Israellycool

Melbourne’s Sheik Mohammed Omran, who has caused fresh controversy with comments that Muslim rapists are more harshly treated than non-Muslims, has said he can say what he likes because he is an Australian.

 

In a sermon last Friday, the sheik questioned the consistency of sentences handed down to Muslim rapists compared with other sex offenders, such as “bikies” and “football stars”, saying Muslims received harsher penalties.

 

The sermon has drawn him into a controversy surrounding Sydney’s Sheik Taj al-Din Al-Hilaly.

 

“What I said in the sermon, I say it here and I’ll say it wherever I am,” Sheik Omran said on ABC radio today.

 

“We are part of the Australian society and, as an Australian, forget what I am, a cleric or not a cleric, I am an Australian, I have a view and I am free to tell the people about my view.

 

“Even if you don’t agree with it, we agree (that) everyone (can) say what he wants to say even if (others) disagree with it.”

 

Sheik Omran’s said in his sermon, later published on his website and reported by The Australian newspaper: “I feel there is no justice here. Not 60 years and someone else three years and they did the same crime. Why?

 

“They make a big fuss about these kids because one of them, his name is Mohamed. Even if you kill someone you don’t go for 60 years,” he said, referring to the sentences, later cut on appeal, originally handed out to gang rapists who were active in Sydney in 2000.

 

“We don’t support criminals or crimes, but at same time we want justice for everyone.”

—-

Sheik Omran said he should be free to express his view, that the Muslim youths involved had first received excessive jail terms of up to “60 years” compared to less than 10-year terms for other sex crimes.

 

“In that case, in particular, I couldn’t see that (consistency), otherwise, I should see the one who rape his own daughter, or the priest who rape a child under his care, or the teacher who have a sexual relation(ship) with his student, they are equally dealt with.

 

“And the journalists, and the radios and the stations and the Prime Minister are angry with them at the same level, but I don’t see that, and that’s what upset me.”

 

Sheik Omran also said he would confidently re-state his views.

 

“I put it myself on my website, so I am not hiding my thoughts and I am not waiting for someone to spy on me,” he said.

 

Asked whether he felt Muslim leaders were being targeted by the Government and the media, he replied: “absolutely yes”.

—-

Sheik Omran, one of the country’s most outspoken and controversial fundamentalist clerics, said on Friday that attacks on Sheik Hilaly were attacks on Islam.

 

“His name is a mufti and we should respect that name - we should respect the turban on his head,” Sheik Omran said in the sermon, an audio copy of which was posted on his Ahlus Sunnah Wal-Jamaah Association website yesterday.

 

“This is the sign of a scholar - you are not attacking Sheik Taj here, you are attacking the scholars, you are attacking Islam.” 

Talk about naked terror.

A wanted Palestinian terrorist showering at his parents home last week escaped an Israeli arrest raid by jumping out a window and running naked through a densely populated refugee camp.

The terrorist, a senior leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in the northern West Bank, recounted the story to WND under the condition his name and location be withheld, conceding he is “very embarrassed” by the incident.

He demanded anonymity even though the event is now well-known in his city.

“I was in the bathroom last week. It was night and I was in my parents house,” related the terrorist, who is on Israel’s most-wanted list and boasts of leading a cell responsible for six suicide bombings and scores of shooting attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians.

“I entered to take a shower and suddenly while I was soaping myself I heard voices and people shouting. I didn’t know what they were shouting but I heard the word ‘jiash’ (soldiers) and I understand that the Israeli army was attacking our house.”

—-

Continued the Brigades leader: “I went out of the bathroom and from the second floor I jumped to the roof of our neighbors. From this roof to another one and than to the street. Soldiers were already far from me at my parents house. I started running almost 200 meters (about 650 feet) in the camp street naked trying with acrobatic gestures to hide my buttocks and my sexual organ (thanks goodness for that acrobatic training, huh? - ed).

“If I saw somebody in front of me so I put one or two hands on my sexual organ; if there was nobody in front of me and I heard people speaking or laughing behind me I put my hands on my buttocks,” related the terror leader.

The Al Aqsa militant said he finally took refuge inside a friend’s house and hid there the rest of the night.

He said for him fear of arrest was far greater than the embarrassment of running nude through the refugee camp, where he is a famous figure.

“It is true that while running I felt embarrassed but the stress in which I was in was more important than the embarrassment I felt. I know that some people will speak about this idiot who ran naked but this is better than to be now in the Israeli prison.

