Asia-Pacific News
Australians rage at Muslim cleric's rape defence
Oct 26, 2006, 8:48 GMT
Sydney - Australia's top Muslim cleric was roundly condemned Thursday for saying women who didn't wear a veil were asking to be raped.
'They are appalling and reprehensible comments,' Prime Minister John Howard said. 'The idea that women are to blame for rapes is preposterous.'
Sex Discrimination Commissioner Pru Goward accused Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali of inciting sexual assault by excusing the perpetrators while blaming the victims.
She said the Egyptian-born Mufti of Australia should be deported. 'It's time we stopped just saying he should apologise,' Goward said of the leader of Australia's 350,000 Muslims. 'I think it's time he left.'
Al-Hilali likened unveiled women to 'uncovered meat' in a fasting month sermon in Arabic to 500 worshippers at Sydney's biggest mosque.
'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,' he said.
Al-Hilali told the congregation he leads that a woman who stayed home and was veiled would be safe from sexual assault. 'If she was in her room, in her home, in her hajib (veil), no problem would have occurred.'
The 66-year-old apologized for the comments, saying he had 'only intended to protect women's honour.'
Al-Hilali, who serves on Howard's handpicked 14-member Muslim advisory board, has stirred controversy before. He has defended suicide bombers who strike at Israel, described as 'God's work' the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, and blamed Jews for 'all the wars and problems that threaten the peace and stability of all the world.'
Al-Hilali, who rarely speaks in English despite having lived in Australia for 20 years, was also blasted by Treasurer Peter Costello, the deputy leader of Howard's Liberal Party.
'This is totally unacceptable,' Costello said. 'This is comparing women to uncovered meat.'
Costello was the first in the government to raise the possibility that Islamic extremists could be deported if they held another country's passport as well as an Australian one.
'If you have a significant religious leader like this preaching to a flock in a situation where we have had gang rapes ... then people that listen to that kind of comment can get the wrong idea,' Costello said.
His reference was to a series of gang rapes of white women by Muslim men in Sydney in 2000 in which the victims were told they were targeted because they were 'Aussie pigs.'
Sophie Mirabella, also a Liberal Party lawmaker, called for the mufti to be sacked and for all 14 of Howard's Muslim advisors to stand up and condemn his views on women.
'I have a message for Sheik al-Hilai: this is Australia, not Iran, and violence and degradation of women is not acceptable,' she said.
Waleed Aly, a spokesman for the Islamic Council of Victoria, condemned al-Hilali and called for his resignation, saying his views sought to normalize immoral sexual behaviour.
'It's basically saying that the immoral response of men to women who are not fully covered is as natural and as inevitable as the response of an animal tempted by food,' Aly said. 'But men are people who have moral responsibilities and the capability in engaging in moral action.'
Aly said he fully expected a backlash. 'I am expecting a deluge of hate mail,' he said. 'I am expecting people to get abused in the street and get abused at work.'
He added: 'The idea that somehow victims on that occasion (the Sydney gang rapes) were to blame, or in any way invited that sort of assault, is probably the most disgusting comment we will see in the country for a very long time.'
© 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-AgenturCOMMENT
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Older Talkback
page: 1
This is the kind of crap we get (western countries) when we try to hard to accommodate immigrants by being too politically correct. They stick to their own laws and customs with our approval and they reject our laws and customs. I think we as an open society have gone too far in trying to make people from other countries welcome in our countries. I think its time we ask our newer landed immigrants to promise to adopt our way of life , our principles, values, and customs. Yes, deport the dog, but not to Canada please.
That multi-culturalism, it sure is good! Now how about asking this peanut brain his views on the Holocaust and various other topics so we can all savour his wisdom?
Oh well, too late for much of the modern Western World. The writing is on the wall. Wholesale immigration policies to fill quotas for new taxable heads and bending over to accommodate them so that politicians can get their votes gives you stuff like this. And bombings like in England. And riots like in France. And a whole big mess of people following their own seperate Dark Ages based 'cultures' and not really being part of the culture of the country they immigrated to! Why are they in Australia? Didn't they move to Australia to be Australians? Huh? Completely ridiculous.
