Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2006, Page 14
at establishing branch offices on every continent, with these offices possibly operating as
specialist academic cult-research centres and maintaining close links to those watch groups
that can play a pivotal role in the timely acquisition of information public policy makers
need. We certainly need you!
Interfaith Rehabilitation and the Prerogative of Mercy
It is occasionally noted in academic books on terrorism that amnesty programs have had
some success in breaking the cycle of violence. For example, in 1990, Jerrold M. Post
observed that
As important as it is to inhibit potential terrorists from joining terrorist
groups, it is equally important to facilitate their leaving those groups …
Amnesty modelled after the highly effective program of the Italian
government can contribute to that goal … In the long run the most effective
way of countering terrorism is to reduce external support, to facilitate
pathways out of terrorism, and, most important, to reduce the attractiveness
of the terrorist path for alienated youth.xxii
With respect to facilitating pathways out of terrorism, it seems to me that governments
need to pursue decisive, circuit-breaking policies that reach out to potential leavers,
facilitate their rehabilitation, and most importantly, send a strong message to others that
they too can come in from the cold. In Australia, the case of Jack Roche is an example, in
my view, in which such an opportunity was not taken, although it is never too late to re-
evaluate policy.
Jack Roche is a convert to Islam who fell in with some unsavoury characters. He
subsequently became indoctrinated into such a deviant stream that he was persuaded that
it was a good idea to case the Israeli Embassy in Canberra and the Israeli Consulate in
Sydney for a proposed terrorist attack under the direction of al Qaeda. Somewhere along
this path, Jack Roche resolved to phone ASIO to ―volunteer information about his travel to
Afghanistan and possible Australian links to al-Qaeda.‖xxiii Apparently he left messages, but
they didn‘t get back to him! Thankfully, the mission was aborted, and he was later arrested,
charged, and sentenced by a state court to nine years in prison with a four-and-a-half-year
nonparole period, despite a letter from the federal authorities attesting to the fact that he
had cooperated with investigations.
While providing a straight amnesty or pardon for an indoctrinated and bewildered follower
such as Roche would be politically unthinkable (a large proportion of the Jewish and wider
community would be understandably outraged), I believe that a creative form of sentencing
and program of inter-faith rehabilitation would be an appropriate path to take. A course of
rehabilitation (re-education, if you like), involving a committee of Imams, Rabbis, and other
faith leaders, cooperating to take Jack Roche into hand and pointing out the error of his
former deviant thinking, as well as educating him into the possibilities of interfaith
tolerance, might well be appropriate. As a follower who had already exhibited serious doubt
about the course he had embarked upon, he would probably be receptive to this approach
and would perhaps provide an important role model for other recanters.
I believe that the federal Minister for Justice has power to offer the prerogative of mercy in
special cases. If mercy could be extended conditional on a program of rehabilitation that
actively involved members of his targeted community, perhaps with a form of continuing
detention commensurate with this objective, I think this approach would be well worth
considering. Religious figures with a thorough understanding of the complexities of cults,
sects, and/or new religious movements would be well placed to take the lead in this sort of
interfaith rehabilitation exercise.

Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2006, Page 15
Monitoring Religious Groups
When I first sought an inquiry into cults in the NSW State Parliament in 1992, I had a
perception that there was a difference between groups pejoratively described as destructive
cults and genuine or authentic religions. To my mind, the term cult conveyed negative
connotations and should attract government concern, whereas religion was something
beneficial and positive, probably deserving of government support. However, in the course
of researching my doctoral dissertation, I came to understand that cults and religion form
part of the same continuum, particularly for the purposes of legal definition, which has
profound public-policy implications.
As in Japan, where the 1995 sarin gas attacks led to a fundamental rethinking in the way in
which the state privileges and monitors religious entities, and where post-Aum amendments
have been made to the Religious Corporations Law of 1951, ―which presumes religions‘
potential to do harm and casts the state as a monitor of religion to protect the populace,‖
the 9/11 tragedy has similarly resulted in a greater awareness throughout the world of
religions‘ potential to do harm. Although this is often perceived by liberal academics to be a
negative and unfortunate trend, which may have an unfair impact upon benign or beneficial
religious groups, I see it as a healthy scepticism that legitimately questions the hitherto
sacrosanct and privileged position of religions howsoever defined—and particularly because
the concept is so loosely defined.
But just how do we go about monitoring religious groups that have the potential to do
harm? This in an era in which lawyers are preoccupied with debates about international
human rights and religions have managed to get widespread support for the notion that
they deserve especial protections and privileges from the state—a form of special pleading
that goes well beyond the freedom of an individual to believe in and practice a religious
faith. At the pointy end of concern, governments have shown little hesitation after 9/11 in
proscribing religious groups designated ―terrorist.‖ Hence, in Australia, for example, we
have new legislation under which a number of undeniably religious groups have been
designated ―terrorist‖ and have been banned. All sorts of serious criminal offences are
incurred for membership in or dealings with these groups. The Australian Attorney-General
has claimed in support of harsh security laws that the basic right to security is a
fundamental right that trumps other rights.
Conversely, there has been only cautious movement to seek to monitor the myriad not-for-
profit religious organisations that benefit from government largesse in the form of tax-
exempt status and a myriad other perquisites yet are hardly accountable at all to the
general public from who they derive their financial support.xxiv With respect to the United
States, a contributor to the Cultic Studies Review, Christopher Centner, has written that
The United States is very circumspect about monitoring religious movements.
The Constitution makes faith an individual choice not subject to government
scrutiny. Consequently the intelligence community does not monitor religious
movements, nor would it be feasible to do so. It monitors terrorist groups
and calls them such only when they enact violence. Americans cannot expect
their government to detect potentially violent religious movements early in
their development. The academic community might, however, be well
positioned to warn the government when a religious or ethnic movement is
moving toward violent action.xxv
If this constitutionally required circumspection is impregnable, that is unfortunate for the
United States—although there is a world of difference between covert surveillance of
specified targets and general indirect monitoring based on a regulatory regime that does not
target any specific religious group and operates to protect the integrity of all groups.