AUSTRALIA: AL-HILALI "I'M MISUNDERSTOOD"

'I'm misunderstood' excuse is wearing thin
Richard Kerbaj
October 27, 2006

FOR more than two decades, Taj Din al-Hilali has courted controversy - and has more than once fought off calls for him to be kicked out of the country.

Troubles for the Egyptian-born mufti stretch back to the 1980s, soon after he arrived in Australia. Before yesterday, he had most recently sparked anger with a sermon in which he questioned the Holocaust.

The cleric was once again reaching for a credibility lifeline in July when The Weekend Australian revealed that he had called the Holocaust "a ploy made by the Zionists" and trivialised the number of Jews killed by the Nazis.

But the imam's ability to manoeuvre his way out of controversy by claiming that hateful or divisive remarks he had made were "taken out of context" by listeners - especially the media - enabled him to escape deportation on at least two occasions before he was granted permanent residency in 1990.

Four years after his arrival in Australia in 1982, the then Labor immigration minister Chris Hurford tried to deport him for allegedly inciting "hatred", but failed because of pressure from other Labor figures.

Sheik Hilali again avoided being expelled from the country in 1988 following comments he made about Jews being the "underlying cause of all wars".

Labor's then new immigration minister, Robert Ray, agreed not to deport him after the cleric insisted he was misquoted.

The spiritual head of Lakemba Mosque in Sydney's southwest attracted criticism in 2000 for allegedly blaming "Australian society" for the infamous Sydney gang rapes.

He has repeatedly attacked the Howard Government even after the Prime Minister picked him to be a senior member of his Muslim advisory board.

In March, Sheik Hilali told The Australian that the Muslim Community Reference Group was "stillborn" and created to disseminate government "propaganda" under the guise of an elite Islamic body.

While he paints himself as a moderate, at a young age Sheik Hilali joined the Muslim Brotherhood - an extremist group influenced by one of Islam's most radical thinkers and a supporter of violent jihad.

Although the cleric has formerly claimed that he broke away from the Brotherhood because they were too "extreme" in their teachings, several years ago he allegedly praised suicide bombers and called anyone who died fighting for Islam a "hero".

And in 2004, he gave speeches in Lebanon that seemed to suggest the September 11 attacks on the US weren't so bad.

But it is not only Sheik Hilali's mouth that has got him into trouble. He was jailed in Egypt in 2000 over the alleged export of antiques, but the charges were later dropped. And he was also charged with assaulting a policeman during a routine traffic incident in Sydney in 2003. Again, the charges were dropped.

Last year, he made a dash to Iraq in an effort to help the Howard Government secure the freedom of kidnapped Australian contractor Douglas Wood, but there was controversy surrounding the part he played in his release.

Yesterday, Sheik Hilali was again defiant. Asked if he intended to bow to pressure from many within the community to resign, he told a journalist from Nine's A Current Affair: "No and no and no."

Sheik Hilali again fell back to that well-worn defence, the one he has used so consistently over the past 20 years: I have been misunderstood.

Pertinent Links:

1) 'I'm misunderstood' excuse is wearing thin