Wake up world.
This kind of stuff is what goes down all the time in Islamic media throughout the world. It is not only preachers at Mosques, though they tend to love extremes, but mainstream Media which are filled with not simply insulting, and ridiculous messages to the Modern world, and those who do not share their belief - system, but hate- filled violent messages also.
The answer is for those moderate Muslims, who are shouted down by the violent to raise their voice. One problem is that probably if they raise it too loud they will not have it for long.
There are Christians who believe the same thing too.
I am a Muslim and I was born in Australia, this is my country but Hilali doesn’t represent me or my religion. Kick him out…He’s an extremist
A majority of muslims and the all the so called Islamists are still living in the earlier centuries when koran was written. unless they realise that today they live in the 21st century and any teaching should be taken in today's context people like sheik who inspite of living in australia for 20 odd years have failed to integrate into the society and failed to realise the above facts. These people refuse to accept those facts. We as a society should endeavour to strike a balance between political correctness and whats acceptable. If people like the sheik failed to integrate/unable to do so should leave australia to his homeland where he can continue to preach!!! and live a life in illusion
What do expect from a religeon written by a gangsta who bedded his 8 year old wife. I can just see Mohamed's (hbuh) mates saying er dude what are you doing with that 8 year. Um er.. She was showing a bit of leg. Oh ok can we join in.
If this was Britain, you wouldnt even get an apology from him and you would certainly not get any other muslims denouncing him. Australia better put a foot down on this or it will turn into Britain.
Sheik Hilaly must be on a different planet from the rest of us! Didn't he notice the storm that Bishop Hollingsworth provoked by similar comments? Hasn't he noticed that such medieval notions can only make life more difficult for Muslims? This is being reported around the world- how embarassing for Australia and Muslims! These injudicious comments only make life harder for Muslim youth - as if it isn't hard enough already for them.
Religious belief is largely to blame for all wars and problems in the world ever. Take it away and you remove the single largest dividing factor between communities. There would be no more excuse for these kinds of unbelievingly demonic and ancient ways of thinking.
Why the western world puts up with it is beyond me.
Religion is just a bunch of excuses which can be twisted by man's will to mean whatever they want them to mean, and because they have such large followings, they think it's ok.
I think the world is at a time where people should grow up and start living in the real world instead of their story book religions.
There's really no excuse any more!
And I suppose that poor 14 year old from Bagdad whose entire family was shot in front of her so she could be gang raped and then murdered herself was to blame too, this guy is very bigoted but sometimes I wonder if that isn't what all men think deep down, this kind of stuff makes me not want to leave the house in the morning!
****it!, I think we've been tolerant enough, it's time for war
I think what this idiot saying out of context and If you ready the Quran it say's A womwn has the some Authority as men do. this people have abused there own believe and the believe of others.
I think that it is too bad that the western world has to put up with these religious opportunists without having to suffer sanctions by our legislature. It's time for politicians to show signs of life and respond to the reasons of why they were put in that position they hold, by finding laws that would allow us to send people that do not abide to our western style of life to go back where they came from, and if there are no laws, to make one that addresses this situation so that we can enforce it according to our democratic traditions.
OMG....a Muslim said this....let the World Revolt:
burn down the mosque
attack the 'muslim international' aide building and kill innocent employees
boycott 'muslim' food
burn the Islamic Flag
protest in the streets by the 10's of thousands
pronounce a 'holy' war against clerics
Demand a Public apologies on Islamic TV
Surely the whole point is that the human male should have evolved beyong being an animal. We may be provoked, but we don't have to attack. DOes the sheik condone crabbing a flash watch of the wrist of a man - the same provokation, surely?
well, time for the christians to riot, murder and pillage until we get an acceptable apology.
Apparently human males have no more sense or restraint than a feral cat in this man's mind.
I think all of these comments pretty well sum it up.
