Amira Karroum was one of many Australians being recruited to fight in Syria Amira Karroum with school friends. AMIRA Karroum's friends from school remember her beautiful smile and her bubbly personality. She was a girl who would throw her arms around mates and greet them with a hug and a kiss as she grew up a "sweet and caring" daughter on the Gold Coast beaches, where her dad ran a kebab shop along the Glitter Strip. To the people who knew her from those days, she would have seemed the unlikeliest terrorist - they would never have thought of her as a religious martyr. But in the months and weeks leading up to her death last week in a bullet-ridden house in war-torn Syria alongside her husband Yusuf Ali, her Facebook posts reveal a young woman heading for a dangerous future - and fully prepared for what she would meet. "Everything is temporary," she wrote. And: "Islam is my identity. Jannah (the Islamic garden of paradise) is my destination. Yusaf Ali along with his Gold Coast wife Amira Karroum where killed in fighting in Syria Source: Supplied The husband she called her "lion," and the "man of my dreams" wrote in one of his last posts: "Preparing for the grave." The couple are not the only Australians to go to their graves as part of the rebel cause bringing down the ruthless regime of President Bashar al-Assad, but as the first Australian woman to die Karroum's story has shocked a public unable to conceive of anyone dying for a foreign country, for a foreign cause, let alone a highly educated and intelligent young woman from a good family. Young Australian Muslims like Karroum, 22, and Ali are being exploited by radicals and political zealots to go to Syria, says Dr Stepan Kerkyasharian, outgoing chairman of the NSW Community Relations Commission. People are being duped into being cannon fodder between the two warring Sunni factions. People are killing each other within their own faith," he says. They are being misled and lured into an evil situation that was about freedom but now it is about the abuse of their religion. In many places, recruitment is so subtle that those being recruited may not even know it. It is believed as many as 205 Australians have travelled to the battlefield that is Syria since the conflict began in 2011 - part of a contingent of about 11,000 foreign fighters answering what they see as Allah's call to battle. Syrian opposition fighters swear for the liberation of Syria at an undisclosed location in the northern city of Aleppo. At least five Jihadist death notices have been posted online for Australians in the complex civil war that has so far claimed more than 100,000 lives. Some Islamic leaders say Australians may be motivated to join the Syrian conflict out of frustration at a perceived lack of international action against the Assad regime. National security agencies fear what the radicalised fighters will bring home with them. "The best-case scenario is that someone has witnessed the conflict and comes back with enormous psychological baggage," Kerkyasharian says. The worst-case scenario is someone who has gone there, who's been involved in the fighting, who's seen fellow combatants killed and they've come back with revenge in his or her heart. Andrew Zammit from the Monash University Global Terrorism Research Centre said most fighters who returned to Australia would not become a threat, but others "could be very dangerous." "They can get skills, connections, and may decide to carry out violence," Zammit says. Authorities are very worried. They are aware that this is the greatest mobilisation of Australians to fight with jihadist groups that we've ever had. They could be travelling there with all sorts of motives, often after having watched footage of people they identify with being killed by the Assad regime. The big issue is what groups they get involved with once over there. Opposition fighters prepare to storm the headquarters of the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq in Aleppo. In 2012 Karroum, who had studied graphic design at Queensland's University of Technology, moved to Sydney and met US-born Yusuf Ali, a Muslim convert. They married in April last year and settled at Granville in Sydney's west - in the heart of the Muslim community. Despite her education at one of the country's top Anglican schools, St Hilda's in Brisbane, Karroum was always a Muslim - but it was not until a couple of years ago that she started to wear a burqa. On her Facebook page, she described her work as a "Slave of Allah" and her posts became increasingly extreme, condemning America, the war on terror and even democracy. Today I witnessed hijabi girls promoting democracy with their T-shirts and their stupid voting papers. May Allah guide these strangers!" she posted on federal election day last September. After wild Muslim riots in Sydney's Hyde Park in 2012 she called for more violence, urging Facebook followers to: "F... the police! Smash the cop cars. On the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, she posted: "Worst effing night. I'm proud of being a Muslim!!!!! 