As two boys spar, sweat spraying the mat, a coach leans over the boxing ring to give them advice.
“Remember your basics,” he says calmly as the boys pummel each other.
It’s a Thursday night in Greenacre in Sydney’s west, and Brotherhood Boxn is thrumming with energy as boys and men of all ages prepare for a training session.
In the middle of it all is Muhummad “Coach Keefe” Alyatim, the owner and head coach at the gym, a magnetic presence around whom the entire gym revolves.
“We teach these boys to be healthy men, good Muslim men here,” Keefe says.
“They feel comfortable, safe and relaxed here; we teach them to control their emotions and behaviours, to safely express themselves, to be better.”
Brotherhood Boxn, which is a complex that includes a musallah, or prayer space, and a barber in addition to the well-stocked boxing gym, has become a hub for many young Muslim men in the area. Coach Keefe has sought to turn the centre into a rehabilitating space, where angry young men are given “discipline and purpose”.
In the wake of seven teenagers being charged with a range of terror offences after a 16-year-old boy allegedly stabbed a bishop in Wakeley in early April, conversations on rehabilitation and deradicalisation have re-emerged in the Muslim community.
Coach Keefe says he has come across boys who have been tempted by lives of crime and violence, and helped them back on to the straight and narrow.
“The most important part of coaching is teaching them how to be wise. Because a wise man knows how to deal with each situation, whether in the ring or in life,” he says.
“I try and give these boys discipline and purpose, to try and direct the their energies towards something good. Some of these boys I have coached for over 10 years, and they speak to me more than they do their father.
“I will hear them out, whereas you get a lot of fathers that won’t. I look after them. They are under my protection under this place.”
Religion is central to the coach’s work. The gym and the prayer centre below it are interlinked, with Keefe often stopping training and urging the boys to join him in congregational prayers.
Brotherhood Boxn has been open for more than 15 years now, and in its early days the boys would just pray in the gym itself. They held countless Friday sermons in the space, before the building was renovated and a prayer centre was opened on the lower level.
“We turned the boxing club into a musallah because we had no choice – there wasn’t really a place to pray in this area. And prayer is a must for us as Muslims – we need it as much as food and water,” Keefe says.
It’s this layer of spirituality to his coaching that so endears him to his students, who hang on his every word. Keefe says he knows and accepts the responsibilities that come with his place in the local Muslim community, embracing his status as a mentor and relishing the changes he has inspired in the boys around him.
Connected to and respected by many different groups in the local community, he has become the go-to for boys with difficult backgrounds.
“A majority of the boys here come from broken homes. And it is broken homes that lead boys to the streets,” he says.
One of the fighters in his gym, Harith Khalid, was one such kid who found direction at the gym.
Khalid has been coming to Brotherhood Boxn for two years, and has two brothers in prison, one on terror charges.
As he prepares for a training session, Khalid says the gym is like a second home for him, a place for him to find solace and direction.
“Boxing has helped me through many things, I’ve had a rough life with a lot of stuff that’s happened to my family. But coming here has helped. It hit me hard when my brothers got locked up, but I had boxing to pick me up,” he says.
Keefe is like “a second dad”, he adds.
“He’s not only taught me boxing, he’s taught me many other things. I felt the love when I first arrived here, and that love has only grown since.”
Khalid says he keeps in contact with his brothers as best he can, as both reminders to himself and out of love for his family.
“After my first fight and first win, my brother called me from jail to congratulate me. He was so excited to know I was fighting, and when I told him I won, he was jumping up and down in his cell. He is one of my biggest supporters.”
Khalid does some cardio work with the group before jumping in the ring and sparring with one of his friends, Coach Keefe watching on.
He says Keefe has a “special technique” when it comes to boxing training, combining spiritual self-discipline with a strategic approach.
“He doesn’t get frustrated, he empowers us to find a way through,” he says.
“And he has definitely brought me closer to God.”
Khalid says Keefe “can tell how the boys are feeling” and is “someone we can look up to”.
“There aren’t many men like that. Lots of boys from this area need a strong father figure, who can laugh with us but who can put us in our place when we need it,” he says.
Khalid says the spiritual side to Coach Keefe has been essential in his work rehabilitating young men and leading them away from a path of violent extremism. He says many teenage Muslim boys can feel lost between difficult family situations, peer pressure and exploitative extremist discourse.
It is within that context that the gym becomes a deradicalising force, but Coach Keefe insists it remains independent of government support or any major Muslim organisation.
He says it is an ideological position that reflects the volatile relationship between the Muslim community and Australian authorities, with many Muslims feeling targeted and unfairly vilified by governments at all levels and by policing authorities.
It comes after Keefe stood among leaders of the Muslim community last week who condemned the “discriminatory treatment” of the community by law enforcement agencies.
The assembled organisations and imams included representatives of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils and the Lebanese Muslim Association, fronted by Sheikh Wesam Cherkawi, a local imam and community leader.
He said the community was outraged at what they say are discriminatory applications of anti-terror laws. He claimed the application of the laws has largely targeted Muslims, and said the laws had to change.
He says the “negative political rhetoric” needs to end, and called for an inquiry into the recent anti-terror raids and subsequent arrests of seven minors.
“For decades, the Muslim community has been asked to come forward and condemn. However, this simply pigeonholes the matter of violent extremism to the faith of Islam, which thus ignores the root contributing causes such as the structural, psychological, the individual, the socioeconomic and the unmet psychological needs,” he says.
“It is unacceptable for senior government officials, including law enforcement, to make inflammatory comments that further stigmatise and marginalise the Muslim community. Such rhetoric only serves to deepen existing divisions that perpetuate harmful stereotypes.”
Asio was contacted for comment.
Keefe says Muslims are “sick” of feeling targeted and that they are looking for a change in how authorities engage the community. This position lends Keefe credibility among the young men he coaches, who see him as steadfast and consistent in his defence of the community.
Dr Samina Yasmeen, head of the University of Western Australia’s Centre for Muslim States and Societies, says Keefe’s efforts at Brotherhood Boxn are an example of “good practice” when it comes to deradicalising efforts.
“It represents a positive approach. Because narratives don’t have to be communicated through writing, it can be through engaging people in activities that give them a different way of being,” Yasmeen says.
“What it is doing is giving those young people another space in which they can find meaning to their lives.”
There are 11 organisations funded by the federal government to deliver deradicalising programs in New South Wales, apart from a broad range of programs the state government delivers that it claims counters violent extremism.
While Brotherhood Boxn successfully offers “alternative narratives” that can help young men, Yasmeen says that to truly effect change on the issue, a whole-of-society approach is needed.
“The gym is a good idea, but the way forward has to be framed by understanding that the Muslim community does not exist in a vacuum,” she says.
“We need to be asking questions of the cracks these kids fall through, and how we can protect them.”