My point here is why a wrong comment made by a muslim cleric in one corener of the world should be given such a wide media coverage? While many wrong comments about women, othere religions even about Africans, made by very big evangelical figures here in US hardly make a news? That's a lie, that he is 'Australia's leading Muslim cleric', do a google search and you will see that there are like 100 different names labelled as a 'Australia's leading Muslim cleric'.
Anything related to Muslims always make it in the front page of world news. If a Muslim terrorist kills 5 people, it will make it to World News but however if Christian terrorists kills 5 people, it doesn't make it to world news, for example, in North-Eastern India, Christian terrorist groups like National Liberation Front of Tripura (CRPF) and National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) kills Hindus all the time. Just today they killed two Hindus. No world news has mention this, why? See the bias in news reporting.
This cleric doesn't represent Muslims or majority of Muslim clerics. Unlike other religion, there is no hierarchy in Islam. Every Muslim has the right intepret Quran and Islam for themselves, clerics can't interpret for them.
My point here is why a wrong comment made by a muslim cleric in one corener of the world should be given such a wide media coverage? While many wrong comments about women, othere religions even about Africans, made by very big evangelical figures here in US hardly make a news? That's a lie, that he is 'Australia's leading Muslim cleric', do a google search and you will see that there are like 100 different names labelled as a 'Australia's leading Muslim cleric'.
This is typical of Islam. This is how they value women in the Islamic nation of Saudi Arabia: kill a person or or cause to die & you have to pay blood money or compensation, as follows:
100,000 riyals if the victim is a Muslim man
50,000 riyals if a Muslim woman
50,000 riyals if a Christian man
25,000 riyals if a Christian woman
6,666 riyals if a Hindu man
3,333 riyals if a Hindu woman
Source: The Wall Street Journal, April 9, 2002
This isnt the sheikh has damaged the image of muslims in Australia. I have learnt to ignore mostly what he says but has a muslim we are taught respect our Scholars regardless if there views fall in the majority of other scholars. The mewspapers and politicans love him and usually make meal out of him and push there agenda forward.
On another point a scholar once told myself that we should follow the majority scholars opinioin and majority of scholars dont deal with issue as hijab in the manner the sheikh has. they would always incourage with virtues of doing the right thing beacuse comments like the sheiks only anger and breed more wrong.
The sheik is one scholar amongest approx 20 others and you will never read there names in the paper. He is one of kind and he is becoming a haedache.
I think everyone is upset not because the shake dude called women meat, but because he compared men to mangy starving cats. Sheik-boy implies that men lose all self-control when they hear their penis call. He thinks that veils mute that call. I think that what really upsets people is that they sense Sheikie treads dangerously close to a call for emasculation and neutering (whaddya call those former dudes who guard the harems?).
I don't think this has anything to do with women-- or the way they dress-- at all, really. I think this is about the oppression of men, not the defense of rape.
Not only was he comparing women to meat, but he was comparing men to wild animals. Maybe he doesn't realize that Australian men are not the animals that he seems to think men are...the men he knows perhaps?
While I deplore the comments this man made and agree completely that it is disgusting to blame women for sexual assault, the free world must allow everyone to be free, even when we despise the way that the freedom is used. Men are not animals. We are expected to be capable of restraining our sexual impulses even when hundreds of completely nude women parade down the street. Men of every culture should certainly be expected to restrin themselves from rape when confronted with a woman who is not veiled!! I'm confident that nothing in the Koran gives men express or implied permission to rape under any set of facts. All of that is a given.
The larger issue is whether a government that holds itself out as the leadership of a free society, should take steps to censor the speech of someone who expresses such vile views. I know it's Australia and not the U.S. but what little I know of Australia leads me to think that our governments share a common respect for liberty. Some in the U.S. may recall the unpopular decision by the American Civil Liberties Union to defend the right of a white supremacist group to march through a Jewish neighborhood as part of a demonstration. It was disgusting speech and allowing it was the right thing to do. Being free is hard. We have to set the example for the world. We can't expell people from countries because we do not like what they think - even when the overwhelming majority of us are in agreement. Recall that persecuting Jews was very popular in Nazi Germany too.