“That was the equation ‚Äì running naked and being treated for some days by the people of the camp as impolite, crazy and insane, or sitting in front investigators from the Shabak (Israeli security services) insulting me, torturing me and knowing that all my life I will be in jail. I chose the first possibility.”

The terror leader, who has escaped Israeli raids in the past, admitted he was caught off guard.

“I am very careful. I even sleep with my shoes but the soldiers came for the first time from the western part of the camp. They never came this way because in the middle of the road leading to the house there is the cemetery of the camp. Any appearance of the soldiers from any other side of the camp we would have been alerted by many people but it was in the eve of our holiday (Eid al-Fitr, the festival that ends the Muslim Ramadan) and they came from the cemetery.”

He said he did not have his gun in the bathroom while taking a shower, but that he would never make that “mistake” again.

“Also next time I will be more careful and I will have my shower when I am wearing my clothes,” he said.

“My friends in the Brigades laugh at me but my parents still feel some shame when they walk in the camp,” said the terror leader.

Heh.

Palestinian gunmen on Monday abducted a Spanish aid worker in the central Gaza Strip, the latest in a wave of kidnappings of foreigners, Palestinian security officials and colleagues of the man said.

 

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk to the media, said the man was forced into a yellow Skoda at the edge of the town of Khan Younis.

 

The hostage was identified by colleagues as Roberto Vila, a 34-year-old aid worker with the Cooperation Assembly for Peace, a Spanish charity group.

 

Celine Gagne, a fellow worker, said she and Vila were on their way out of Khan Younis after visiting a project for handicapped children when three or four men carrying Kalashnikov rifles stopped them.

 

“They asked me to stay behind,” she said. The gunmen then forced Vila into their car and sped away, she said.

The party got into the taxi and headed for the Rafah crossing ­ which reopened after the Israeli pullout from Gaza in a deal brokered by the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, and is monitored by the European Union ­ to allow Palestinians from Gaza to travel in and out of Egypt. Mr Khulab said: “They wanted to see the suffering of the Palestinian people and the destruction of the border but also to see how the crossing was working.”

 

They got to see something else: the muzzle end of a “militant” gun.

 

Mr Mansour said: “It all happened so quickly no one had time to say much. I said, ‘What are you doing’ to one of the men but he pointed the gun in my face. Kate told her father to get in the [kidnappers'] car. She was calm. No one was screaming or anything. If there was anything I could have done to stop it I would have done, believe me.” Neither he nor Mr Khulab had a weapon. Mr Khulab tried to call for help on his mobile phone but the network was busy so they drove to the Rafah police station, five minutes away, and told officers what had happened. The two men stayed in Rafah until midnight desperately hoping for news. Two of Ms Burton’s friends, Celine Gagne, 25, and Roberto Vila, 33, have arrived in Gaza from Ramallah hoping for news. Like her, they work for an non-governmental organisation passionately devoted to helping Palestinians under occupation

According to other sources, Palestinian gunmen kidnapped two foreign journalists. Palestinian security officials said they were searching for a yellow Skoda.

Kate Burton told the BBC Arabic service she and her parents had been held in Rafah, southern Gaza, but that she could not say a bad word about her captors, who always asked whether they needed anything.

The French make a lot of people sick. No, really.

Around a dozen Japanese tourists a year need psychological treatment after visiting Paris as the reality of unfriendly locals and scruffy streets clashes with their expectations, a newspaper reported.

“A third of patients get better immediately, a third suffer relapses and the rest have psychoses,” Yousef Mahmoudia, a psychologist at the Hotel-Dieu hospital, next to Notre Dame cathedral, told the newspaper Journal du Dimanche.

Already this year, Japan’s embassy in Paris has had to repatriate at least four visitors - including two women who believed their hotel room was being bugged and there was a plot against them.

Previous cases include a man convinced he was the French ‘Sun King’, Louis XIV, and a woman who believed she was being attacked with microwaves, the paper cited Japanese embassy official Yoshikatsu Aoyagi as saying.

“Fragile travellers can lose their bearings. When the idea they have of the country meets the reality of what they discover it can provoke a crisis,” psychologist Herve Benhamou told the paper.

The phenomenon, which the newspaper dubbed “Paris Syndrome”, was first detailed in the psychiatric journal Nervure in 2004.

Bernard Delage of Jeunes Japon, an association that helps Japanese families settle in France, said:

“In Japanese shops, the customer is king, whereas here assistants hardly look at them … People using public transport all look stern, and handbag snatchers increase the ill feeling.”

And to think I got off lightly with a mild case of anti-French neurosis..

