A cleric who said women who did not wear a veil were 'uncovered meat' asking to be raped will keep his job as the spiritual leader of Australia's 350,000 Muslims.
Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali was confirmed as Mufti of Australia on Friday after the governing body of Sydney's largest mosque rallied behind the Egyptian-born cleric.
"The board is satisfied with the notion that certain statements made by the mufti were misinterpreted," Tom Zreika, head of the Lebanese Muslim Association, told local radio. Zreika said that as a sop to public opinion, al-Hilali will not be preaching until he goes on the Haj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia in six weeks' time.
Prime Minister John Howard, who hand-picked al-Hilali for a 14-member Muslim advisory panel after the London bombings in June, said remarks in Arabic in a fasting-month sermon to 500 worshippers that compared unveiled women to food left for stray cats were 'appalling and reprehensible.'
Howard warned Muslims they risked a backlash from other Australians if they continued to back al-Hilali against mainstream opinion.
"If it is not resolved, then unfortunately people will run around saying: Well, the reason they did not get rid of him is because secretly some of them support his views," Howard said.
Others in his government have called on al-Hilali to be prosecuted for inciting sexual assault or even to be deported.
"If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden, or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem," al-Hilali said.
In an address that was tape-recorded by The Australian newspaper, Al-Hilali said a woman who stayed home and was veiled will be safe from sexual assault. "If she was in her room, in her home, in her hajib (veil), no problem would have occurred."
The 66-year-old apologized for the comments, saying he had 'only intended to protect women's honour, but he refused calls for him to resign.'
A defiant al-Hilali, speaking amid cheering supporters as he emerged from Friday prayers at Sydney's Lakemba Mosque, said he will not be resigning until the 'White House was cleaned' first.
The mufti has frequently referred to Howard, United States President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair as the 'axis of evil.'
Al-Hilali has stirred controversy before. He had denied the Holocaust, defended suicide bombers, described as 'God's work' the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, and blamed Jews for 'all the wars and problems that threaten the peace and stability of the world.'
Al-Hilali, who does not speak English despite having lived in Australia for 24 years, referred in his sermon to gang rapes in Sydney in 2000 that led to several Muslims being sentenced to long jail terms. He was critical of the judges, saying they had shown no mercy.
Only white women were victims, and they were told they were targeted because they were 'Aussie pigs.'
Howard, who had hoped an outcry over al-Hilali's defence of rape will force the mufti to resign, expressed frustration.
"What has to happen in relation to this man is that the issue has to be resolved by his own community," Howard said, adding: "He was not expressing Australian values, I can say without fear of contradiction that what he said is repugnant to Australian values."
Al-Hilali, in his sermon, also caused offence by saying women were mostly to blame for adultery. "When it comes to adultery, it is 90 per cent the woman's responsibility because a woman possesses the weapon of seduction," he said.
Waleed Aly, a spokesman for the Islamic Council of Victoria, condemned al-Hilali and called for his resignation, saying his views sought to normalize immoral sexual behaviour.
"We would have liked to have seen some form of fairly strong censure just given the magnitude and the gravity of the comments," Aly said.
But other prominent Australian Muslims refused to criticise the mufti. Imam Abdul Jalil Sajid, the chairman of the Muslim Council of Great Britain, who is visiting Australia, sprang to the mufti's defence. "I know he is one of the greatest Muslim scholars on earth and Australia is blessed with him," Sajid said.
- DPA
