Replacing Radical Hilaly with 'Moderate' Naji as Mufti of Australia a Farce

I'm republishing this article written on June 2007 and published originally on my blog Nemesis as a result of a report of the Australian on August 7, 2009 that all five of the arrested would-be terrorists were regular prayers at the Preston Mosque in Melbourne where the Mufti of Australasia Sheikh Fehmi Naji el-Imam presides.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

"The evil doctrine, the armed forces at the disposal of those professing the doctrine, and the sympathizers with the doctrine in other lands ( e.a) constitute one united threat which must be met by force". Edmund Burke, writing on the French revolution and of the English citizens who supported it either in word or deed.

In a battle between flaming fundamentalists and mute moderates, who do you think is going to win. Irshad Manji, Muslim writer

As we have predicted in the past, the stepping down of radical Hilaly as Mufti of Australia and his replacement by another imam who would be just as radical but who would attempt to cover the sinews of his spiritual radicalism under the garments of moderation, has just happened. The selection by the Australian Council of Imams of the elderly and scholarly Sheikh Fehmi Naji el-Imam of the Preston Mosque to replace Hilaly as Mufti of Australasia, is no less than an attempt by the politically minded advisers of the Australian Council of Imams to cozen and dupe the Australian public that they were substituting a moderate cleric in the person of Sheikh Naji for the radical Hilaly.

But let us see whether our prejudgment of the new Mufti is too hasty and facile by looking at the past conduct and statements of Sheikh Naji. Six years now since the twin towers bombing and all the objective evidence who was behind the attack, the Sheikh still refuses to acknowledge that Osama bin Laden was behind it. His reply is that he has heard people saying that al Qaeda were the perpetrator but he himself has not seeing the evidence. Now the Sheikh is reputed to be a scholarly and intelligent man and one would expect of him to use the latter two qualities in search of the truth. If six years after the event, he still cannot make up his intelligent mind, despite the resounding evidence that is also verified by the statements of bin Laden himself that al Qaeda was the deadly agent, as to the real perpetrator of that dastardly action, then people must come to the conclusion not that the Sheikh does not have the truth in his hands but that he hides it. And the reason why he hides it is that he does not want to alienate himself both from other imams, who also believe that bin Laden was not behind the attack, and of the wider Muslim community which also believes likewise, after hearing their clerics for so long repudiating that the attack was engendered by al Qaeda.

Hence the important question is not what Sheikh Naji truly believes about 9/11 but what he truly represents. That a great number of Muslims, after being indoctrinated for so many years by their radical imams about the evils of the West and the Great Satan America have been also radicalized, and it’s exactly this fundamentalist stratum that the Sheikh represents. That there is a majority of fledgling radical Muslims in our midst has been lucidly illustrated by the recently religiously arrogant statements of the head of the Supreme Islamic Shia Council of Australia, Kamal Mousselmani, as reported in the Australian, on June 23-24, 2007. He said, his entire of 30,000 Shi’ites in Australia were avid [my emphasis] supporters of Hezbollah (Party of God) and haters of Israel, considered Hezbollah to be a “resistance group” not a terrorist organization. He continued, “Shia in Australia considers Israel a terrorist organization and also view those who support Israel in the same light”. And with the superciliousness of a fanatic who speaks in the name of God, he said to the reporters attending his press conference, “put those words down, we are not afraid to say that”.

Certainly there is a minority of moderate Muslims within their community but who would dare to swim against the stream of such torrential river of radicalism? This is why the expectation by some civil libertarians and politicians that moderate Muslims can oust the radicals from their position of power and influence, is completely unrealistic at least in the short term. And in “the long term we will all be dead”, to quote John Maynard Keynes.

Furthermore, Sheikh Naji’s record speaks for itself. He officially supported the application for residency of Abdul Nacer Benbrica, who presently awaits trial for alleged terrorist actions in Australia. Asked by a reporter if moderate Muslims should take a stronger stand against extremists, he ducked the question and answered that the media misrepresented the facts about Muslims. What he would say to those Muslims who wanted to go overseas and participate in jihad, he replied, “I don’t know what (the) circumstances outside (Australia) would be”. He also called for the removal of Hezbollah’s military arm from Australia’s proscribed list of terrorist organizations. And in a lame attempt to shift jihad in favor of Australia, not realizing that he was throwing a boomerang in the air, he said that Australian Muslims would participate in a jihad to “protect Australia from its enemies”. (m.e.) Presently Australia is fighting its enemies, extremist Muslims, in Iraq and Afghanistan; is the Sheikh going to send his holy warriors to these theatres of war as an outcome of his pledge to protect Australia? Lastly, asked in his press conference after his election as Mufti about the war in Iraq, he was promptly muzzled by his minders to articulate his views on the issue, pleading his ill-health (he had suffered a stroke), and was quickly whisked away from the tough-fisted questions of some reporters, his advisors replying that he will answer these questions another time.

Hence, the Australian Council of Imams being too clever by half, not only have they picked a seemingly moderate imam to replace Hilaly, so he can pass muster in the eyes of the general community, but a frail one to boot. So whenever Sheikh Naji faced difficult questions of the media his minders would plead his ill-health, thus shielding him from giving an impromptu answer that could compromise his position as a moderate imam, and, also, exposing all those who elected him Mufti as being also avid representatives of the radicalism of their flock since they happen to be its sires.

The general public must not allow itself to be duped by this latest farce of the Muslim clerisy that they are willing and preparing to walk hand-in-hand with the Australian maiden, on the path of moderation, mutual respect, and peace, when their sermons are replete to the brim with the seeds of war against the infidels, the Jews, and the Great Satan, America.