Time’s up for a recalcitrant sheik

SHEIK Taj Din al-Hilali had no clue what he was about to unleash when he stood up in front of 500 followers at Sydney's Lakemba mosque during Ramadan late last month to give his evening talk. Using florid prose intermingled with laughter, the nation's most senior Muslim delivered a sermon in which he likened female rape victims to pieces of meat who brought the attacks on themselves.

Hilali assumed he was on safe ground. The Mufti's speech was spoken in Arabic, at night, to his hard-core followers. His words were never meant to be heard by mainstream Australia. But when they appeared on the front page of The Australian this week, it was the nation's Muslim leader who was left exposed like raw meat to be preyed upon.

The carnivores were swift, comprehensive and unforgiving. Withering criticism flowed from both sides of politics, from all echelons of society and, most telling, from the overwhelming majority of Australian Muslims.

By the end of the day, the shell-shocked sheik had issued a qualified apology, feebly claiming he had been misinterpreted. His spokesman said he was "bedridden, on an oxygen machine and very unwell".

The same could be said of the state of relations between Islam and non-Islamic Australians in the wake of his comments.

Although it is patently unfair to taint the nation's 300,000 Muslims with the stain of the Mufti's remarks, the damage may have already been done. "I am expecting a deluge of hate mail, I am expecting people to get abused in the street and get abused at work," Islamic Council of Victoria spokesman Waleed Aly says.

When fears of Islamic terror have carved a tense divide between Australia's Muslim and non-Muslim communities, Hilali's comments were explosive.

The fallout will not be helped by the fact the Mufti has so far escaped serious punishment and will hold on to his job despite being condemned by most Muslims.

After a four-hour meeting on Thursday night, Sydney's Lebanese Muslim Association voted not to take tough action against him, concluding that his comments had been misinterpreted.

It was an astonishing decision and one that flew in the face of calls by other Muslim groups, including the Islamic Council of Victoria, for the Mufti to be sacked.

By early yesterday the LMA's resolve had already begun to crumble as it found itself roundly condemned. It has agreed to review the decision.

Although the Mufti's escape may only be temporary, the LMA's decision will be seen by many Australians as proof that such extreme views are tolerated, if not tacitly accepted by some Muslims. As such, his comments have sparked fresh debate on the limits of multiculturalism. How tolerant should Australians be of those who are so clearly intolerant of basic Australian values?

This debate is not confined to Australia. In Britain and across Europe, the spectre of Islamic terrorism has fuelled fear and suspicion towards Muslim minorities. The prevailing belief is that closer integration of Muslims into Western society is less likely to produce homegrown terrorists who harbour a deep hatred of the West.

This means the social symbols that so clearly separate Muslims from non-Muslims, such as veils, are being openly questioned. In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair this month described the veil as a "mark of separation" as polls found that 71 per cent of Britons believe Muslims should do more to integrate into mainstream culture.

Last month Prime Minister John Howard, took aim at the failure of some Australian Muslims to integrate into the wider community. The concept of free speech is being refined, with Muslim leaders now heavily criticised for any statements that might give comfort to extremists or which - such as those of the Mufti - are at odds with Western values.

In short, the age of terrorism is forcing Australia and the West to reassess the nature and the limits of multiculturalism.

The faultlines are shifting from multicultural diversity towards social cohesion. It is a shift fuelled by a desire for greater security, but it could also fuel xenophobia and anti-Islamism if not handled carefully.

"Australia's ethnic diversity is one of the enduring strengths of our nation," Howard said in his Australia Day speech this year. "Yet our celebration of diversity must not be at the expense of the common values that bind us together as one people."

The Mufti's comments are a head-on collision between two entrenched Australian values - the rights of women and the right to religious self-expression.

Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner Pru Goward made it clear which right she believed should prevail, saying the Mufti should be deported for his comments. "We have got past the stage of everybody rushing around and being upset," she said. "If we are really serious about Islam and Islamic Australia being part of Australia then I think there has got to be a bit more leadership shown."

The problem for the Muslim community is that Hilali has become a thorn in relations between Muslim and non-Muslim Australians. His history is littered with anti-Semitic and extremist comments, clashes with the law and other inflammatory rhetoric unbecoming of a senior religious figure.

What is more frustrating is that he is not even a properly elected leader, despite holding the titular title of Mufti since 1989. "For Australia's Muslims, the real issue isn't that Sheik Taj has said things that most people would find offensive and incorrect, but that his views have been interpreted to represent the Islamic position in the same way as a comment from the Pope or the chief rabbi might be seen to represent the view of their respective communities," says Amir Butler, co-convener of the Australian Muslim Civil Rights Advocacy Network.

There is a new generation of articulate, media-savvy and progressive Muslims who are challenging the established order. They say their religion is being gravely misrepresented by dinosaur clerics such as Hilali, who still cannot speak English after 24 years in Australia and who harbours interpretations of Islam not shared by modern Muslims.

Yet Hilali's views still resonate inside the Muslim community. Chairman of the Prime Minister's Muslim advisory council Ameer Ali, has defended the Mufti. "He is our spiritual leader and nobody is more knowledgable about Islam," Ali says. "Knowing the Mufti, I would say he was using colourful language, the way he sometimes does, and it's unfortunate."

Hilali's close associate, Keysar Trad, went even further, defending the Mufti's comments on the grounds that "it doesn't really work when you try to translate it".

Yesterday the federal Government placed the onus on the Mufti's supporters to take action. "What I am saying to the Islamic community is this: if they do not resolve this matter, it could do lasting damage to the perceptions of that community within the broader Australian community," Howard said. "If it is not resolved, then unfortunately people will run around saying, 'Well the reason they didn't get rid of him is because secretly some of them support his views."'

Australian Federal Police chief Mick Keelty fears media coverage of the Mufti's comments will further inflame tensions. "If we are not careful we risk raising a generation of Australians who will have a bias against Islam. We don't want to provide them with more reasons to be marginalised or disenfranchised to the point where they will take their own life in order to kill others," Keelty said.

But the Muslim community may feel less marginalised if it sidelined a leader whose values appear more medieval than mainstream.