Radical Australian mufti challenged to face voters

SYDNEY, Jan 21 (Reuters) Australia's most outspoken Muslim cleric, who has inflamed anti-Muslim sentiment with comments seen as justifying rape and with his anti-US stance, has been dared to run in a state election so voters can reject his views.

The premier of the state of New South Wales, Morris Iemma, challenged Sheikh Taj El-Din Hilaly, mufti of the country's biggest mosque in Sydney, to stand for parliament after media reports he or other Muslims might contest the March poll.

''Don't hide behind another candidate,'' Iemma told reporters today. ''If you want to challenge, challenge yourself.'' ''I love Australia and its people and he doesn't,'' Iemma said.

''I believe that the great majority of people in my electorate won't be voting for lunacy, no matter who is putting it forward.'' Iemma's western Sydney electorate is home to a large number of Muslims.

Hilaly's outspoken condemnation of the US war in Iraq, in which Australian troops are involved, regularly stirs anti-Muslim feeling.

And the Egyptian-born cleric was accused of justifying rape in November after a Ramadan sermon in which he likened unveiled women to uncovered meat.

Following that controversy, Hilaly left Australia for West Asia, with some politicians calling on him not to return. Even there Hilaly made new headlines, telling Egyptian television that Muslims had a greater right to be in Australia than white Australians of convict heritage.

Many Muslims view his Friday sermons as highly politicised. His November comments about women once again split Australia's small Muslim community of some 280,000 people.

''DEATH SERIES'' Last week more fuel hit the flames when it became known that Sheik Feiz Mohammed, head of the Global Islamic Youth Centre in Sydney's western suburbs, had urged children to be Islamic martyrs and referred to Jews as pigs. The exhortations came in DVDs entitled the ''Death Series''.

Feiz has lived in Lebanon for the past year.

Today, the Islamic Friendship Association said it was considering whether to put up candidates at the elections in New South Wales, Australia's most populous state.

''We need to make sure we are taken seriously,'' association spokesman Kaysar Trad told reporters.

''Not only in terms of getting them to stop picking on us every time there is an issue, but also in terms of acknowledging that there are strong candidates who are capable of serving this nation in the political arena,'' he said.

Trad told Reuters this week that Australia's Muslims, who live in small ethnic pockets in Sydney and Melbourne, were too few to wield any political or economic clout.

''Only if the number of Muslims and the potency of Muslims in Australia expands can we exert political or economic pressure,'' Trad said in an interview.

He said that without political and economic might Muslims here would continue to face prejudice.

''If it continues it will divide Australia. No one wants a nation of racists. I do not want this country to be divided to the point like Lebanon where people killed each other,'' he said.

''In Australia I hope it will never get to that.'' REUTERS AB BD1315