Irfan Yusuf: Foot-in-mouth Sheikh lacks Muslim mandate

On Sunday, New Zealand broadcaster Kerre Woodham castigated Sheik Taj Aldin Alhilali for his views on women. The irony is that few Muslims on that better side of the Tasman have even heard of him. And I thought Kiwis were two hours ahead of us.

By now much of the world will have heard of him. Already Sheik Alhilali's comments have made it to CNN, BBC and other international news agencies.

So who is Sheik Alhilali? Where did he come from? And what do Muslims really think of his comments?

There's little argument on what the Sheik said. Women who refuse to cover up to the level expected by Islamic teachings are comparable to meat. Men are comparable to cats that enjoy eating meat left out in the street. Women who appear in public dressed a certain way bring rape (or at least fornication) upon themselves.

These medieval attitudes were delivered a few weeks ago to a Sydney audience of 500 Muslims. This concerns New Zealand readers because the Sheik claims the title of "Mufti of Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific". He has held this title for over a decade.

This latest case of foot-in-mouth disease from the Sheik may well reflect on Muslims in New Zealand, many (if not most) of whom have probably never heard of him.

Across Australia, the Sheik's comments have been greeted with disgust and uproar by both Muslims and non-Muslims. The chairman of the Islamic Council of Queensland has described the remarks as indefensible and said Sheik Alhilali should be "put in his place".

Politicians have also stepped in, with Prime Minister John Howard calling on Muslims to act decisively or risk harming relations between Muslims and other Australians.

"What I am saying to the Islamic community is this: that if they do not resolve this matter it could do lasting damage to the perceptions of that community within the broader Australian community, and that would be a tragedy," the PM told ABC TV.

Yet Howard and his fellow conservatives sat back and did nothing when Howard's handpicked Governor-General, a former Anglican Archbishop, was accused of involvement in a cover-up of allegations of child sexual assault.

This of course does not excuse Sheik Alhilali's remarks; neither does it excuse the powerlessness displayed by Australian Muslim organisations who seem divided and unable to act. The implications of their inaction could well be felt by Muslim communities across the Tasman and the Pacific.

New Zealand and South Pacific Muslims had little say in the appointment of the Sheik as their Mufti in the late 1980s.

At the time, Sheik Alhilali's immigration status was not finalised. He faced deportation after making grossly anti-Semitic remarks in a speech to students at the University of Sydney.

Paul Keating, then acting Prime Minister, was keen to grant the Sheik permanent residency and so gain support from the Sheik's congregation, many of whom lived in his electorate.

This could be done only if Alhilali was given a special title. So the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils decided to create the position of "Mufti" and appointed Alhilali to fill the post.

The term Mufti is frequently translated as spiritual leader or archbishop. Yet Islam knows no priesthood, and the Mufti is usually little more than a legal expert able to give authoritative but not binding opinions on the application of Islamic religious law to novel situations.

The appointment of Alhilali as Mufti was done without any meaningful consultation with Muslims on either side of the Tasman. No record seems to exist of the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand or any peak Muslim body in the South Pacific endorsing the appointment.

Making matters worse, Alhilali is senior imam at a mosque managed by the Lebanese Moslems Association, a body which allows only males eligible for Lebanese citizenship to be members. So the Mufti of our region is imam at a mosque whose membership structure institutionalises racism and sexism.

The Sheik's recent remarks are the most recent instalment in a chequered career of offensive remarks. Some months back, just before the Lebanon conflict, Alhilali questioned the numbers of European Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Given that Australia's Jewish communities have the largest concentration of Holocaust survivors outside of Israel, the remarks were particularly offensive.

Even in relation to his recent comments, many Muslims felt Sheik Alhilali may have been misquoted by hostile elements in the Murdoch Press. Rupert Murdoch was quoted some months back as suggesting Muslim migrants had dual loyalties, and the flagship Murdoch broadsheet The Australian has allowed racist and xenophobic commentary about Muslims to be printed on its op-ed pages.

But on this occasion the newspaper did its homework and released the recording of the Sheik's speech to other competing media outlets, all of whom came up with substantially the same translation.

Even worse is that the Sheik's words reflect attitudes not limited to some Muslims.

In a recent survey by the Violence Against Women Community Attitudes Project, two-fifths of Australians surveyed believed men who rape do so as they are unable to control their urges, and a quarter believed domestic violence was okay as long as perpetrators genuinely regretted it afterwards.

If the latest Alhilali incident illustrates anything, it is that society's attitudes toward violence against women need a major rethink.

* Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer.