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| Down Under |
| Sheikh al-Hilali sez radical Australian clerics are Binny’s followers |
| 2003-12-22 |
| AUSTRALIA’S most senior Muslim leader has launched a scathing attack on Australia’s radical Islamic clerics, accusing them of "following in the footsteps of Osama bin Laden". Sheikh Taj Din al-Hilali says fundamentalist clerics hold grudges against non-Muslim Australians and warns that their attitudes are harming the image of all 280,000 Muslims in the country. "I don’t regard these people (fundamentalist clerics) as leaders, I look at them as adolescents," Sheikh Hilali told The Australian. "They want to appear they are following in the footsteps of bin Laden - they want that reputation, to appeal to simple Muslims, that they are people applying jihad. These people bring a rigid and incorrect understanding of Islam to Australia and they bring harm to their religion." Sheikh Hilali’s comments are his strongest yet, and reflect growing tension between mainstream Muslim leaders and fundamentalist clerics. Fundamentalist Muslims, who adhere to a strict and conservative version of Islam, make up only a small proportion of Australia’s Muslim population. Sheikh Hilali said the teachings of fundamentalist scholars - such as Sheikh Feiz Mohamad, who was profiled in The Weekend Australian on Saturday - were outside the boundaries of most Australian Muslims. "I appeal to them in the spirit of brotherhood to correct their information." Speaking at a festival to mark the end of Ramadan last month, Sheikh Hilali challenged Australian Muslims to "love this country or leave it". But Australia’s most senior Islamic fundamentalist, Sheikh Mohammed Omran, has hit back, accusing Sheikh Hilali of "bringing hatred and dividing the community". |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #5 DD#3 Thanx, yeah, I was in mid-thought when I realized I shoulda looked him up first. Something new under the sun: an opportunistic fundo NIMBY. Methinks if asked to choose between the two I would not. I don't do Real Player. Tried for a while, got tired of it taking over everything. It was a pain to stamp out, too. Almost as bad as QuickTime. |
| Posted by: Glenn (not Reynolds) 2003-12-22 1:27:08 AM |
| #4 Glenn, if you have some time to spare, you can watch an Australian current affairs program's report on him here, and you'll need to have Real Player. To summarise the story, he is a man who is buddies with Abu Qatada and Abu Dada, the al Qaeda spiritual leaders of Europe and Spain respectivily. Some of his followers are known to have gone to Afghanistan training camps. However, Omran claims to be in regular contact with the Australian intelligence service ASIO, and that when some Indonesian terrorists came to him asking for their blessing to carry out an attack in Australia, he told them it was forbidden. So he probably is an al-Qaeda spiritual leader, but the Australian authorities seem to think that it is better to have someone who is willing to cooperate with them act as the local Jihadi leader, rather than someone who is less 'pragmatic'. |
| Posted by: Paul Moloney 2003-12-22 1:03:56 AM |
| #3 Yep, look here. He seems like the Australian version of Qazi to me, though I give Hilali a gold star for taking him to task on this. |
| Posted by: Dan Darling 2003-12-22 1:00:59 AM |
| #2 "...accusing Sheikh Hilali of bringing hatred..." Has that smell of pro-active. Rantburg got anything on this Omran guy? |
| Posted by: Glenn (not Reynolds) 2003-12-22 12:54:01 AM |
| #1 Hilali has made plenty of extremist statements of his own in the past, especially about the jooos, but he seems to have mellowed in his old age, around the same time that Salifis like Sheikh Omran have been growing in popularity here. |
| Posted by: Paul Moloney 2003-12-22 12:50:10 AM |