DAR AL HARB - AUSTRALIA: NO AUSSIE FLAGS ON MOSQUES

Muslim clerics push for flags to be flown on mosques
Richard Kerbaj
February 17, 2007

SENIOR Muslim leaders have called for the Australian flag to be flown outside the nation's mosques as an expression of the Islamic community's "loyalty" and commitment to this country.

Muslim clerics yesterday urged Australia's 300,000 Muslims to back the idea as a symbol of "integration" and pride.

The former chairman of the Prime Minister's Muslim reference group, Ameer Ali, pushed the Australian Muslim community yesterday to adopt the flag.

"Even in Muslim countries in the mosque they fly the national flag ... (such as) in Pakistan. If that can be done in a Muslim country why not in Australia?" Dr Ali said.

He said Muslims opposed to the flag being displayed outside mosques were religiously narrow-minded. "I think they are looking at it from a very narrow, religious angle," he said.

Dr Ali said he spearheaded the initiative of displaying the flag outside Muslim schools owned by the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils when he ran that organisation in 2002.

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The response:

Muslims reject flag idea

QUEENSLAND Muslim leaders have rejected a plan to fly the Australian flag outside mosques.
The Lebanese Muslim Association in NSW has called on the Federal Government to supply flags and flagpoles for its mosques in that state.

But Queensland Islamic Council president Suliman Sabdia said he would not support asking mosques to fly the flag.

"This is a secular state, we are now politicising a place of worship and I think it would be very controversial in the wider community if somebody suggested that the flag be flown on every church and every synagogue and every temple," he said.

Former Islamic Council president Sultan Deen said he had no worries with mosques flying the flag.

"But I don't see why that should have to be done," he said. "Why is that Muslims have to bend over backwards to show their support when we have been doing it all our lives?"

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Pertinent:

1) Muslim clerics push for flags to be flown on mosques

2) Muslims reject flag idea