Radical Sydney cleric labels Australia’s New Year’s Eve celebrations a ‘celebration of foreskin’

Australia’s peak Jewish body has slammed a radical cleric’s latest sermon, which said Israelis were ‘descendants of pigs and monkeys’.

Abu Ousayd, also known as Wissam Haddad, a Sydney-based Islamic cleric, who recited parables calling for the killing of Jews.

Australia’s peak Jewish body has slammed the anti-Semitism and “stupidity” of a radical cleric’s latest incendiary sermon, in which he said Israelis were “descendants of pigs and monkeys” and called New Year’s Eve festivities a “celebration of foreskin”.

It comes as a cleric known as “Brother Ismail”, who previously called for jihad, claimed that ASIO and counter-terrorism squads visited him, before police dropped their probes, as he criticised Islamic leaders for not standing up for him.

On the eve of Sydney’s biggest fireworks displays in recent years, cleric Abu Ousayd – also known as Wissam Haddad – gave an incendiary sermon at Bankstown’s Al Madina Dawah Centre on Friday, slamming the celebrations and claiming that in Judaic tradition the event was instead a “day of circumcision”.

“In essence, and I’m sorry to say this, you are celebrating (on New Year’s Eve) a piece of foreskin,” Mr Ousayd said.

Abu Ousayd gives a sermon on Friday 29 at the Al Madina Dawah Centre, Bankstown, Sydney. Picture: Rumble

“How low can the Muslim community stoop that we are celebrating a piece of flesh that is cut and thrown away.”

This publication revealed in November how Mr Ousayd was actually radical Islamic cleric Wissam Haddad, who had boasted about his friendship with men such as Khaled Sharrouf and Mohamed Elomar, who went on to commit atrocities in Syria.

It followed this masthead revealing the incendiary sermons by both Mr Ousayd and Brother Ismail, and how their contents were the subject of both federal and state police investigations, both of which were later dropped.

“Muslims should not celebrate or get involved in New Year’s Eve,” Mr Ousayd said in his Friday sermon.

“Flocking to watch the fireworks, staying up until midnight in the city.

“The kuffar (non-believers or faithless in Arabic) on New Year’s Eve turn and kiss each other at midnight … keep away from them.”

Mr Ousayd said New Year’s traditions had been invented by the Chinese, to ward off evil spirits, and urged Muslims to reject them as “paganism” and not “stand shoulder to shoulder with unbelievers”.

“The Chinese are the first to come up with fireworks to scare off evil demons ... another pagan origin,” Mr Ousayd said, who added that Israelis and Jews were “descendants of pigs and monkeys”.

Abu Ousayd warned Muslims to not attend Sydney’s New Year celebrations, calling it a “celebration of foreskin”. Picture: AFP

“Let us not forget what has been happening to our brothers and sisters (in Palestine),” Mr Ousayd said.

“These (Israelis and Jews) descendants of pigs and monkeys are stealing the organs of our brothers and sisters.”

Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Alex Ryvchin slammed the latest sermons and anti-Semitism.

“He believes Jews are pigs and monkeys yet they have built a thriving pluralistic democracy that ingathered millions of refugees and formed one of the most sophisticated, powerful and innovative countries in the world despite facing near constant war and possessing few natural resources,” he said.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Alex Ryvchin. Picture: Richard Dobson

“Meanwhile, the people he considers their natural masters can only dream of creating such things. This results in a frenzied anger towards the Jews, including wild ravings about New Year’s Eve.

“His comments are obviously despicable and dangerous, but they also provide a study in how anti-Semitism works and the stupidity that accompanies it.”

Brother Ismail, who hadn’t appeared on the organisation’s social media channels since November, took aim at Islamic leaders for not standing up for him when media reporting and investigations into his sermons began.

“(The government) put laws in to target Muslims under the name of fighting terrorism,” he said, saying that “leaders of the Mafia” had more rights than Muslims in ­Australia. “When I got targeted by the media, ASIO and counter-terrorism police contacted me,” he claimed. “Not one Muslim leader stood up and said something – this is a show of weakness.”

NSW Police and the Australian Federal Police said in early December that they had dropped their probes into the clerics and their previous sermons given they were unlikely to meet the criminality threshold.