BURYING THE TRUTHAndrew BoltSource: Herald Sun (19/11/2001)The...

BURYING THE TRUTH
Andrew Bolt

Source: Herald Sun (19/11/2001)

The Australian media has been too timid to confront divisive Muslim leaders preaching in praise of terror.

JUST weeks before Islamist suicide squads killed 5000 people in the United States, SBS television went filming in Sydney's Lakemba mosque. The footage was startling. It showed Sheik Taj Eldine El-Hilaly, the spiritual leader of Australia's 300,000 Muslims, praising suicide bombing, the favoured means of attack by Islamist terrorists against Jewish targets. Anyone who died fighting for Islam was a ``hero'', he said. A defence of such terrorism would be shocking from a religious leader at any time. But El-Hilaly was speaking just days after a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 15 people in a Jerusalem pizza shop, including Melbourne girl Malki Roth. And his remarks became even more significant when on September 11, more Islamists launched devastating suicide attacks on the US. But the tape of El-Hilaly -- shot for an Insight current affairs report on ``Terrorism in Australia'', broadcast on September 20 -- never made it to air.

IN fact, I know of it only because someone in the SBS was so disturbed by this that he told a mutual friend that SBS had decided the footage was too ``inflammatory'' to run after September 11. When I rang the SBS journalist behind the report, Belinda Hawkins, she told me she didn't know exactly why the footage wasn't included in her report. But she suggested that ``the story took a different turn'' after September 11 and El-Hilaly's views ``would not have come up''. Insight executive producer Lindy Magoffin later told me she'd decided not to screen the footage of El-Hilaly praising suicide bombing to Sydney Muslims because it had been filmed before the September 11 attack and it would be ``misleading'' to have run it after. Yet it's bizarre for SBS to think that El-Hilaly's support of suicide bombing wasn't relevant to its report. After all, I was asked on the very same show to speculate on the presence here of terrorist sympathisers. Of course, El-Hilaly has since deplored the September 11 attacks. But he has also said they were the work of ``100 per cent American gangs'' -- and his record of inciting hatred here is shameful. El-Hilaly is actually an Egyptian
who came here in 1982 on a six-month's visitor's visa to be Imam of Lakemba, but stayed and stayed. In 1986, the then Labor Minister for Immigration, Chris Hurford, finally tried to expel him for making statements said to be an ``incitement to hatred''.

Among other things, El-Hilaly had appeared to endorse martyrdom for Islam and had called on Islamic countries to help ``oppressed'' Muslims in Australia. But Hurford let him stay, after pressure from Labor figures such as Paul Keating. Then in 1988, the sheik accused Jews of being ``the underlying cause of all wars'', and of using ``sex and abominable acts of buggery, espionage, treason and economic hoarding to control the world''. He later claimed he'd been misquoted, and Labor's new Immigration Minister, Robert Ray, agreed not to deport him after more lobbying from Labor faction boss Leo McLeay, whose seat includes many Muslims. In 1990, El-Hilaly finally gained permanent residency, despite strong protests from the Liberal Opposition. Labor has never explained this decision.

YET El-Hilaly's mosque was soon hosting meetings of the Islamic Youth Movement, whose magazine Nida'ul attacks Jews, defends suicide bombing and praises terrorist boss Osama bin Laden. In recent months, El-Hilaly has blamed ``Australian society'' for a spate of race-related pack rapes by Lebanese gangs, and when an Indonesian boat sank last month, drowning nearly 400 Muslim asylum seekers, he fueled anger by vilifying the Prime Minister. ``All the sharks and the carnivorous fish who preyed on these innocent children are now thanking Mr Howard for his policies,'' he said. This is the main spiritual leader of our Muslims, a man I have not once heard specifically condemning bin Laden and his terrorists. Again I must stress that most Muslims I know are horrified by terrorism of any kind. But they have been let down by many of their leaders, who have done so little to combat extremism, or to support our fight against bin Laden's network. This is the scandal that most media outlets seem scared to tackle for fear of seeming racist or unkind. ABC radio guru
Phillip Adams, on his September 13 Late Night Live show, cut off Professor Gerald Steinberg as the Israeli expert tried to tell of ``the incitement to hatred and support of terrorist attacks . . . in mosques in many countries''. ``Hatred is preached in churches and
synagogues,'' snapped Adams in parting. Adams in a letter to an angry listener said he'd terminated Steinberg's remarks because the man was ``behaving like a thug'' and ``pouring petrol on an already delicate issue''. ABC National Talk Radio head Mark Collier agreed Steinberg had to be ``challenged'' and cut off ``given the growing incidence of hate crimes against Australian Muslims''.

To me, that sounds like saying we shouldn't tell the truth about Muslim leaders preaching hate because the ABC thinks this is a ``delicate'' topic.

NOR is the media alone in being too timid in confronting divisive Muslim leaders. During the election campaign, Labor MP Nicola Roxon visited a Melbourne mosque and was told by the Newport Islamic Society's president, Mohamed Dennaoui, that bin Laden wasn't to blame for September 11. ``We believe it was neither Muslims nor terrorists behind it,'' Dennaoui told her at the public meeting. ``Internal hands'', American hands, had done it. Roxon's feeble response to this wild conspiracy theory? ``I guess the point is we don't know who's done it.'' Tolerance is precious, but becomes a weakness if it degenerates into a refusal to confront intolerance of the El-Hilaly kind. And it becomes a menace if it leads media outlets like SBS to censor the truth about threats within.



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