Bondi Beach's legacy should not be the gunmen's hatred, but the rescuer's courage. He has provided the world with a living Qur’anic exegesis, showing that "Jihad of Conscience" is terror's most potent weapon
VA Mohamad Ashrof
HISTORY’s moral trajectory is defined not by violence itself but by humanity’s response to it. On 14 December 2025, at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, a terrorist attack during Hanukkah celebrations claimed over a dozen innocent lives. Yet the prevailing narrative of inevitable civilisational conflict was disrupted—not by state forces, but by the bare hands and “jihad of conscience” of a single man: Ahmed al-Ahmed.
Al-Ahmed, a 43-year-old Syrian-born Muslim father and fruit shop owner, emerged from the terrified crowd to intervene, disarming the gunman and saving countless Jewish worshippers. His actions serve as a historiographical pivot point, forcing rigorous re-examination of Islam’s role in the modern world.
Al-Ahmed’s heroism represents authentic Islamic theology, whilst the “killer men”—those who slaughter in faith’s name—are theological aberrations abhorred in the Qur’an as anti-Islamic. By juxtaposing this event with Christchurch and Norway, where perpetrators were never taken as Christianity’s representatives, we deduce the mechanisms by which Islamophobia is manufactured to fuel a destructive “civilisational war.”
The ‘Jihad of Conscience’: Defining the Act
The term jihad, linguistically meaning “struggle” or “striving,” has been appropriated by extremists to mean “holy war” and by Islamophobes to mean “terrorism.” However, in lived reality, as exemplified by al-Ahmed, the term denotes profound internal and external striving for justice and ethical conduct.
Al-Ahmed’s motivation was a “jihad of conscience,” aligning with the Prophetic tradition distinguishing between Jihad al-Asghar (the lesser struggle of physical defence) and Jihad al-Akbar (the greater struggle against one’s own ego and fear). On Bondi Beach, al-Ahmed engaged in this ultimate struggle. His biological instinct commanded self-preservation; his spiritual conscience commanded preservation of the “Other.”
Islam’s “real role,” therefore, is not conquest or subjugation, as posited by the “Clash of Civilisations” thesis propounded by American political scientist Samuel P Huntington, but subjugation of the self in humanity’s service. Al-Ahmed did not ask his victims’ religious identity; their humanity sufficed. This universality constitutes Muslims’ first pillar: to be custodians of peace (Salam) in a world fracturing into tribal violence.
The “killer men”—terrorists claiming Islamic justification—assert their violence is sanctioned by God. Rigorous Qur’anic reading reveals such men are not merely “radicals” but actively anti-Islamic, acting in direct contravention of the Divine Law.
Islamic bioethics’ cornerstone is found in Qur’an 5:32: “Whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption in the land—it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one—it is as if he had saved mankind entirely.”
The Bondi killers are guilty of slaying mankind entirely. Conversely, Ahmed al-Ahmed’s action elevated to humanity’s salvation. Crucially, the Qur’an does not qualify the “soul” as “Muslim”; it uses the universal Nafs (soul). Thus, killing Jewish worshippers was, Qur’anically, an assault on Islam itself, violating the sanctity God explicitly forbade.
Qur’an 6:151 commands: “Do not kill the soul which Allah has forbidden, except by right.” Classical exegesis limits “by right” strictly to judicial process, never to individual whim. The “killer men” usurp God’s authority, appointing themselves judge, jury, and executioner. This arrogance (takabbur) is Satan’s defining trait in Islamic theology. Therefore, terrorists functionally follow Satan’s methodology, not Prophet Muhammad’s.
Furthermore, Qur’an 17:33 insists on “not exceeding limits,” directly refuting mass casualty attacks. When confronted, terrorists claim they’re “correcting” the world. The Qur’an anticipates this inversion in 2:11: “And when it is said to them, ‘Do not cause corruption on the earth,’ they say, ‘We are but reformers.'”
The “killer men” are the Mufsidun (Corruptors), antithesis of the Muslihun (Peacemakers). Ahmed al-Ahmed, by stopping the gunman’s Fasad (corruption), enacted Islah (reform). The terrorist breaks; the Muslim builds.
The Anti-Islamic Nature of Indiscriminate Violence
Islam’s “real role” is illuminated by strict engagement rules historically binding Muslim military tradition—rules modern “killer men” ignore entirely. Prophet Muhammad explicitly forbade killing women, children, the elderly, monks, and people at worship.
The Bondi attack targeted civilians celebrating a religious festival—a double abomination: killing non-combatants and violating sacred time and space. Rachel S Mikva, in Dangerous Religious Ideas: The Ethics of Interpretation in a Multifaith World, notes that “religious concepts can be weaponised to justify violence and exclusion,” but this weaponisation requires distortion. The “killer men” act on dangerous religious ideas severed from interpretive roots.
Utilising Qur’anic imperatives (4:29: “Do not kill yourselves [or one another]”; 49:13: “We made you… to know one another”), we deduce the killer is an outlaw who has exited Islam’s pact (Peace) and entered Harb (War against God’s creation). To label him a “Muslim Terrorist” is a theological oxymoron; he is a “Terrorist acting against Islamic mandates.”