10 years of war in Afghanistan for two towers. She talked of going to a shooting range and, on Facebook, regularly checked in at a Sydney address she called "Bin Laden's Cave." In Granville, Ali is alleged to have been recruited by Hamdi Alqudsi, 39, and sent with another four men to Syria. A sixth, aged 23, was arrested at Brisbane airport. Members of an Iraqi Shiite fighters militant group called Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhadaa, or Master of Martyrs Brigades. Alqudsi, a disability pensioner, was arrested in December and accused of being the mastermind behind a network sending Australians to Syria to fight alongside Jabhat al-Nusra and other al-Qaeda-linked groups. Alqudsi, charged with recruiting, organising and funding the men, is the husband of controversial Muslim Carnita Matthews - the woman who, in 2010, claimed police tried to rip off her burqa to see her face during a roadside breath test. Yesterday Alqudsi, asked to comment on the current situation in the Middle East said: "No thank you. I don't speak English, I don't speak English. Ali left Australia for Syria soon after his marriage, saying he was going to do humanitarian work. Karroum followed him just days before Christmas, telling her family she was heading to Denmark to holiday with friends and then do some humanitarian work. They were killed inside a house near the city of Aleppo, which is near the border with Turkey and ground zero of the war, possibly by members of the Free Syrian Army. The rebels are fighting government troops and other factions trying to oust Assad. On Facebook, Karroum's sister Rose, who also embraced Islam and calls herself the "Mujahidah Lioness," asked for prayers for the couple, who she said had been "martyred." She described her sister as a "soldier" who had been parted from her husband by "something bigger than them." An al-Qaeda fan page posted a photo of Yusuf Ali on Monday, labelling him and his wife martyrs: "May Allah SWT unite them both in the Highest of Heavens ...Ameen." Amira Karroum's half-brother Karl Karroum said the family had no idea she was going to Syria. "They are peaceful people," he said of Amira and her husband. Gold Coast Islamic Society president Hussin Goss says the couple worshipped at his mosque when they were visiting the Gold Coast. He does not believe they were radicals. "People say they must have been radicalised in Sydney or on the Gold Coast but the last time I saw Yusuf about six months ago, he was a normal person - smiling, having fun, and praying of course," Goss says. Amira was a good girl who did a lot of volunteer work in the community. She was more of a giver than a taker - she had an open heart. I can only say good things about her. Goss says he understood Karroum and Ali had gone to Syria to do "humanitarian work" - not to fight the Syrian government. "They were over there trying to help because the governments of the world aren't," he says. On the Gold Coast, Karroum's father Mohamad suffered a mild heart attack when he heard the news of her death. Her mother Honor Deane said she was "distraught with grief." Just weeks ago Karroum had posted a Facebook photo of her mother with love hearts and emoticons and the words: "My Life, My Mum." Hala Trad is a 23-year-old philosophy student from Yagoona. She was born in Australia to Lebanese parents. Her father Keysar fled his homeland in 1976 as a refugee and her mother arrived here in 1986. Here she tells TAYLOR AUERBACH why she sympathises with Australian Muslims who feel compelled to join the war in Syria. Hala Trad, 23, at her Yagoona home in Sydney. IS Islam against fighting? I don't know how to answer that question. It's not completely against war because war happens. Suicide is completely Haram (against Islam) but war isn't. Sometimes you're in a position where you need to fight. I definitely sympathise with the frustrations of Muslims in Australia who feel like they have to go over to Syria. I know some people who I believe went over there to fight. People say things. By the way they talk, it seems like they went over for the cause. The situation in Syria is very hard to hear about, especially from Australia where we can't do anything. I get goosebumps just thinking about it. So many people are being oppressed by this regime and being displaced. I'm not qualified to go over, I don't have the resources. But I can understand how people would do anything to help the people the government regime is oppressing. It's hard to tell people not to go over and fight because Islamic people get very heated up by the situation. They feel helpless. It's not close geographically, but it's so close to home. One thing that Islam teaches is that we have to help our Muslim brothers and sisters. This tyrannical regime is oppressing their brothers and sisters and it's incredibly frustrating. They feel helpless from here. Could they die as martyrs? It really depends on their motivations for going over there and the situation they were in when they got harmed. Personally, I'm a philosopher. I think there are other ways to help. Any sort of humanitarian aid that I can do, I do.