Australian journalist Martin Chulov has an absolutely bizarre piece treating one of Australia’s most radical Islamic nutbags as a sympathetic figure, unjustly persecuted for his entirely innocent associations with jihadis and convicted terrorists and his Dark Ages misogynistic creed: Treatment has sheik wary of returning home. (Hat tip: Hamuzi.)

AUSTRALIA’S most influential firebrand cleric feels like an alien in his own country.

And Sheik Feiz Mohamed is not alone. He believes a rising anti-Islamic tide has made Muslims wary of their countrymen, forcing at least eight families to abandon their homeland for the Middle East. From the foothills of his ancestral village in north Lebanon, the man with the most sway over the nation’s Islamic youth says five years into the war on terror a dangerous divide exists here.

In a rare interview, Feiz, an Australian citizen, says he is apprehensive about returning home after spending more than 12 months in Lebanon caring for his ailing father. “Imagine me going to the Opera House and taking photos,” he says. “I can’t walk through the airport without hundreds of eyes on me. They are like foxes trying to eat sheep.

“Before I left I was at a restaurant in Sutherland (in southern Sydney) with my wife, eating spaghetti, and we were like aliens from Mars. I said, ‘Let’s get out of here’.

“We are just human beings. I am not saying Australia is negative or not good, I am saying it has changed. There are about seven or eight families who have left in the last few months and many more who are planning to go.”

Feiz left for Lebanon just before two events that profoundly influenced some Australians’ views of Islam - the mass counter-terrorism raids that netted 23 people in Sydney and Melbourne in November 2005 and the ugly race riots at Cronulla, in Sydney’s south, one month later.

The former horsebreaker-cum-preacher calls two of the accused terrorists close friends and knew all of the Sydney men arrested. However, he strongly denies claims circling among Sydney’s Islamic community that he was urged to leave town by ASIO.

Feiz has continuing links to almost every notable member of Australia’s Islamic community and continues to direct his Global Islamic Youth Centre from Lebanon. GIYC is the nerve centre of Islamic youth in Sydney, setting the tone for 4000 youths, their families and fraternities in the city’s southwest.

He counts as friends Rabiah Hutchison, whose two sons have been deported from Yemen; Saleh Jamal, who faces trial for attempted murder; and Bilal Khazal, accused of compiling a Jihadi handbook naming Australian officials as assassination targets.

He has been a central figure in most moments of discord, rapprochement and high drama in the Australian Islamic landscape since the September 11 attacks in the US, but the past 12 months has troubled him more than any point during the past five years.

Meanwhile, some of Sheik Feiz Mohamed’s fellow travelers were plotting to attack a nuclear reactor: Terror nuke rocket attack plotted.

NUMEROUS Sydney buildings, including the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor and others housing US companies, were terrorist targets for illegally-bought Australian rocket launchers.

The Saturday Daily Telegraph can reveal alleged terrorists who obtained five of the launchers – believed to have been stolen from the Australian army – discussed using them on the US targets.

One of the targets was a high-rise building near Hyde Park which is the base for American Express.

Another was the nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights, NSW Assistant Police Commissioner Nick Kaldas said today.

Yesterday, a 28-year-old unemployed Leumeah man was in Central Local Court, charged with illegally obtaining and selling seven of the stolen rocket launchers.

Taha Abdul-Rahman was arrested in his Eliza Way home early yesterday following a joint investigation by NSW Police, Australian Federal Police and ASIO.