Al-Ahmed represents the Qur’anic archetype of the Mu’min (Believer), embodying Adl (Justice) and Ihsan (Excellence). He acted as God’s servant, protecting life’s sanctity from those seeking to desecrate it. In the stark contrast between gunman and fruit seller, the world witnessed the difference between an ideology of death and a theology of life.
Dismantling the Double Standard
The “Civilisational War” narrative relies on a specific cognitive distortion: The Asymmetry of Attribution. When perpetrators claim Islamic allegiance, media and politics instinctively attribute actions to the faith’s core theology. However, when “killer men” emerge from the Christian West, they’re pathologised as “lone wolves” or “mentally disturbed,” detached from their civilisation.
On 15 March 2019, Brenton Tarrant murdered 51 worshippers in Christchurch mosques. His manifesto framed the slaughter as continuing the Crusades, defending “Christian Europe.” Yet global consensus was immediate: Tarrant was not a Christian soldier. Religious and secular leaders universally condemned him, arguing Christ’s teachings—”blessed are the peacemakers”—could never sanction such slaughter.
If Tarrant’s appropriation of Christian symbolism didn’t make him Christianity’s representative, logic demands we apply the same standard to Bondi attackers. When they targeted Jewish worshippers, they violated Qur’anic injunctions protecting life (6:151) and places of worship (22:40). Tarrant betrayed the Cross by weaponising it; Bondi killers betrayed the Crescent by using it as murder’s shroud. Both are “killer men” whose actions are anti-religious.
Anders Behring Breivik, who massacred 69 people in Norway (2011), styled himself a “Justiciar Knight Commander,” a martyr for Christendom. Despite his intense Christian identification, the West didn’t enter crisis regarding Christianity. There were no demands for “moderate Christians” to apologise. No widespread discourse asked “Is Christianity inherently violent?”
This restraint was correct. Breivik’s ideology rooted in extremist nationalism, not religion’s core tenets. However, this intellectual charity rarely extends to Muslims. When Bondi attackers struck, discourse pivoted not to “political extremism” but “Islamic terrorism.” This discrepancy isn’t merely analytical error; it’s a war tool. By refusing to separate Bondi killers from Islam—as we separated Breivik from Christianity—war-mongers fabricate a monolithic enemy.
Comparative analysis reveals “killer men”—whether in Oslo, Christchurch, or Sydney—occupy the same theological vacuum, defined by what they reject: Mercy (Rahma), Universalism (Qur’an 49:13; Galatians 3:28), and Law. Therefore, Bondi attackers are not “radical Muslims” any more than Breivik was a “radical Christian.” They are anti-Islamic and anti-Christian extremists, heretics to traditions they claim to champion.
If Tarrant and Breivik represent faith’s distortion, Ahmed al-Ahmed represents its rectification. He didn’t retreat into tribalism or check victims’ identity cards. Just as Christchurch’s first victim greeted Tarrant with “Hello, brother,” al-Ahmed tackled the Bondi gunman. The “killer men” tried starting civilisational war; Muslims responded with peace.
The media distinction—granting nuance to white, Christian terrorists whilst denying it to Muslims—is Islamophobia’s engine. The association of violence with Islam is a manufactured construct, a lie justifying “Civilisational War.” Bondi killers are as alien to Islam as Breivik is to the Church. The true representative is not the gun-holder, but the one who takes it away.
How War-Mongers Engineer the ‘Civilisational War’
Despite overwhelming theological evidence against violence and millions of peaceful Muslims like al-Ahmed, why does the inevitable conflict narrative persist?
The answer lies in geopolitics of fabrication. “Civilisational War” is not historical inevitability; it’s a manufactured product, carefully constructed by war-mongers—political elites, the military-industrial complex, and sensationalist media—who profit from conflict. Following the Soviet Union’s collapse, Islam was conscripted to fill the “existential threat” vacuum.
Bondi Beach events illuminate this machinery. Without al-Ahmed’s intervention, the narrative would have been simple: “Muslims kill Jews; civilisations are at war.” By intervening, al-Ahmed threw a wrench into this machine, forcing the world to witness a glitch in Islamophobia’s fabricated matrix.
Modern Islamophobia’s intellectual architecture rests on the “Clash of Civilisations” thesis, acting less as observation than self-fulfilling prophecy. This incompatibility is fabricated through Essentialisation: war-mongers present “killer men’s” actions (the anti-Islamic aberration) as faith’s essence, whilst presenting al-Ahmed’s actions (the Qur’anic norm) as exception. This inversion allows the security state to justify infinite war budgets. If the enemy is specific criminals, police work suffices. If the enemy is a “civilisation,” total war is required—and far more profitable.
Mechanics of Fabrication
Extremists and Islamophobic war-mongers share a common goal: eliminating the “Gray Zone”—where Muslims and non-Muslims coexist peacefully. Ahmed al-Ahmed lives in this Gray Zone: Syrian Muslim integrated into Australian society, serving Jewish customers, acting as protector. War-mongers seek to erase such men because their existence proves “Civilisational War” is a lie. Fabrication works by silencing coexistence narratives and amplifying conflict.
