BOLT: I’m talking to you as probably our most influential Muslim educator. And you’re speaking to someone widely regarded by Muslim spokesmen as . . .
SALMAN: A Muslim basher.

BOLT: One thing concerning me is there’s nearly half a dozen Muslim schools and some state schools with many Muslim students, and the results overall aren’t good. And I worry there’s no strategy to better equip those students to integrate.
SALMAN : But if you relate that heavily to Islam, is not that a little biased?

This invites speculation that Muslims are failures. But it is true schools with many Muslims tend to have bad VCE results. Although you say that in one school, yours, these VCE results do not give the full picture.
Right. Last year we had 18 of our students doing the International Baccalaureate instead, and only 21 doing VCE. The IB students had high results, so to say this school is not performing is not right.

Number two point is that the ENTER score of a school is a better indicator of school performance than the VCE, and we’ve done well. Also look at how VCE results are then scaled to get the final ENTER marks. If you get a mark of 40 in Arabic, it’s reduced by a couple of marks for the ENTER score. But look at Hebrew -- if a student gets 40, the mark is scaled up to 51.

We’ve often heard of Saudi Arabia exporting its extremist Wahhabist ideology. Do you accept that’s a wide concern?
Not in Western societies, but in themselves possibly yes. But take my word, this school was started in 1983 with $340,000 from the Saudi King purely as a one-off, and never ever at any stage have they interfered here.

The Saudi Government also gave the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils $1.2 million for schools, plus the right to certify meat as halal and raise money. AFIC also helped to establish your college. What is your connection now?
We’ve had to sever relations. They tended to interfere, and I am determined not to let any pressure group interfere with the school, and to make sure there was no influence from any other country.

What sort of Islam are you teaching here?
Sunni is the main Muslim religion, and this is a Sunni school. We believe Islam is moderation and peace.

Yet the AFIC, which helped to start your school, appointed as Mufti of Australia Sheik Taj El-Din El-Hilali, who praised suicide bombers and called the September 11 attack on America "God’s work against oppressors". He was appointed with the support even of the Islamic Council of Victoria, whose head is your school’s public relations official.
You’ve got it wrong. This Mufti is able to give his opinion on religious matters, but he’s used his position to make political opinion, which is not allowed. In religion the man has his credentials and no one disputes that. But politically he is naive, sometimes.

He’s worse than naive.
But look, you always advocate free speech.

Free speech comes with a duty to fight bad speech, Salman. In most articles I say people like Hilali, who praise suicide bombers, don’t represent most Muslims. But what worries me is how few Muslim leaders say the same publicly.
No leader in any of the states support what happened on September 11. For me this is not an issue of religion. This is about criminality. No one can defend it.

But some do.
Andrew, Islam is different to Christianity and Judaism in one way, in that we don’t have a priesthood. Everyone is equal, with an equal right to speak. He is an individual -- if he is right, he is right.

So when you hear Sheik Hilali praising children who die fighting Israelis and saying September 11 is "God’s work against oppressors", how do you react as a Muslim and an educator?
You have to be broad minded, Andrew, and you cannot look from one eye only. First of all, we are involved with a Jewish school in a harmony project. But if America is really sincere in this matter (of Israel), there will not be a problem. This must be solved. The hatred comes from that.

How do your students react to stories which appear almost weekly about Islamist terrorists who blow up trains and buildings?
Very bad. Those who do this are criminal and they should not identify as Muslims. These ones in Spain are Moroccans, and had nothing to do with Islam. The Koran says do not kill.

But the Koran also says oppressors must be fought. And some may say that I oppress Muslims and . . .
But fought how? To fight here has a different meaning, doesn’t it?

I don’t know. I hope so. Would you also condemn suicide bombings in Israel?
To condemn -- the word is too hard. Are you able to condemn the (Israeli) Apache helicopter killing people? If they kill innocent people, I condemn them. If they kill military, I don’t.

What do you teach about Israel?
We refer to Jews as our cousins.

But you employ as an English teacher Nigel Jackson, who says the Holocaust is a "myth", or he doesn’t believe it, and rages about the "Zionist lobby".
This guy, whatever his political point of view, is a very sensitive, excellent teacher. He never, never raises these subjects at school, and that is a condition of his employment. You can’t really gag people.

What kind of citizens do you hope to produce?
We want them to be productive Australian citizens with good Islamic values.

Would good Muslims here believe that an Australian government to be fully legitimate must be Muslim?
You’re talking about a particular sect of Islam, the Shia. But a government can be legitimate as long as it observes the guidelines of the Muslim religion -- do the right and don’t do the wrong. But as a citizen of a country you must follow the law, that is the Islamic way.

It’s interesting how many prominent converts you get. Peter Barnett, former head of Radio Australia, is a convert, as are spokesmen of the Islamic Council and the Muslim Public Affairs Committee. What is driving this?
Seeing that Islam is a good alternative, simple as that. If you listen to the British journalist who came here last month (as a guest of Monash University), Yvonne Ridley, about what made her convert, she read the Koran for herself.

Ridley? She went to Afghanistan under the Taliban (who jailed her) and thought this was good.
Andrew, she promised them to read the Koran, and that was the only thing. She said the Taliban were naive and not good, but she read the Koran.

But Ridley this year said killing Israeli children was legitimate because they’d grow up to be soldiers.
Killing civilian children is out of bounds.

Yet she came to your school.
But said nothing about killing. Our question to her was: Why did you convert?

But can’t you see how it looks that someone who has endorsed the killing of Israeli children and endorsed suicide bombing comes here to address students?
Why do you take this line? You never condemn targeted killing by Israelis or the bulldozing of houses with women and children inside. Or the targeting of one terrorist, with the killing of 20 innocents around him. Why don’t you try to see both sides? You never criticise anti-Muslims.

I do. I’ve condemned attacks on mosques here.
If you work in education, you don’t meddle in politics because it damages your school. Politics is a very dangerous area. But what I’m really against is that although there’s a lot of people implicated (in extremism), they shouldn’t be taken as homogenous representations of Islam. That’s the thing I am really against.