Radical sheik blasts judges on rape
Cameron Stewart & Richard Kerbaj, The Australian
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The leader of the nation's most radical Islamic group has fuelled the Taj Din al-Hilali controversy by accusing Australian judges of discriminating against Muslim rapists.
As Sheik Hilali yesterday took "indefinite leave" from preaching after a "heart attack", The Australian can reveal 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.
"I feel there is no justice here. Not 60 years and someone else three years and they did the same crime. Why?" Sheik Omran told worshippers at his Brunswick mosque.
"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.
"This is where I think everything has gone unbalanced," Sheik Omran said. "We don't support criminals or crimes, but at the same time we want justice for everyone."
Sheik Omran strongly defended the besieged mufti, who until yesterday had defiantly resisted demands from Muslims and the wider community to step aside for likening women to uncovered meat and suggesting rape victims should be held responsible for enticing attackers .
Soon after arriving at Lakemba Mosque yesterday morning for another crisis meeting over the Ramadan sermon that prompted the furore when it was revealed by The Australian last week, Sheik Hilali collapsed and was rushed to hospital.
In a statement issued in his name later, Sheik Hilali - who came under more pressure yesterday when The Australian also uncovered recent comments supporting military jihad against US and Australian forces in Iraq and Afghanistan - said he would step aside.
"The pressure of the last couple of days has had an obvious effect on my health and wellbeing," the statement said.
"I ask the public to give my family and I some privacy, time and space to recover. I have also asked for indefinite leave from duties at Lakemba Mosque."
The decision came as the federal Opposition demanded that the Government investigate whether Sheik Hilali's support of jihad in Iraq and Afghanistan constituted treason and John Howard repeated his advice to Muslims to overthrow their spiritual leader.
"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.
Mr Metcalfe said he had a "personal knowledge" of the matter because he was working with the department in a legal capacity at the time.
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.
When asked about his knowledge of the intelligence report yesterday, Mr Metcalfe said he had "knowledge as to the answer of that question" but was concerned about revealing it because it could breach matters of privacy, national intelligence and protocol surrounding the decisions of a previous government.
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.
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