Australia has changed its character and its traditions of nation-building and asylum away from permanent refugee settlement. Its region was facing the possibility of escalating warfare and consequent increases in refugee numbers. Much of the Muslim world was disintegrating in internecine wars, with the exception of Indonesia and Malaysia, Australia's largest and closest neighbours. The creation of the long-awaited Islamic ‘caliphate’ (ISIL) in Syria and Iraq was built on nations in which Australia had intervened as an ally of the United States. Australia was also a participant in the inter-communal warfare of Afghanistan. These were futile attempts to create democracies by force in societies that had never accepted democracy, a system some Islamic teachers have described as haram or forbidden. ‘Crusading’ intervention was almost certain to fail and leave much bitterness behind. Military intervention to change an unpopular culture is too high a price to pay unless it directly challenges Australia.

In the view of Australian governments, which their Oppositions endorsed, the propaganda and recruiting power of the ‘caliphate’ was such that young Muslim Australians were being attracted and trained in terrorist tactics ultimately directed against Australia. This was undoubtedly true, although the numbers going to Syria were little more than a hundred and included converts and non-Arabs. This fear, which was publicly endorsed by ASIO and the Federal Police, created the dilemma of endorsing multicultural principles and practices, while greatly expanding supervision and control over half a million Australian Muslims. This approach has failed in France and Britain. It unleashed the dormant hostility that underlay much Australian and Muslim public opinion. To focus public antagonism on one small section of society is not conducive to social cohesion (Chulov 2006). ‘Deradicalization’ programs were developed and revised to appeal to the Muslim communities, but were failing to reach the locally born youth with their social media networks, which the ‘caliphate’ used with great skill. One problem was that rebellious youth had assimilated to Australian street life, with its long and violent traditions, which were scarcely ‘Islamic’ at all and mainly inspired from the United States. Terrorist attacks that focused on Australian and British targets in the Lindt Café, Sydney (2014) and Westminster, London (2017) were the work of single, mentally disturbed individuals, known to the police but not regarded as Islamic terrorists until after they had been shot dead during their damaging attacks.