Muslims defend calls to violence

Muslims defend
calls to violence
Authorities probe sermons urging
faithful to kill enemies of religion

The Australian government, whose leaders have invited Muslims who believe religious law should trump the nation's secular constitution to leave, now has launched an investigation into recordings of messages urging Muslims to kill enemies of Islam.

According to a report in the daily newspaper The Australian, members of the Federal Police force have begun looking into the DVD recordings by Sheik Feiz Mohamed. They collected a copy of the recordings recently from a 4,000-member Muslim youth center founded by Mohamed.

Officers who arrived at the Global Islamic Youth Center at Liverpool, in Sydney's western suburbs, declined to comment, but Muslims are defending even the references to violence and martyrdom in the messages.

Australian leaders, as WND has reported, have taken a much harder stance than leaders in other free nations against those would suggest that Islamic law, or Sharia, should be observed.

Prime Minister John Howard has said he believes activities of those in Australia's mosques should be monitored, citing a need for the government to know if members of the Islamic community supported or taught violence.

"We have a right to know whether there is, within any section of the Islamic community, a preaching of the virtues of terrorism, whether any comfort or harbour is given to terrorism within that community," Howard told Australian radio earlier.

Education Minister Brendan Nelson said those members of the Islamic faith who do not support Australian values are welcome to leave. Treasurer Peter Costello, who is seen as heir apparent to Howard, also has made similar suggestions about those who do not accept Australia's Constitution and the laws created by its parliament.

"If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you," he said.

He continued: "I'd be saying to clerics who are teaching that there are two laws governing people in Australia, one the Australian law and another the Islamic law, that that is false. If you can't agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy, and would prefer Sharia law and have the opportunity to go to another country which practices it, perhaps, then, that's a better option."

Mohamed, who was described as a "firebrand" in one report, has defended the messages on the DVD, which call children to jihad, urge Muslims to kill enemies of Islam and praise martyrs. The messages include a statement that inmates at Guantanamo Bay, where those suspected of being involved in Islamic terrorism are detained, are "better" than Muslims in Australia, who would not forsake their lifestyles for martyrdom.

"The brothers in Cuba are better than us," the newspaper quoted him saying. "They are being examined through the best examination (a reference to God's judgment)."

Mohamed, who now lives in Lebanon after leaving Australia in 2005, said his followers should seek the honorable death of a believer.

"They fight in the cause, they kill others – the enemies who fight Islam and they themselves are killed as martyrs," he said.

He gives the example of a mujaheddin who fought in Bosnia in the 1990s who spoke of nothing but jihad and was killed on the battlefield.

"What a beautiful person to be associated with. Would you not like to be an associate of this person?"

The messages were recorded several years ago, officials said, and tell Muslims how they should live their lives.

"This is our intention that we want to have children and offer them as soldiers defending Islam, loving Islam," Mohamed said.

A former student of Muhamed, Zeky Mallah, described the sermon as "normal with any Islamic scholar."

Muhamed denied to the Australian that his jihad references meant violence. But the newspaper reported the DVD is "littered" with references to violence and a call to arms.

In a previous controversy over Muslim interactions with Australian law, WND reported that an imam justified the rape of unveiled women, after a 16-year-old girl was viciously assaulted.

"The problem all began with who?" Sheik Taj el-Dene Elhilaly said earlier in a Sydney mosque, referring to the women victims – whom he said were "weapons used by Satan."

The sheik said: "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat?

"The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred," he said.

Australia, which has supported the worldwide war on terror, also has had other controversies over Islam within its borders. WND has reported that two Christian Australian pastors were handed convictions – and later saw those convictions overturned – of "vilifying" Muslims when they quoted from the Quran during a seminar on jihad.

"There's a need to keep these vilification laws in sharp focus to reveal the problems this law is creating," said one, Pastor Danny Nalliah, from Catch the Fire Ministries.

And there have been instances of Muslims putting Islamic law first. WND reported on the situation when a Muslim man stabbed his wife after his daughter became a Christian.

"From what we understand the daughter decided to tell her father of her radical plan to convert to Christianity which, in the eyes of most Muslims, is totally unacceptable and to be honest, sadly, many would react as he has done," a Muslim source told "The Gold Coast Bulletin."

"It is the Islamic way that if a son or daughter does or plans to do something that is unacceptable or wrong for a Muslim then it is the mother who is automatically at fault and will bear the brunt of the blame," the source said.

On the U.S. Jihad Watch website, where Robert Spencer monitors such activity worldwide, several readers commented on the latest developments.

"Same old story. Anything a non-Muslim says, regardless of the context, is automatically viewed as Islamophobic. Everything a Muslim says is always taken out of context by non-Muslims. Who really has the phobia here?" asked a poster identified as "Dumb Ox."

Said, "tblab:" "Why use the word firebrand as a adjective to describe this dreg? … How about 'Bloodthirsty cleric Sheik Feiz Mohamed.'"