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ASIO shifts terrorism categories, warns of rising Baptist extremism
CANBERRA, ACT – Australia’s domestic intelligence agency, ASIO, has announced as part of an Annual Threat Assessment that they will now focus on the rise of violent Baptist extremists.
ASIO Director-General of Security, Mike Burgess, declared ASIO will change its language referring to ‘Islamic extremism’ and now use the general umbrella term of ‘religiously motivated violent extremism’.
“We at ASIO don’t want to discriminate according to religion, and felt that focusing on violent offenders who follow Islam was unfair.”
“In our eyes all religions are equal and all teach the same thing, and our language and attention needs to evolve to match the evolving threat environment.”
“Therefore we are initiating a ‘rotating monitoring extremist program’ that will change the religious group focus from year to year.”
“For 2021, ASIO will use our energies and resources to keep Australia safe from violent Baptist extremists, and perhaps next year move onto the Quakers.”
Pastor Alan Goodwin, of New Hope Baptist Church in Armidale, indicated that he was surprised by the change in focus but happy to cooperate with ASIO to root out any terrorist cells within the congregation.
“I can’t say I’ve noticed too much, but I guess sometimes you never know until someone reveals their suicide vest in the middle of morning tea.”
“Though, now that I think about it, the flower arranging group has been acting suspicious of late – and I think I overheard one use the phrase ‘God is great‘.”
“In all honesty, there are a few people in the pews who need a good water-boarding!”
It has been further reported that Baptist youth groups are being monitored closely as potential recruitment fields.
Witnesses have claimed seeing some male attendees carrying up to 10 chairs at a time, as well as climbing random walls, in what is feared to be terrorist training activities.
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