Aus PM appeals to imams to help counter home-grown radicalisation after Melbourne stabbing incident

olice officers block members of the public from walking towards the Bourke Street mall in central Melbourne. (Reuters Photo)

Melbourne: Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Monday called on imams in the country to do more to counter the growing threats posed by home-grown Islamic radicals, a week after a deadly knife attack here carried out by a radicalised Somali-origin man.

Hassan Khalif Shire Ali stabbed three members of the public and attacked police officers in the Bourke Street on Friday before he was shot and killed by the police.

The 30-year-old, who was driving a utility vehicle, loaded with gas bottles, into the busy Bourke Street, allegedly set it alight and began stabbing members of the public.

"This bloke (the attacker), radicalised here in Australia with extreme Islam, took a knife and cut down a fellow Australian in Bourke Street," Morrison was quoted as saying by the Australian Broadcasting Company.

"He was a terrorist. He was a radical extremist terrorist who took a knife to another Australian because he had been radicalised in this country, he said while rejecting the claim made by the family of the attacker that he was mentally unstable.

Morrison dismissed the suggestion that mental health issues negated that primary cause as a "lame excuse".

"I am not going to make an excuse for that. Of course issues of mental health and all these other things are important," Morrison said.

The Prime Minister added "These other issues are relevant, don't get me wrong, but he was radicalised, and that's why he took a knife to people."

Morrison said the Bourke Street attack showed that Muslim community leaders needed to make sure they intervened to stop radicalisation.

"What is happening in these communities is we have people coming in to them and spreading this vile evil and taking advantage of vulnerable people in their community," he said.

"Now, imams and others who are the leaders in their religious communities need to be looking carefully at who is coming in to their community, who's talking to their kids, who's at the back of the mosque and walking out with some young person who seems a bit disenfranchised," he added.

On the claims that his criticisms were racist, Morrison said this was the "same old, tired excuse" that was always made.

"I don't believe that is where the majority of decent, hard-working, respectable Australian Muslims are at. They want their community to be safer and there are people coming in to their community and they are infecting their young people and others with hatred and false teaching, which is taking them on the wrong path,'' he said adding ''Now, that has to be called out and it has to be stopped."

"This happened because of an Australian citizen who was radicalised in Australia ? he didn't bring it from somewhere else, he learnt it all here."

The family of Somali-born Shire Ali, who moved to Melbourne in the 1990s, has claimed that he was delusional and not a terrorist.

In a handwritten letter, the family said Shire Ali was "crying for help" because he was mentally ill.