Muslim Clerics in Australia Gagged for 'double-speak'

A Muslim association in Australia has banned five clerics from talking to the media for what it said were "anti-Australian" comments.

The gagged imams include Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, who compared women who dressed without headscarves to "uncovered meat", and said they were inviting sexual assault.

Issuing the order, the Lebanese Muslim Association said such remarks had caused "immeasurable damage" to Australia's Muslim communities.

A spokesman told the Australian newspaper that of particular concern were interviews on Sydney's Arabic radio stations, where the imams would sometimes contradict what they told interviewers in the English-language media.

"One of the big issues is the double-speak by the various imams. They go on to the Voice of Islam and talk about something which really isn't in accordance with our views ... as Australians," Tom Zreika told the paper.

"[While] most of our clerics are selected on the basis that they have Australian values and Australian characteristics ... some of them haven't [lived] up to that."

The five imams - also including Sheik Yahya Safi, the official Australian representative to the Mufti of Lebanon - are based at the Lakemba mosque, the largest in Australia.

Sheik Hilali, considered Australia's most senior Muslim cleric, was widely criticised from within the community following his remarks in a sermon last year on "uncovered meat".

Australia's most prominent female Muslim leader, Aziza Abdel-Halim, said the hijab did not "detract or add to a person's moral standards", while an Islamic Council of Victoria spokesman, Waleed Ali, said it was "ignorant and naive" for anyone to believe that a hijab could stop sexual assault.

Sheik Hilali was reported to have said: "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside ... without cover, and the cats come to eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat's? The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred."

He has attracted controversy before. In 2004 he was criticised for saying, in a sermon in Lebanon, that the September 11 attacks were "God's work against the oppressors". He last year made disparaging remarks on Egyptian television about Australia's convict beginnings.