Esra’a reports that her fellow Bahraini blogger, Mahmood, has been blocked by Bahrain’s Ministry of Information.

I never thought I’d see the day Mahmood’s Den, the most popular and informative blog in Bahrain (if not the entire Gulf), be blocked by our Ministry of Information because it has gotten away with a lot. But it’s confirmed now by Mahmood himself that it will happen in the very near future.

What a wonderful road to democracy we are taking!

If no one initiates a petition by tomorrow, I will start one. And hopefully, just like Saudi Jeans got unblocked due to an overwhelming amount of complaints, we can achieve the same difference.

Please help Mahmood spread the word about this horrible news, and suggest things we can do about it. I will make a button soon which everyone can plug into their sites demanding the unblocking of Mahmood’s Den and other blogs and websites, especially Bahrain Rights which has also been recently blocked.

Mahmood’s Den blocking order signed by the Minister of disInformation:

You might recall that in July, Israellycool was also banned in Bahrain. Fortunately, the site was quickly “unbanned” , thanks to Esra’a’s efforts. I truly hope that the same fate awaits Mahmood’s great blog.

Update: Bahrain have a history of banning websites, even those you would not expect. Take this BBC report from 2002:

Bahrain has banned the Arabic television channel Al Jazeera from reporting from inside the Gulf state, Information Minister Nabil al-Hamr said on Friday.

According to a news bulletin on the Qatar-based channel, Mr al-Hamr said the ban was being imposed because the station was biased towards Israel and against Bahrain.

—-

Mr al-Hamr is said to have accused the station of being infiltrated by Zionists.

“We believe (Al Jazeera) is suspect and represents the Zionist side in the region. We will not deal with this channel because we object to its coverage of current affairs. It is a channel penetrated by Zionists,” he was quoted as saying.

Sheik Taj al-Din al-Hilaly, Australia’s cat-loving, rape-supporting Mufti, may be stripped of his title, according to News.com.au.

TAJ al-Din al-Hilaly is set to be stripped of his title of mufti on the grounds that Australia’s 300,000 Muslims do not need a national leader.

 

The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, which appoints the mufti, will vote to abolish the position at coming elections.

 

AFIC spokesman Haset Sali said yesterday that the new executive board, expected to be elected in February, would work to remove the position of mufti from the council’s constitution because it was not relevant to Australian society.

 

Mr Sali said Australia did not need a mufti, nor was there anyone qualified to fit that post.

 

“I don’t believe Australia needs a mufti,” Mr Sali told The Australian.

 

“It needs a mufti like a hole in the head.

Mr Sali said he was one of only a few people on the council who had voted against Sheik Hilaly’s appointment to the post of mufti in 1989, because he believed that the Egyptian-born cleric’s views were in conflict with Australian values.

 

He said he would work with other AFIC executives to ensure that the position of mufti was struck off the council’s constitution.

 

“If I have anything to do with it, I think it will be (abolished) because I don’t think there is a person in Australia at the present time who could fulfil that position in a positive and constructive manner,” he said.

 

The Australian last week exposed Sheik Hilaly’s Ramadan sermon last month in which he likened immodestly dressed women to “meat” that attracted voracious predators.

 

Mr Sali said Sheik Hilaly was no longer “officially” the mufti because he resigned in July after The Australian revealed that the council could no longer pay his $40,000 yearly clerical allowance. “Since then he has not been reappointed and he is certainly not a paid employee of AFIC,” Mr Sali said.

—-

Mr Sali said Sheik Hilaly’s ignorance of Australian values and lack of English language skills had been his downfall.

Taj Din al-Hilali has praised militant jihadists in Iraq and Afghanistan, calling them men of the highest order for fighting against coalition forces - which include Australian soldiers - to “liberate” their homelands.

 

In an interview on Arabic radio two weeks ago, the imam based at Sydney’s Lakemba mosque said he was opposed to terror attacks in Madrid, London and New York but strongly endorsed fighters in the Palestinian territories, Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

In the interview, Sheik Hilali pays tribute to Sayyid Qutb, the ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood and intellectual mentor of Osama bin Laden and al-Qa’ida.

 

“Jihad of the liberator of Palestine, that’s the greatest and cleanest and highest … jihad which lifts our heads in pride in south Lebanon,” Sheik Hilali says in the October 17 interview.

 

He tells broadcaster Abrahim Zoabi that he endorses jihad for liberation. “We are talking about … jihad of liberating our land, jihad of Muslim Afghanis in their land - that’s jihad.

