Australian Muslim cleric condemned over sermon

CANBERRA, Oct 26: Australia's top Muslim cleric has compared women who do not a headscarf to uncovered meat and hinted they are to blame for sexual assaults, prompting calls for his deportation today.

In a Ramadan sermon last month, the mufti of Sydney's biggest mosque, Sheikh Taj El-Din Hamid Hilaly, said sexual assaults might not happen if women wore a hijab and stayed at home.

''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,'' Hilaly said, according to a newspaper translation.

Hilaly's spokesman Keysar Trad said the Egyptian-born cleric had been lecturing around 500 followers on the sin of adultery.

''He's talking about those people who prey on others, whether men or women, who seek to engage in sexual conduct outside of marriage, and do so through alluring types of attire,'' he said.

The meat comments, Trad said, referred to prostitutes.

Hilaly's sermon has again strained relations between the conservative government and sections of Australia's Muslim community, which makes up 1.5 per cent of the 20 million population.

''I hope that the moderate Muslim leaders will speak out today and condemn these comments, make it clear to Muslims that this is not the view of Islam and that they will really take some kind of action,'' Treasurer Peter Costello told Australian television.

Australia's Sex Discrimination Commissioner Pru Goward said Hilaly, who courted controversy two years ago by glorifying martyrdom and calling the September 11 attacks the work of God, should be deported for inciting rape.

''I would strongly urge the Islamic leadership to ask him to go, we would all support that,'' she told Australian Broadcasting Corpradio.

Islamic Council of Victoria spokeswoman Sherene Hassan said Hilaly's comments were ''absolutely repulsive'', while Iktimal Hage-Ali, a former government adviser on Muslim issues, said the cleric should be dumped from his position.

Prime Minister John Howard in September called on Muslims to conform to Australian values and last year criticised Islamic hardliners for ''raving on about jihad''. Muslim leaders have accused Howard of unfairly targeting their community.

REUTERS