Islam has been untouchable in Australia
By PIERS AKERMAN – Research by HARRY PALMER
At the heart of Prime Minister Albanese’s reluctant calling of a royal commission into the Bondi massacre is a deep fear Labor’s visas for votes racket will be exposed.
For more than 40 years, Labor has assisted Muslim immigration despite warnings that rushed programs could not meet adequate security checks.
Long term national security was traded for short term political advantage.
Bob Hawke acknowledged the value of the Muslim vote, as did Paul Keating, who was involved in one of the most egregious examples of political pandering to Muslim migrants.
This occurred in 1986, nearly 40 years ago, when Labor Immigration Minister Chris Hurford attempted to deport the hate-filled Egyptian-born cleric Sheik Taj El-Din al-Hilali for both breaching the conditions of the tourist visa he arrived on in 1982 and as a security risk.
Al-Hilali flouted the restrictions on tourists by becoming imam at the huge Sunni Muslim Lakemba Mosque in western Sydney.
His disgracefully bigoted inflammatory sermons stressing religious and cultural differences between his brand of Islam and the prevailing Australian culture deeply concerned security agencies and Hurford began deportation proceedings.
The first attempt was, according to Hurford’s former press secretary Godfrey Wiseman, lost in the bureaucracy but the second proceeded until it was brought to a sudden halt after the fiery intervention by then Treasurer Paul Keating, whose seat of Blaxland contained a large Muslim population.
Wiseman told me this week that Keating “barged into Chris’s room without even knocking” and departed a few minutes later.
“Soon after, Chris emerged furious.”
According to Hurford, Keating told him that al-Hilali could not be deported because the government would lose a lot of Muslim voters.
Wiseman confirmed what Hurford told me after he retired from politics.
Hawke stripped him of the immigration portfolio, gave him a non-Cabinet job of Community Services minister in which he lasted less than six months, and then pushed him off to New York as Consul-General after he had successfully held the seat of Adelaide at the 1987 election.
Hurford, who died in 2020, was certainly not anti-immigration. He made an unsuccessful attempt to reduce ministerial discretions in the granting of immigration visas and advocated a points system for applicants.
But he told me al-Hilali should never have been granted permission to remain in Australia because of the security agencies’ deep concern about the virulent anti-Western content of his sermons and hatred of “Australian values”.
A conga line of Labor immigration ministers opposed Hilaly’s admission – Stewart West, Mick Young, Clyde Holding and Robert Ray – and refused him permanent resident status.
Gerry Hand ultimately signed the paper, on acting prime minister Keating’s order during Hawke’s absence in 1990.
Hurford told parliament on February 20, 1986, that Hilaly had given him an undertaking to leave the country by the end of the month. Hilaly broke it.
In July, 2013, Keating, the man who foisted the radical preacher upon the nation against the wishes of more moderate Muslims, told reporters to “nick off’’ rather than explain why he was adamant the Egyptian imam be granted Australian citizenship.
The vile claims al-Hilaly made during numerous sermons and speeches, including a notorious address at the University of Sydney in 1988 in which he claimed Jews try to control the world through sex, then sexual perversion, then the promotion of espionage, treason, and economic hoarding, provided the template for the hate speech which has echoed through other Western Sydney mosques.
In December 2023, Sydney-based preacher Sheik Ahmed Zoud accused Jews of raising their children on “violence, terrorism and killing”, and called on his followers to “kill them all, and leave none of them behind”.
The Australian newspaper also noted that another cleric, Abu Ousayd, also known as Wissam Haddad, delivered a similar sermon at the Al Madina Dawah Centre describing Israelis as “descendants of pigs and monkeys” days later.
Al-Hilaly also argued against the length of prison sentences given to a gang of Lebanese Muslims who committed a series of rapes in Sydney in 2000, blaming women who dress provocatively, saying “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.” Judge Finnane QC sentenced Mohammed Skaf to 32 years in prison for his involvement in the crimes. Bilal Skaf was sentenced to 55 years with a non-parole period of 40 years.
Mohammed Skaf was released on parole October 6, 2021, after serving 22 years in prison.
Summary execution of Muslim woman
I made a point of meeting al-Hilaly after he claimed I had misquoted the Koran.
I had not and produced three separate translations including a volume produced by the House of Saud, given me by a member of the Saudi royal family, which deflated the arrogant al-Hilaly, who claimed to be the Grand Mufti of Australia.
His go-between, the prominent Lebanese Muslim leader Keysar Trad had hoped to inflate al-Hilaly’s reputation by inviting, unbeknown to me, a crew from SBS to film this event but al-Hilaly refused to eat at the same table with the female reporter, whose crew packed up and left in disgust.
Years of hatred spewed from the pulpits of mosques went unchecked by either state or federal governments well before the Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, murdering babies, young men and women, and taking hostages on October 7, 2023.
No action was taken against the hate preachers celebrating this atrocity the following day, or against the mob that protested outside the Opera House, on October 9. Obviously the ALP’s green light was switched on for Muslims.