 

“Jihad of Iraqi Muslims is jihad, but not when Sunnis and Shias are killing each other - that’s not jihad.”

—-

Sheik Ibrahim El-Shafie said yesterday Sheik Hilali was a follower of the Egyptian Islamic scholar Qutb, one of the founding fathers of modern jihad, whose teachings are used by al-Qa’ida and Jemaah Islamiah.

 

In the radio interview, Sheik Hilali says Qutb interpreted the Koran in the “finest manner”. “Sayyid Qutb is an intellectual man … who gave up his soul in 66 for Islam.”

 

Sheik Shafie told The Australian that since arriving in Australia in 1982, Sheik Hilali had defended Qutb’s radical ideology and praised him as a “martyr for Islam” and a “role model”.

 

“Hilali has since he got here been defending the ideology of Sayyid Qutb,” he said.

 

Sheik Shafie said Sheik Hilali’s support of Qutb was effectively “encouraging” his followers to espouse and act on the executed scholar’s ideologies.

 

“And as you know, those responsible for the Bali bombing are so-called JI and (follow) the same ideology as Sayyid Qutb, which Hilali is now defending,” he said.

—

As the Lebanese Muslim Association, which hosts the Lakemba Mosque, was still divided last night about how to handle the Hilali crisis, Sheik Shafie launched a scathing attack on his fellow Sunni cleric.

 

Sheik Shafie said Sheik Hilali was an “extremist” who posed as a moderate for political advantage that ultimately gained him Australian citizenship.

 

“This person is acting like a chameleon,” he told The Australian yesterday. “The chameleon, if it stands on a green spot it turns green. If it stands on a blue spot it turns blue - so he’s camouflaging.

 

“He might say we condemn such and such, but then, on the other side, when he is with his followers in the mosque, he’ll start … expressing his anti-Western views.”

Australia’s Mufti Sheik Taj al-Din al-Hilaly makes some despicable comments.

“If you get a kilo of meat, and you don’t put it in the fridge or in the pot or in the kitchen but you leave it on a plate in the backyard, and then you have a fight with the neighbour because his cats eat the meat, your’e crazy.”If you take uncovered meat and put it on the street, on the pavement, in a garden, in a park, or in the backyard, without a cover and the cats eat it, then whose fault will it be, the cats, or the uncovered meat’s? The uncovered meat is the disaster. If the meat was covered the cats wouldn’t roam around it. If the meat is inside the fridge, they won’t get it.

Isn’t that true, Mr Snookums?”

The next day, Hilaly responds to the criticism generated over his comments.

“Not representing Australian values? I am as Australian as halal vegemite. In fact, I am responsible for getting it off the banned list.”

But seeing this does not stem the tide of criticism, Hilaly changes tact…

“Ohhh, the pain, the pain.”

My favorite Sheik continues to charm all and sundry.

Leaders of the Sydney mosque where Sheik Taj al-Din al-Hilaly preaches have not ruled out taking action over the cleric’s comments that immodestly-dressed women are inviting rape.

But the Lebanese Muslim Association (LMA), which runs the Lakemba Mosque in the city’s south-west, said it would give Sheik Alhilali the benefit of the doubt until it had reviewed his address.

The mufti triggered outrage from politicians and moderate Muslims after comparing women who wear revealing clothes to “uncovered meat”.

LMA president Tom Zreika said he was “flabbergasted” on reading the cleric’s comments today.

“In order to afford him natural justice principles, we said he’s got the benefit of the doubt until we have reviewed the comments on the tape as well as on the translated transcripts,” he said.

“We would like to assure the wider public, which we are part of, that those comments were hurtful, misguided and were taken out of context.”

Earlier Sheik Hilaly issued an apology for the remarks.

The Australian newspaper reported today that, in a sermon delivered last month, Sheik Hilaly likened scantily clad women to uncovered meat eaten by animals.

“I unreservedly apologise to any woman who is offended by my comments,” he said in a statement today. “I had only intended to protect women’s honour, something lost in The Australian presentation of my talk.”

Sheik Hilaly has been widely condemned by Muslim and other groups for the Ramadan sermon he gave in Arabic to 500 worshippers in Sydney.

According to The Australian’s translation, he said: “If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the 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 (Islamic headscarf which covers the hair neck and shoulders), no problem would have occurred.”

Oh, accursed uncovered meat!

The mufti of Australia and New Zealand did not back away from his comments but said he was shocked by the way his sermon was interpreted.

“The Australian front page article reported selected comments from a talk presented one month ago,” the sheik said.