The fabrication employs “contagion logic,” implying “killer men’s” violence is contagious to all Muslims—directly violating the Qur’anic principle of individual responsibility (6:164). War-mongers utilise media to demand all Muslims apologise for the crimes of the few, psychologically reinforcing the faith-crime link.
As Islamicity’s analysis notes, “Just as it is wrong to label Islam by the actions of a few, it is equally misguided to see these individuals as representatives of Christianity.” Fabrication succeeds only when audiences forget this equivalence.
The civilisational war narrative relies on selective history, highlighting Crusades or modern terrorism whilst ignoring centuries of symbiosis—Muslim Spain’s Convivencia or Muslims protecting Jews during the Holocaust. Mikva notes how “religious concepts can be weaponised to justify violence and exclusion” (Dangerous Religious Ideas: The Ethics of Interpretation in a Multifaith World — Page 85). War-mongers weaponise history by stripping context, presenting Bondi as the latest battle in a 1,400-year war rather than a specific 2025 crime.
Ahmed al-Ahmed became a global symbol because he represents cognitive dissonance for Islamophobia consumers. The Narrative says: A Muslim man at a Jewish festival is a threat. The Reality: The Muslim man was the saviour.
This “Jihad of Conscience” disrupted the script. Al-Ahmed’s motivation was explicitly Islamic—”saving one life is equivalent to saving all of humanity” (5:32)—yet served the civilisational war script’s “enemy.” This forces a deduction: if Islam’s “real role” is saving the Jew, the “Civilisational War” is a hoax.
The Qur’an warns against sectarianism war-mongers exploit (30:32). The “killer men” are a sect rejoicing in violence; war-mongers are a political sect rejoicing in conflict. Al-Ahmed represents the Ummah in its holistic sense—connected to humanity. Verse 8:61 commands: “If they incline to peace, then incline to it [also].”
The deduction is clear: Islamophobia is not a natural sociological phenomenon; it’s a strategic asset for the war industry, functioning by suppressing Islam’s theological reality (peace/submission) and promoting the heretical “killer men” reality (violence/corruption). This manufactured fear harms Muslim communities and undermines pluralistic society’s foundations.
Ahmed al-Ahmed didn’t just save lives at Bondi Beach; he saved the truth. By embodying the Qur’anic imperative of protecting life, he exposed the “Civilisational War” for what it truly is: a fiction profitable to the few, deadly to the many.
The Real Role of Islam and the Architecture of Peace
This inquiry’s trajectory—from Bondi Beach’s bloodstained sands to the Qur’an’s theological axioms and the “Civilisational War’s” geopolitical machinations—leads to a singular, irrefutable verdict. The events of 14 December 2025 were not a clash confirmation between Islam and the West, but its dramatic refutation.
Islam’s “Real Role,” deduced from Ahmed al-Ahmed’s actions, is serving as moral stabiliser in a chaotic world—custodian of Hifz al-Nafs (Preservation of Life), one of five higher objectives (Maqasid).
When al-Ahmed disarmed the gunman, he wasn’t merely protecting Jewish bodies; he was protecting the Abrahamic covenant of peace. His actions underscore that Muslims are commanded to be agents of Rahma (Mercy). As Prophet Muhammad said, “Those who are merciful will be shown mercy by the Most Merciful” (Abu Dawud 4941).
The narrative painting Muslims as eternal antagonists violates reality. The “Real Role” is found in millions of Muslims’ everyday coexistence who, like al-Ahmed, contribute to Western societies’ fabric as doctors, teachers, neighbours, and—when crisis strikes—heroes. Ignoring this reality for the “killer men” narrative is intellectual dishonesty.
Rachel S. Mikva’s concept of “Dangerous Religious Ideas” serves as our final lens. She argues religion is powerful—dangerous when weaponised, redemptive when understood through compassion’s ethics. The “killer men” proved religion without ethics is a curse. Ahmed al-Ahmed proved religion with ethics is a cure. Islamophobia fabrication’s antidote is amplifying this truth, requiring conscious effort to dismantle prejudice walls and recognise that “Civilisational War” is fiction crumbling the moment a Muslim risks his life for a Jew.
Bondi Beach’s legacy should not be the gunmen’s hatred, but the rescuer’s courage. Ahmed al-Ahmed has provided the world with a living Qur’anic exegesis, showing that “Jihad of Conscience” is terror’s most potent weapon.
By recognising al-Ahmed’s heroism, we do more than honour a man; we vindicate a faith. We affirm that “killer men” are abhorred Qur’anically, cast from Islam’s moral community by their own hands. We affirm that war-mongers’ fabrication cannot withstand genuine human solidarity’s light.
The path forward is clear: rejecting collective guilt, abandoning double standards, and embracing the Qur’anic vision in 5:32—that saving one life is saving all humanity. On that December day, Ahmed al-Ahmed saved humanity. It is now up to the rest of us to be worthy of that salvation.
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V A Mohamad Ashrof is an independent Indian scholar specialising in Islamic humanism. His work aims to foster a just society, encourage critical thinking, and promote inclusive discourse and peaceful coexistence. He can be reached at vamashrof@gmail.com