It's time for politicians to stop suggesting censorship (and other limitations on civil liberties) because it is the politically popular thing to do. Political leaders should not be calling for this lunatic's deportation. They should be holding him out as an example of what it means to live in freedom. Say to the world, 'We find this man's thoughts and words despicable and we would like to point out that we afford him a level of freedom to be despicable that his own country would not. If he made statements in his home country that were contrary to the views of the government, he would be punished. Here, he is debated and denounced but allowed to continue unharmed. That is what it means to be free.'
I read the hatred here from all sides. My philosophy is summed up as follows: 'The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren and to do good is my religion'. - - Thomas Paine
I have a question for Taj Din al-Hilali. If there is a 64 year old rabid dog foaming at the mouth and which has endangering normal people for 20 years and finally someone puts him out of his misery is that the fault of the dog, the person who put him out of his misery or those who allowed the dog to be a threat to people for 200 years?
After visiting Australia numerous times as a young man, I viewed Australian women as the most gorgeous women on earth. I was like a kid in a candy store. Uncovered meat, I think not, Aussie women are more akin to candy being the sweetest most delectable females that a young U.S. Marine could ever hope to meet. Just a bit of advice to Australian women, 'What ever your doing ladies, keep up the good work, because your irritating the heck out of the extremists.' Australian women are doing more with their femininity to fight the war on terrorism than all the bullets and bombs put together.
The U.S. can always count on the Australians to come through in a clutch, Thanks Australia.
Is he also saying that men, who roam freely are like animals without the ability to respect others? Deport this guy back to the Middle East and free the women who are held hostage in this thinking.
It is interesting how many of the Muslims, here, seem to bring up politics.
It probably comes as a shock - that people could be so outraged at something, which they themselves or others around them, believe. So to explain, or to find some reason, for the public outrage at one of their beloved clerics, they blame politics - rather than face that people outside of their religion, really do feel very differently, on the subject of women's freedoms, it is better, it seems to cocoon oneself, in the defense that it is only politics at play - and not people rejecting their religious view of the world.
In a futile attempt to back Islam up, in the belief that one day Islam will be everyone’s religion, they will go to any length to cover up and pretend that these more radical views don't form the basis of the Islamic belief system.
Well yes it's true that women in western dress are like 'uncovered meat' to the sexually repressed muslims. Just ask any womed who tried to travel alone through any of the islamic countries.
I am one of them.
(- Who has travelled to an Islamic country alone)
You can't even describe it.
In the West women do enjoy some attention - but in Muslims countries, these Muslim men, have a whole 'nother idea. The best way to describe it is like being thrown in the lion’s den.
The Muslims - spend so much time trying to act pious, but having travelled to two Islam/Muslim countries, I know that most of it is for show.
The men there are so desperate. It is really incredible. Most Western women would not understand their mentality.
In the end the best thing was to travel with a Western man, and then you don't get troubled so much.
They propose marriage like – literally - 5 minutes after they meet you. 'Will you marry me' is their pick up line!!
And this all while the women keep their virginity, (by sleeping with each other – by the way).
The more you know about Islam the less you are fooled.
Ever seen a prostitute in the long Islamic dress – with head scarf?
I have.
It seems the women's clothing has nothing to do with her mind and what she is willing to do with her body.
'It says all his good work has been forgotten in the rush to condemn him.'
Muslim are the biggest Morons and Hypocrites alive...did these stupid islamic brain dead towel heads suddenly forget all the good work the Pope did...before they went on a baby temper tantrum...in a rush to condemn him for something he said from 100's of years ago...they should put this fascist Cleric on the closest plane back to Muslim Country...and who is this Islamic Counsil...Australia isn't their country....but I'm sure the locals will take care of this idiot.
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ranonOct 26th, 2006 - 09:30:44
This type of thinking is nothing new.
if you go through the sermons of preachers in India too you will find that the concept that dressing provacatively incites rape is common
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