“The title was ‘Why men were mentioned before women for the crime of theft and woman (sic) before men for the sin of fornication’.

“I would like to unequivocally confirm that the presentation related to religious teachings on modesty and not to go to extremes in enticements, this does not condone rape, I condemn rape and reiterate that this is a capital crime.

As usual, Hilaly is lying:

Prime Minister John Howard earlier today labelled the comments appalling and reprehensible.

“They are quite out of touch with contemporary values in Australia,” Mr Howard said. “The idea that women are to blame for rapes is preposterous. I not only reject the comments, I condemn them unconditionally.”

Mr Howard said the sheik’s remarks clearly related to a “particularly appalling” rape trial in Sydney.

And as usual, when the going gets hot, he is playing the bad health/sympathy card:

A spokesman for Sheik Hilaly said the backlash and criticism had badly affected him and he had been depressed and confined to bed all day, breathing with the assistance of an oxygen tank.

All together….awwwwwwwwwwww.

The good news is that members of the Australian Islamic community have joined in the condemnation.

The United Muslim Women Association (MWA) also joined the chorus of condemnation.

Maha Abdo, manager of the association, said she was shocked by the comments, which did not reflect mainstream Muslim beliefs and warned they would create a backlash against Muslim women.

“From what I know of the imam, he’s always been very supportive of women’s rights and women’s issues, and advocate of women,” she said. “We are continually having to say Muslim women have rights. We are concerned about the consequences of the reporting today.”

Ms Abdo said she “disagreed totally” with Sheik Hilaly’s words and said there should be no blame on victims of sex attacks.

She also warned that his comments could confuse understanding of why some Muslim women choose to wear the hijab.

“It’s not a sign of deference or as a sign this gives me protection against being attacked,” she said. “Rather this is a spiritual connection for me at a personal level between me and God.

The Islamic Council of Victoria (ICV) earlier called on the cleric to resign with committee member Sherene Hassan saying she was outraged by the comments.

“Those comments are extremely offensive, and there is no basis for what he said in Islamic teachings,” Ms Hassan said to AAP. “They are a paternal distortion of Islamic teachings.

“The ICV is issuing a statement calling for his resignation.

A spokesman for the Islamic Council of New South Wales, Ali Roude, today said he was “astonished” at the comments, saying the sheik “had failed both himself and the Muslim community”.

—-

A former member of the Federal Government’s Muslim Advisory board, Iktimal Hage-Ali, said she had listened to a recording of Sheik Hilaly’s speech and believed he should be stripped of his position.

“I was just flabbergasted,” she said on ABC radio.

Update: According to The Australian, Hilaly is an even bigger Richard Cranium than previously thought.

Despite insisting The Australian misrepresented the sermon delivered at his mosque in southwest Sydney in September, two independent translations of the Ramadan address were even more damning of the sheik.

In a clear reference to the notorious Sydney gang rapists, Sheik Hilali said in the sermon: “It is she who takes off her clothes, shortens them, flirts, puts on make-up and powder and takes to the streets, God protect us, dallying.

“It’s she who shortens, raises and lowers. Then it’s a look, then a smile, then a conversation, a greeting, then a conversation, then a date, then a meeting, then a crime, then Long Bay Jail,” he tells his worshippers with a chuckle.

“Then you get a judge, who has no mercy and he gives you 65 years.

“But when it comes to this disaster, who started it? In his literature, scholar al-Rafihi says: ‘If I came across a rape crime - kidnap and violation of honour - I would discipline the man and order that the woman be arrested and jailed for life.’ Why would you do this, Rafihi? He says because if she had not left the meat uncovered, the cat wouldn’t have snatched it.”

Update: You can find the full text of his speech here. And as you can see, he doesn’t have despicable views on women only.

“Those atheists, people of the book (Christians and Jews), where will they end up? In Surfers Paradise? On the Gold Coast? Where will they end up? In hell and not part-time, for eternity. They are the worst in God’s creation.”

Palestinian gunmen kidnapped an Associated Press photographer in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, grabbing him as he walked out of his apartment and whisking him away in their vehicle, a witness said.

 

Emilio Morenatti, 37, the photographer, was heading out of his apartment for an AP car, where Majed Hamdan, an AP driver and translator, was waiting. Hamdan said four gunmen grabbed his keys and phone and told him to turn away, pressing a gun to his head and threatening to harm him if he moved.

 

Then they grabbed Morenatti, shoved him into a white Volkswagen and drove off, Hamdan said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.