DAR AL HARB - AUSTRALIA: SAUDI'S FUNDING MOSQUES, NO QUESTIONS ASKED - - - CHECKS WRITTEN

'No questions' on mosque cash
by Greg Roberts

FORMER federal Labor MP Graeme Campbell says the Saudi embassy was so eager to fund a WA mosque it made a $250,000 personal cheque out to him.

"I could have gone to the bank and put it in my account if I had been that way inclined," he said yesterday. Mr Campbell said he approached the Saudis when representatives of the Muslim community in Port Hedland, in the state's northwest, asked for his assistance to raise money for a mosque.

"There were no questions asked by the embassy at all," Mr Campbell said. "I just put the question to the Saudis and the cheque was in the mail."

The money was used to build the mosque, which was opened in 1984.

...

He said that after the mosque opened, he learned that a succession of radical fundamentalist imams from Malaysia and Indonesia had preached there.

"I heard that one imam was giving speeches in Arabic, telling people that Australians were dirty and that Muslims should not mix with them and certainly should not marry them," Mr Campbell said.

"The more moderate Muslims were coming back and telling me that they disapproved of what these radical imams were saying."


Pertinent Links:

1) 'No questions' on mosque cash