Mufti mixes motives

We should be grateful Australia's most senior Islamic cleric has trekked to Baghdad to save the life of Australian hostage Douglas Wood.

But the Mufti of Australia, Sheik Taj El-Din El-Hilaly, has at the same time shown -- again -- that not all the Muslim extremists who threaten us are in Iraq.

Surely now even his closest supporters see that this man of hate should no longer represent our Muslims.

Hilaly on the weekend filmed an appeal in Arabic for Wood's kidnappers to spare the life of the 63-year-old engineer, who had been bashed, shaved bald, and threatened with execution if coalition forces were not pulled out of Iraq.

Hilaly is a Sunni extremist, like the men believed to hold Wood, and in his appeal, broadcast in Iraq, he told them: "We value your jihad and your efforts."

But, he added: "We call upon you to do something for the sake of our community and all Australian society, which does not support (Prime Minister John) Howard's pro-American policies. You know the Australian forces in Iraq are protected by American forces and don't do anything -- it's all politics."

I can think of only one plausible way to read this -- our senior Islamic cleric values the terrorists who kill and kidnap countless victims, most of them Iraqis. And he wants Wood freed because killing him won't help Muslims here, most Australians already think Howard is a toady, and the real enemy is America.

Of course, excuses were immediately made for the Mufti, as they always are when he is discovered vilifying Jews or Americans, or praising suicide bombers and terrorists.

Labor's immigration spokesman, Laurie Ferguson, for instance, said the "jihad" Hilaly backed was "not necessarily violent".

Besides, he added, "you've got to look at (his comments) in the context of his efforts to save someone's life", because "he has to negotiate with those people and to try and persuade them of his bona fides".

THERE they go again. Labor has a shameful history of defending Hilaly, ever since 1988, when the Egyptian-born radical called Jews "the underlying cause of all wars", using "sex and abominable acts of buggery, espionage, treason and economic hoarding to control the world".

Hilaly was about to be deported for rabble rousing, but the Hawke Government overturned the decision of its own Immigration Minister, Chris Hurford, so it could win Muslim votes in Sydney's western suburbs.

The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils has been just as quick to defend Hilaly, but hasn't bothered pretending, as did the dupe Ferguson, that this jihad he backed wasn't violent.

"The jihad is the war that you fight in self defence, and (the kidnappers) are trying to free the country from foreign occupation," its president, Amir Ali, said.

Yes, those patriotic freedom fighters, whose victims, paradoxically, are overwhelmingly Iraqi Kurds and Shiites, many of them women and children blown apart by car bombs.

But the federation, too, has long defended Hilaly's extremism. It first made him Mufti in 1988 to "help him stay in Australia", as one of its members told me, and last year denied Hilaly had endorsed jihad and suicide attacks on Israel, even when he'd been taped in Lebanon saying just that.

And it said nothing at all when SBS filmed the Mufti just before the September 11 attacks calling suicide bombers "heroes".

Of course, Hilaly may simply have said what Wood's kidnappers want to hear, to give himself a better chance of saving the poor man.

But his record -- which includes endorsing the Hezbollah terrorist group and hailing the September 11 attacks as "God's work against oppressors" -- is against him. I'm sure he said what he truly believes.

Even his former translator and spokesman, Keysar Trad of the Australian Lebanese Muslim Association, finally ran out of spin this week, admitting Hilaly had "used language that's not consistent with our expectations as Australians".

More consistent with our expectations has been the language of Australia's most senior Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Sheik Mohammed Hussein al-Ansari, who described the kidnappers as criminals who defiled Islam.

"Those people, they have no religion or denomination," he said.

"They are a bunch of criminals and terrorists. They are using the name of Islam but they are not generally a Muslim people."

SUCH hot talk will not save Wood. But it may save Australia's Muslims from some of the unjust suspicion they attract by being represented by a Mufti who so often lauds Islamist terrorists and kidnappers.

Most Muslims are not enemies of freedom and the West, but leaders like Hilaly make them seem so.

The sooner he is replaced by a man of moderation, perhaps Melbourne's Sheik Fehmi Naji El Imam, the better for all Australians, Muslims and infidels alike.

bolta@heraldsun.com.au