Taekwondo champion Haydar Shkara has pledged to continue working on the issue of youth deradicalisation after winning selection onto the Australian team for the ninth straight year.
The 26-year-old Olympian, lawyer and Muslim youth advocate won his new lightweight category at the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) over the weekend in Canberra, remaining an AIS-categorised athlete.
“It’s a big assistance in allowing me to compete overseas,” Mr Shkara told SBS.
“With the help of my coach and my team, having less hours in the gym has meant that I have to have higher quality training, and the rest of the time I dedicate to my business.”
Tackling radicalisation
Born in Sydney to Iraqi and Japanese parents, Mr Shkara says a long-term passion of his has been to help reduce the risk of disengaged Muslim youths becoming radicalised.
Following the 2015 shooting death of police employee Curtis Cheng by 15-year-old Farhad Mohammad Jabar in Parramatta, as well as multiple counter-terrorism raids resulting in teenagers being arrested and charged, the federal government has perceived western Sydney as one of the key battlegrounds in Australia's anti-radicalisation efforts.
Mr Shkara, who is working in tandem with charity group The Youth Centre, agrees.
“We’re focused on youths in western Sydney,” Mr Shkara told SBS.
“All the work that we do, and the projects that we’re trying to undertake, it’s all to get younger people more active and more involved in the Australian tapestry of life.
“One of the projects we’re doing at the moment is we’re running a series of workshops for youth in western Sydney to critically analyse content on social media.”
After Rio
After representing Australia at last year’s Olympic Games in Rio, Mr Shkara started his own law firm in Sydney. Neat Law focuses on family law and providing legal advice to small businesses.
“It’s an interesting phase in my life where I’m trying to patch together two lines of my career: one being law, one being taekwondo," Mr Shkara said.
“So being able to manage to do both, fighting for people in court and fighting for country on court, for me it’s a great sense of self-accomplishment.”
Motivational aspirations
The talented Australian also hopes his sporting successes, coupled with his work in the courtroom, can help motivate disadvantaged and disengaged community members.
“It’s always important to give back. The more one person can achieve, the more they feel like they can give back to the community,” he said.
Hayder Shkara has been on the Australian taekwondo team since 2009. (Supplied) Source: Supplied
“Any achievements I feel that I can make personally; I feel like that can distil out throughout the community and provide a bit of inspiration to younger generations, where they can aspire to different avenues of success.”
