Australia: Rape row deepens

Another "Australian" muslim cleric has waded into the "uncovered meat" row claiming that muslim rapists are treated unfairly by Australian judges.

Melbourne cleric Sheik Mohammed Omran told his flock on Friday that rapes committed by Australian non-Muslims - such as "bikies" or "football stars" - were treated more leniently than those committed by Muslims.

"They make a big fuss about these kids because one of them, his name is Mohamed. Even if you kill someone you don't go for 60 years," he said, referring to Sydney's 2000 gang rapes in which Lebanese Muslim Bilal Skaf was initially sentenced to 55 years' jail, but later had the sentence reduced on appeal.

Kids today, eh?

Bilal Skaf and his brother, Mohammed, were involved in a series of organised gang rapes on white women.

Skaf was engaged at the time of his arrest but although his fiancée stood by him during his trial, she ended their engagement soon after his conviction. Skaf's response was to sketch cartoons depicting his former fiancée being raped and murdered.

Since his conviction, Skaf has threatened acts of terrorism and was even responsible for a hoax in which a white powder laced letter was sent to the NSW Corrective Services Commissioner Ron Woodham. Meanwhile, the instigator of the "uncovered meat" row, Sheik Hilali, has taken "indefinite leave" from preaching after a "heart attack" and Australia's Prime Minister, John Howard, called for Australian muslims to overthrow him as mufti.

"One of the things that does bother me is that when he goes overseas he carries the title of Mufti of Australia and that represents to the world a view of Australian Islam which I feel very uncomfortable with," the Prime Minister said.

Sheik Hilali - in an interview on Arabic radio a fortnight ago - had also praised Egyptian philosopher Sayyid Qutb, the intellectual mentor of Osama bin Laden.

And yesterday Immigration Department chief Andrew Metcalfe sought advice from the Prime Minister's office and intelligence agencies about whether he could discuss his knowledge of a 1984 intelligence report warning that Sheik Hilali had links to extremist groups.

The intelligence report was provided to the department six years before Sheik Hilali was granted permanent residency.

A former Australian secret agent has alleged the report was shelved because of the importance of the ethnic vote to the Labor Party, which was then in government.

The Weekend Australian revealed that Hawke government immigration minister Chris Hurford tried to have Sheik Hilali deported in 1986.

But senior party figures including treasurer Paul Keating and MP Leo McLeay, whose electorate included the Lakemba Mosque, opposed the move, allegedly for political gain.

That's the socialists for you. Your security is the least of their concerns and immigration is all about securing their power base - not our future.

Sheik Omran, one of the country's most outspoken and controversial fundamentalist clerics, said on Friday that attacks on Sheik Hilali were attacks on Islam. "His name is a mufti and we should respect that name - we should respect the turban on his head," Sheik Omran said in the sermon, an audio copy of which was posted on his Ahlus Sunnah Wal-Jamaah Association website yesterday. "This is the sign of a scholar - you are not attacking Sheik Taj here, you are attacking the scholars, you are attacking ... Islam."

Sheik Omran has said bin Laden was a good man and the US, rather than the al-Qa'ida leader, was behind the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

These are the sort of people that are preaching to muslims in the mosques across the western world. In Melbourne and Manchester, Sydney and Southall, Brisbane and Birmingham. And these are only the things we get to hear about. It is the tip of the iceberg.

SHEIK Taj Aldin al-Hilali's comments about women are just the tip of the iceberg of extreme views which could have damaged Australian society over the past decade, Treasurer Peter Costello says.

"You go right through the decade, the sheik has been anti-semitic, he has supported jihadists, he has made statements that are absolutely offensive to women, such as the uncovered meat one. "It wasn't just that he had a bad day last September."

Right through any decade at least back to 1984.

Mr Costello suggested people who didn't like these values and were entitled to live elsewhere should do so.

"Where they are dual citizens and there is somewhere for them to go back to, I, for one, would be quite prepared to invite them to go back," he said.

"If they don't like Australia and Australian values and they are citizens of another country, well, they may well be happier in that other country."

And we'd be happier without them. For all Costello's rhetoric, though, there is no sign in Australia or here, that these people are being "invited" to go back. They are all "citizens" of the "Nation Of Islam" so there are plenty of places where they can go and live and spout their sick views to like minded people all day long.