Taj Din al-Hilali Grand Mufti decision is why we fear Muslims
SHEIK Taj Din al-Hilali is back after being anointed Australia’s Grand Mufti last week. What bad news for Australia, and even worse for Muslims, writes Andrew Bolt.
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SHEIK Taj Din al-Hilali is back. What bad news for Australia, and even worse for Muslims.
Muslims may complain about “Islamophobia”, but why wouldn’t Australians fear Islam when they see what leaders Muslims keep choosing?
Hilali was Australia’s Grand Mufti until 2007, but was last week anointed Mufti again in Brisbane’s Logan M
osque, before a big crowd that included the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils’ vice-president. What are these people thinking?
MUSLIM FACTIONS WARRING AFTER HILALI GRAND MUFTI
Hilali may be hailed as a “moderate”, but he called the September 11 terrorist attacks “God’s work against oppressors” and praised suicide bombers as “heroes”. A decade ago, he called the Holocaust — the Nazi murder of six million Jews — “a ploy made by Zionists”, after accusing Jews of using “sex and abominable acts of buggery, espionage, treason and economic hoarding to control the world”.
He’s also a symbol of Muslim lack of integration. He came to Australia from Egypt 36 years ago, yet still speaks through an interpreter.
How can such a man be the spiritual leader of Islam in Australia? True, the Australian National Imams Council has challenged his “appointment” as “void and unjustified”, and insists former mufti Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohamed is Acting Grand Mufti.
But this is of small comfort.
A month ago, Hilali endorsed Denmark’s decision to ban ANIC president Sheik Shady Alsuleiman from the country on undeclared security grounds.
Hilali, presenting himself as the more moderate of the two, called on Australian imams to “moderate their words” so as not to “distort the image of Islam”.
Indeed, Alsuleiman became controversial two years ago for attending an Iftar dinner hosted by then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. In videos of his sermons, he accuses gays of “spreading all these diseases” through “evil actions”, damns Christmas parties as “worship of Satan” and says the Koran’s punishment for adulterers is “stoning to death”.
In turn, his ally, Acting Grand Mufti Mohamed, in 2015 appeared to blame the West for Islamic State’s slaughter of 130 people in Paris. Mohamed, who also speaks through an interpreter, said the massacre’s “causative factors such as racism, Islamophobia, curtailing freedoms through securitisation, duplicitous foreign policies and military intervention must be comprehensively addressed”.
Why are Australia’s Muslims represented by such men? What must we then conclude about their faith?
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