AUSTRALIA: 2ND MOSLEM CLERIC BEMOANING THE LONG SENTENCE OF A GANG OF RAPISTS

Second Muslim cleric inflames Australian tensions

Fresh allegations from a senior cleric that Australian courts were biased against Muslims in sex cases has further inflamed tensions with the country's small but highly visible Islamic community.

Fresh allegations from a senior cleric that Australian courts were biased against Muslims in sex cases has further inflamed tensions with the country's small but highly visible Islamic community.

"I feel there is no justice here," Sheikh Mohammed Omran told worshippers in a Melbourne mosque, adding that football stars and other offenders received lighter sentences than Muslims.
His remarks from Friday prayers last week were reported in Australian newspapers Tuesday.

Omran defended his views, telling Australian radio he had a right to express an opinion.

But the Australian government immediately condemned Omran's remarks, the latest in a series of comments by prominent clerics which have divided Australia's Muslim community and strained relations between Muslims and non-Muslims.

"Australia is a tolerant and multicultural society. There is room for all religions, but people who live here must respect the rule of law and Australian values," Attorney-General Philip Ruddock told Parliament.

The comments by the outspoken Omran come after the mufti of Australia, Sheikh Taj El-Din Hamid Hilaly, compared unveiled women to "uncovered meat" who invited sexual violence, and criticized unsympathetic judges in rape trials.

Both Omran and Hilaly were referring to a sentence handed down to the leader of a gang of Sydney rapists, Bilal Skaf, jailed for a series of organized pack rapes in Sydney in 2000. Skaf was sentenced to 55 years in prison for leading a gang in a series of rapes on Sydney women. His sentence was cut to 18 years on retrial.

Australia has about 280,000 Muslims, making up about 1.5 percent of Australia's 20 million population. Most live in the largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne.

The latest row has divided Australia's Muslims, with many community leaders backing calls for Hilaly to stand down or be removed.

Treasurer Peter Costello earlier said both Hilaly and Omran appeared to be blaming the victims of rape, and that sermons like those could have encouraged the attacks. "They have got to understand ... in Australia rape is a crime, we don't blame the victim. If you are not wearing a veil, that is not an open invitation," Costello told Australian radio.

"When you see a sermon like this being preached, when you see him referring to the Skaf case in that way, you can't help but think that this kind of thinking could well have contributed to the way in which Skaf and his co-criminals engaged in their criminal conduct."

Hilaly was hospitalized Monday and has stood aside indefinitely from his position at Sydney's largest mosque. REUTERS


Pertinent Links:

1) Second Muslim cleric inflames Australian tensions

2) Muslim Rape? They Were Asking for It

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women are generally at fault if they are raped. Speaking to a Muslim audience in Sydney, he explained that rape (specifically, zina, sexual activity forbidden under Islamic law -- a word mistranslated in published accounts of the Sheikh’s words as “adultery”) is “90 percent the woman’s responsibility. Why? Because a woman owns the weapon of seduction. It’s she who takes off her clothes, shortens them, flirts, puts on make-up and powder and takes to the streets, God protect us, dallying. It’s she who shortens, raises and lowers. Then, it’s a look, a smile, a conversation, a greeting, a talk, a date, a meeting, a crime, then Long Bay jail. Then you get a judge, who has no mercy, and he gives you 65 years.”

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“But when it comes to this disaster, who started it? In his literature, writer al-Rafee says, if I came across a rape crime, I would discipline the man and order that the woman be jailed for life. Why would you do this, Rafee? He said because if she had not left the meat uncovered, the cat wouldn’t have snatched it. If you get a kilo of meat, and you don’t put it in the fridge or in the pot or in the kitchen but you leave it on a plate in the backyard, and then you have a fight with the neighbour because his cats eat the meat, you’re crazy. Isn’t this true? If you take uncovered meat and put it on the street, on the pavement, in a garden, in a park, or in the backyard, without a cover and the cats eat it, then whose fault will it be, the cats, or the uncovered meat’s? The uncovered meat is the disaster. If the meat was covered the cats wouldn’t roam around it. If the meat is inside the fridge, they won’t get it. If the woman is in her boudoir, in her house and if she’s wearing the veil and if she shows modesty, disasters don’t happen.”

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Australian Muslim moderate leader Tanveer Ahmed acknowledged that “in a large number of Muslim households, young men will be taught that white women are cheap and easy. It is extrapolated to a much bigger scale, for it symbolises for them a moral corruption endemic in free societies, the kind they believe has led to a breakdown in families. Their views have some overlap with social conservatives in general, who see human freedoms, especially with regard to sexuality, as having gone too far.”

Even more significantly, Ahmed conceded that “what Hilali says is consistent with a strict, conservative interpretation of Islam. This remains the fundamental difficulty with Islam's attempts to sit with modernity. As long as Muslims view their religion as sitting above history and culture -- with the Koran as the literal word of God, which in their view makes Islam undebatable -- there will always be Hilalis who can point to certain texts and argue for a social and legal structure consistent with 7th-century Arabia….This is a man who knows the Koran in intimate detail and his views are consistent with a strict reading of the Muslim holy book.”

They are also, unfortunately, consistent with the example of Muhammad, Islam’s prophet, as I show in my new book The Truth About Muhammad. The Qur’an tells men: “And all married women (are forbidden unto you) save those (captives) whom your right hands possess” (4:24) -- that is, slave girls who are considered the spoils of war. All too often in Western countries, particularly in Europe’s restive Muslim enclaves, young Muslim men have understood this as permitting the rape of non-Muslim women who venture out uncovered -- in accord with Shahid Mehdi’s statement.

What’s more, in traditional Islamic law rape cannot be established except by the testimony of four male witnesses who saw the act, as stipulated by Qur’an 24:4 and 24:13. Consequently, it is even today virtually impossible to prove rape in lands that follow the dictates of the Sharia. Unscrupulous men can commit rape with impunity: as long as they deny the charge and there are no witnesses, they get off scot-free, because the victim’s account is inadmissible. Even worse, if a woman accuses a man of rape, she may end up incriminating herself. If the required male witnesses can’t be found, the victim’s charge of rape becomes an admission of adultery. That accounts for the grim fact that as many as seventy-five percent of the women in prison in Pakistan are, in fact, behind bars for the crime of being a victim of rape.[i] Several high-profile cases in Nigeria recently have also revolved around rape accusations being turned around by Islamic authorities into charges of fornication, resulting in death sentences that were only modified after international pressure.[ii]

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