PrintMarch 16, 2007
Australia's Meathead Mufti
Far from bowing to rising clamor for his deportation, the controversial Mufti Sheikh Taj Aldin al-Hilali is taking on the political establishment. Al-Hilali outraged Australians last fall by describing women as "uncovered meat," and in January compounded their furor when he claimed that Muslims had more right to the country than the "Anglo-Saxon" heirs to Australia's convict ancestors. On March 12, al-Hilali spokesman Keysar Trad brazenly baited politicians to stop using Muslims as a "political football."
In October 2006, after al-Hilali's misogynist sermon at west Sydney's Lakemba mosque, Prime Minister John Howard criticized him and other politicians demanded his dismissal and deportation. Egyptian-born al-Halali has been in that position before, however: after spewing anti-Jewish hatred at the University of Sydney in 1988, deportation proceedings began. But under Muslim pressure, in 1990, Australia granted him citizenship.
Al-Hilali certainly follows recent radical custom. In Iraq, Islamic radicals have slain at least 20 women for living (and dressing) as liberated women. In 2005, a Spanish judge sentenced Mohamed Kamal Mustafa to 15 months in prison for writing, "blows [to a disobedient wife] should be concentrated on the hands and feet using a rod that is thin and light so that it does not leave scars or bruises on the body." And in March 2003, Saudi Arabian religious police trapped 890 girls and women in a burning school rather than let them out in "improper dress." At least 15 girls died.
In Status of Women in Islam the "greatest" current-day Islamic scholar, Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yusuf Qaradawi derides any woman with "free rein to assert herself, promote her personality, enjoy her life and her femininity... mix with men freely, experience them closely where they would be together and alone, travel with them, go to cinemas or dance till midnight together."
Actually, the "women are meat" motif is apparently Islamic tradition. Second Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab (634-644) stated, "innamaa al-nisaa' laHm `alaa waDam illaa maa dhubba `anhu" (Women are only meat on the butcher's block, except for any parts that have dried up), according to a 1937 reference by Islamic scholar Georges Vajda to a medieval Arabic text. [1]
Likewise, from Cairo in January, al-Hilali laid claim to Islamic historical and cultural supremacy, prompting Australian leaders to urge al-Hilali not to come back. He stated on Cairo Today TV that Muslims with "deep roots in Australian soil [from] before the English arrived" had more right to Australia than Anglo-Saxons, who "arrived in chains." (It wasn't the first time, either: in 2004, he said that Afghan Muslims, not Capt. James Cook, discovered Australia.) Now, Al-Hilali also blames "racism" for the conviction and harsh sentencing of a Muslim gang rapist. His critics, he added, were racists, too.
Some Muslims rebuked him: Darulfatwa (Australia's Islamic High Council) called al-Hilali an ill-respected, "divisive figure" and asked the Lebanese Muslim Association (LMA) running the Lakemba mosque to fire him. The Forum on Australia's Islamic Relations (FAIR) also sought "sending [al-Hilali] out to an early pasture."
But Melbourne Sheik Fehmi Naji warned leaders against bullying Muslims; and spokesman (and Islamic Friendship Association president) Keysar Trad dismissed al-Hilali's latest outrage gaucherie as "a slip of the tongue."
Meanwhile, the British Undercover Mosque documentary broadcast west Sydney Global Islamic Youth Centre imam Sheik Feiz Mohammed despising infidels as filthy, dirty, disbelieving "kaffirs," and ridiculing Jews as "pigs." They'd found him, in the Islamic DVD "Death Series," urging young Muslims to be holy warriors, and their parents to "Put in their soft, tender hearts the zeal of jihad and a love of martyrdom."
To top it off, 450 Muslims packed a January Hizb ut Tahrir Khilafa conference in Sydney's southwest Lakemba area, where Indonesian radical Ismail Yusanto urged "all the sons and daughters of Islam" worldwide to impose "the divine order of Islam," take "responsibility for effecting political change in the Muslim world to manifest universal brotherhood"--and wage jihad for the establishment and defence of a universal Muslim state headed by one religious leader.
Clearly, Al-Hilali (and cohorts) subscribe to the belief succinctly expressed by Osama bin Laden--"The earth belongs to Allah and thus only Allah's rule should prevail all over the earth." They hold Muslims (believers) to be superior to others--and believe Islam should rule the world. As Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris opined on Palestinian TV on May 13, 2005, "We ruled the entire world before, and by Allah, the day will come when we will rule the entire world again."
Like it or not, Al-Hilali and friends simply follow Islamic scriptural doctrine, which establishes the "divine," i.e. unchallengeable notion (Qur'an, 3:110) that Muslims are "best community that hath been raised up for mankind...," that most Christians and Jews "are evil-livers" and that all land belongs to Allah, [2] like a mosque (masjid), which can never revert to private ownership.[3]
After migrating to Lebanon, in 1982 during its civil war, al-Hilali traveled down under on a tourist visa; he later refused to depart. In September 1988, reports a web archive of Australia's Counter Intelligence-Counter Espionage-Counter Terrorism, he recited traditional lessons from Cairo's al-Azhar University, the world's leading Islamic institution, to Muslim students in Sydney:
"The Jews struggle with humanity is as old as history itself; the present continuing struggle with the Islam[ic] nation is a natural continuation of the Jews enmity towards the human race as a whole.
"Judaism controls the world by secret movements as the destructive doctrines and groups, such as communism, libertinism, Free Masons, Baha'ism, the Rotary clubs, the nationalistic and racist doctrines.
He continued, Jews attempt "to control the world through sex, then sexual perversion, then the promotion of espionage, treason and economic hoarding."
Al-Hilali subsequently pretended to be chastened: On November 15, 2001, at a September 11 memorial with Buddhist, Christian and Jewish leaders, he opposed terrorism, killing and wars. And in November 2003, he coyly labeled Australia "our compassionate mother," criticized criminals among Sydney's Muslims and admonished them to "love this country or leave it; shape up or ship out."
But at a Sidon, Lebanon mosque in 2004, al-Halali said "September 11 is God's work against oppressors," praised the hijacker "pilot who reached his objective without error..," lauded the global "war on infidels" and heralded the "true buy" who, "despite his mother's objections," welcomes the jihad imposed on him to be martyred.
Fast forward: Last November, the same AFIC that named al-Hilali mufti in 1989 to thwart his deportation, formed the National Imams Council following his Meat Head gaffe, ostensibly to independently decide his fate. Who is AFIC president Ikebal Patel kidding? In February, rumors of al-Hilaly's pending dismissal proved false with LMA president Tom Zreika's announcement that the board would let him stay at Lakemba mosque until the contrived AFIC-NIC meeting in early April.
With the al-Hilali camp's latest political announcement, Australia's radical Muslims have also announced their strategy to again leverage multiculturalism and Western guilt for their advantage. This time, they're fighting Christians along with the politicians: Christian Democratic Party leader, Rev. Fred Nile, called Monday for a 10-year moratorium on Muslim immigration to Australia, in favor of Christians fleeing Islamic persecution--which not incidentally goes largely uncovered, in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Pakistan.
But failing a massive Christian campaign on the issue, Muslim pressure again looks ascendant in Australia, and al-Hilali highly unlikely to be sent packing for good. After all, the country's parliamentary multicultural affairs minister recently assured the public that a government-sponsored Islamic center will produce moderate imams.
NOTES:
[1] Georges Vajda, "Juifs et Musulmans Selon Le Hadit" ["Jews and Muslims According to the Hadith"] Journal Asiatique 1937, Vol. 229, pp. 57-127, included in (upcoming) Andrew Bostom, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: from Sacred Texts to Solemm History (2007, Prometheus).
[2] Qur'an 16:41: "And those who became fugitives for the cause of Allah after they had been oppressed, We verily shall give them goodly lodging in the world, and surely the reward of the Hereafter is greater, if they but knew;"
Quran, 57:2: "To Him belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth: It is He Who gives Life and Death; and He has Power over all things.;"
Qur'an 59:7: "That which Allah giveth as spoil unto His messenger from the people of the townships, it is for Allah and His messenger and for the near of kin and the orphans and the needy and the wayfarer, that it become not a commodity between the rich among you. And whatsoever the messenger giveth you, take it. And whatsoever he forbiddeth, abstain (from it). And keep your duty to Allah. Lo! Allah is stern in reprisal."
Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 53, Number 392: Narrated Abu Huraira: "[The Prophet said to the Jews], "If you embrace Islam, you will be safe. You should know that the earth belongs to Allah and His Apostle, and I want to expel you from this land. So, if anyone amongst you owns some property, he is permitted to sell it, otherwise you should know that the Earth belongs to Allah and His Apostle."
Abu'l Hasan al-Mawardi, (d. 1058), "Chapter 12: "The division of fay [property taken from infidels without battle] and the Ghaneemah [property taken by force]," and Chapter 13: "The Imposition of the Jizyah [head tax on unbelievers] and the Kharaj [land tax on unbelievers]," and "Chapter 14: The different statuses of the regions," al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyyah (The Laws of Islamic Governance), 1996 Ta-Ha edition, pp. 207-251. In any case, all confiscated property is "taken from the nonbelievers as a way of exacting revenge." (p. 207) According to al-Mawardi, second Caliph Umar ibn al- Khattab stated that he had "discovered what is good in that which Allah has given me authority over by means of three thing: fulfilling a trust [to Islam], taking by means of force, and ruling by what Allah has revealed; surely I have only found the good in this wealth by three things: that it is taken justly, that it is distributed justly [to Muslims and to benefit Islam], and that it is prevented from being spent on unjustified things...." (p. 251);
Ralph W. Brauer, "Boundaries and Frontiers in Medieval Muslim Geography," (1995), American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 85, Part 6, pp.65- 69;
Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal anti-Discrimination List, Witness statement of John Mark Durie, 3 Oct, 2003;
"The Truth,"("The present 'system' whereby all are forced to be 'subscribers' and all are forced to pay whatever is demanded is to now cease as man is awakened from their 'sleep of ignorance' and are enlightened by their Allah. There will be no more land taxes as all land belongs to Allah not man.") http://www.dar-es-salaam.org/web/hell.htm, p.22.
[3] Thomas P. Hughes, "Masjid," Dictionary of Islam, 1895, 1994 reprint, Kazi, pp.329-332: "The Muslim law regarding the erection and endowment (waqf) of Masjids, as contained in Sunni and Shi'ah works, is as follows: According to the Sunnis: '...as soon as [a property-owner] separates [the masjid] from his property and allows even a single person to say his prayers in it, his right to the property as a mosque ceases.... delivery of it is made to the Qazi or his deputy..... Abu Yusuf was of the opinion that the property in a Masjid never reverts to the original appropriator...." [taken by Hughes from the Hidayah, vol. ii, p. 356] The Shi'ah law regarding the endowment of the Masjids, or land for the benefit of Masjids, does not differ in any important particulars....." (pp. 331-333)
