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Islamic leader alarms Australia

Reports that the spiritual leader of Australia's Islamic community called for holy war against the West and condoned suicide bomb attacks during a trip overseas raised alarm yesterday among lawmakers back home.

The lawmakers said they would look into the reports from media outlets and a Middle East think tank about comments that Sheik Taj El Din Al Hilaly, 62, made during his trip this month to Lebanon, and examine the context of his comments.

Hilaly told interviewers in Lebanon that he was proud of Islamic resistance movements in the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and the disputed region of Kashmir, and condoned "martyrdom operations" -- which typically refers to suicide bombings.

"We support the resistance and support, with all our might, the martyrdom operations carried out by the Palestinian liberation movements, operations that are a legitimate act against the cruel occupation, according to all international norms and conventions," Hilaly was reported to have said.

Speaking in Australia's parliament yesterday, Prime Minister John Howard said that if his remarks were correctly attributed then Hilaly deserved "to be condemned in the strongest possible terms."

"He has behaved with incredible insensitivity to the feelings of many Australians," in visiting a militant leader in Lebanon, Howard said.

Opposition Labor party lawmaker Senator Michael Forshaw said yesterday the quotes were troubling.

"We don't need that in this country at all," Forshaw said.

"Any calls like that would be very, very serious and very damaging to the nature of our society. If that's happened, then I deplore it," Forshaw said.

A spokesman for the Muslim leader said his comments had been taken out of context.

"He is saying `Let's not condemn them because these people are making a major sacrifice to protect their country,'" Keysar Trad of the Lebanese Muslim Association said.

"He has condemned the killing of civilians on both sides," Trad said.

During his trip to Lebanon, Hilaly also met with the leader of the militant Hezbollah group, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, and gave a sermon Feb. 13 at the Al Quds mosque in Sidon, Lebanon, calling for jihad, or holy war, against the US and Israel, an Internet dispatch by the Middle East Media Research Institute reported.

Australia's Channel 7 television said that Hilaly also blessed the bones of suicide bombers during his trip, but Trad dismissed that report as a misrepresentation.

"They were referring to the bones of the prisoners returned from Israel in the recent exchange, and he didn't actually bless the bones, he blessed the process that freed them," Trad said.

Last month, Israel handed over 59 bodies of Lebanese militants and released 436 prisoners. Hezbollah, in turn, gave up a captive Israeli businessman and the bodies of three soldiers captured along the border with Lebanon in 2000.

Natasha Stott Despoja, the foreign affairs spokeswoman of the Australian Democrats, a minor party, said she was looking into the claims.

"They're very serious claims and obviously everyone's very concerned to hear about them," she said.

"If those claims are true they're of grave concern. But I'd like to see more information," Despoja said.
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