but, so far, Michaels appeared to be the only West Australian in the group of white supremacists \u201ctalking about their hate for other people in our community\u201d.<\/p>\n
The commissioner said Michaels was not known to police and that his family was cooperating with the investigation.<\/p>\n
Asked if he personally believed young men could \u201cradicalise themselves\u201d online, Blanch said: \u201cYoung, lonely men need care and love and support and friends and purpose in life, or they find people online to exploit their feelings, and they go down the wrong pathway.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, he said police were looking for anyone who had potentially influenced Michaels into his allegedly extremist beliefs.<\/p>\n
Michaels, who was refused bail, is next due to appear in court on 23 March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The West Australian premier, Roger Cook, has urged the community to condemn the emergence of \u201cdog whistling\u201d and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509443,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-509442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}