31 October 2006
A Muslim cleric in Australia is involved in a bitter dispute over attitudes to women and rape, charging that anti-Islamic bias ensured Muslim rapists got tougher sentences than other men. Sheik Mohammed Omran publicly defended a sermon in which he said Muslims were dealt with more harshly than other sex offenders, e.g. those belonging to motorcycle gangs or "football stars". The sermon was delivered in his Melbourne mosque last Friday, the day after a storm erupted over another senior cleric's description of women without Islamic headscarves as "uncovered meat" inviting sexual attack. Those remarks were made by the Mufti of Australia, Sheikh Taj Aldin al-Hilali, who collapsed and was rushed to hospital Monday after a firestorm of criticism and relentless pressure for his resignation. Both clerics referred in their sermons to heavy sentences meted out to a group of young Muslim men for a series of notorious gang rapes in Sydney six years ago. One of the men received a 55-year jail sentence, which was later reduced on appeal. "They make a big fuss about these kids because one of them, his name is Mohamed," Omran said in his sermon, according to a report in "The Australian" newspaper on Tuesday. "Even if you kill someone, you don't go for 60 years."
Omran later charged that judges lacked consistency in sentencing, saying that otherwise similar sentences should be passed on "the priest who rape(s) a child under his care, or the teacher who (has) a sexual relation with his student". He also accused the media and the government of overreacting to crimes committed by Muslims. Prime Minister John Howard has led the storm of criticism of the mufti's remarks about "uncovered meat". But the government has kept up the pressure on Australia's 300,000-strong Muslim community to distance itself from the mufti, saying he had a history of making inflammatory comments. "You go right through the decade, the sheik has been anti-Semitic, he has supported jihadists, he has made statements that are absolutely offensive to women, such as the uncovered meat one," said government minister Peter Costello. "It wasn't just that he had a bad day."
