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Muslim leader calls for clerics to volunteer

Australia's Islamic clerics should volunteer as surf lifesavers and firemen to improve their image in a country which has "had enough of us," an influential Muslim leader suggested yesterday.

The president of Australia's largest Islamic organization, the Lebanese Muslim Association, made the call in a 16-page report to be considered by the nation's clerics at a meeting this weekend.

Tom Zreika suggests Muslims have become as unpopular as communists once were and accuses some clerics of inciting hatred and violence "on the preposterous justification that they are simply acting in self-defence in a time of war."

"We are not at war," says Zreika, who confirmed that details of his report published in the Australian newspaper yesterday were accurate.

"We have become the new communism, particularly in the West, and some people in our community are so repulsed by our actions it is making life unbearable for us and our offspring," Zreika says.

Australia's top Muslim cleric, Sheikh Taj Aldin al-Hilali, created a storm of protest late last year when he described scantily-dressed women as "uncovered meat" inviting rape.

Faced with calls to get out of the country, the Egyptian-born cleric mocked the convict ancestry of many white Australians and said Muslims had more right to the country.

In a nation where beach culture is strong and public service volunteers are hailed as heroes, Zreika said firefighting and lifesaving could help Australia's 300,000 Muslims improve their image.

"It would be great to see a turbaned imam fighting fires alongside other bushfire service volunteers," Zreika, a lawyer, says in his submission to the Australian National Imams Council.

"Organizations like the Surf Lifesaving Association should be joined as a matter of course by the imam and his followers."

Prime Minister John Howard's conservative government last year passed tough new anti-terror laws and is tightening citizenship regulations.

The government denies that the moves are aimed at the Muslim community, but Howard has frequently expressed a fear of home-grown Islamic terrorism similar to that which hit London trains and buses in July 2005.
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