The Mufti of Australia, Taj Al-Din Hamed Abdallah Al-Hilali has recently become engulfed in controversy following comments he made during his recent Ramadan sermon. In his sermon he preached uncovered women were like exposed meat sitting outside for cats to come to eat. He asked, are the cats to blame for eating the meat or is it the meat's fault for being exposed. He concluded the meat was to blame. Many Australians believe he was alluding to the Lebanese gang rapes in Sydney which means he was implying the women who were raped were at fault for being exposed and not the rapists. It's not surprising that he is being condemned by basically everyone in the country including many Muslims. The leader of a female anti-discrimination group called for Sheikh Al-Hilali to be deported and others echoed similarly but as he's an Australian citizen there's no chance of him being deported and I find the suggestion offensive, no matter what he said.
So anyway, I decided to do a net search to see if I could find a transcript of his sermon in Arabic so I could try to read it. So far I haven't found it but I did find that this Sheikh is no stranger to news headlines. He has said that the September 11 attacks were a punishment from God against the infidels (or words to that effect) but then later he condemned the attacks on Dubai TV. He also negotiated with kidnappers who took an Australian engineer, Douglas Adams in Iraq and the Sheikh seems to have played a part in Adams' safe release. But the most interesting article I found was one explaining Al-Hilali's claims that Australia was a Muslim nation before the British arrived.
The Muslims Discovered Australia
Sheikh Al-Hilali also claims that Afghan Muslims preceded Captain Cook in his discovery of Australia: "Australia is an old-new continent. The Europeans issued a false birth certificate for it when the British seafarer Captain James Cook reached it. However, Australia already had the most ancient race of men on the face of the earth – the Aborigine people… They continue to live their primitive lives to this very day.
"But when you become acquainted with their traditions among their tribes, you find that they have customs such as circumcision, marriage ceremonies, respect for tribal elders, and burial of the dead – all customs that show that they were connected to ancient Islamic culture before the Europeans set foot in Australia.
"That is, Islam had roots deep in the Australian soil and read the Qur'an and called to prayer before the bells of the churches rang in Australia. The best evidence of this is the hundreds of mosques in the center of Australia built by the Afghans. Some of them were destroyed, and others were turned into Australian archeological museums, and still others remained unharmed, and they bear a history that proves that Islam has roots and ancient connections to Australia.
"But because they did not have the proper conditions to continue to exist, such as schools, propagation of the religion, and connection to the Islamic world, the first generation of our Afghan ancestors dissolvedÂ…
"I visited the town of Alice Springs in central Australia, and found there a map [of Alice Springs] under the name Mecca. Alice Springs is surrounded by high black mountains, similar to the mountains of Mecca. Summer there lasts 10 months, and winter only two months. The temperature is above 50 degrees Celsius.
"There are several kinds of dates and palm trees there. We did not believe that dates could grow there. Now that we know the reason, we no longer wonder. We found that our ancestors the Afghans were among the first Muslims, and they settled this area and called it Mecca.
"The strange thing was that when our muezzin [who accompanied Sheikh Al-Hilali on his visit to Alice Springs] stood up to call for prayer, the old people of the town came out, and so did men and youths, and they looked different than the black Aborigines. They were a mixture of Afghan and Aborigine, as a result of marriages of Afghan men and Aborigine women. When the muezzin called 'Allahu Akbar,' they said, 'We have heard this song from our ancestorsÂ…' When they asked us 'What is this song you are singing?' we told them that this was an announcement of prayer time. When we asked them their names, they answered John, or Steve, but their names ended with Saraj Al-Din, Abdallah, or MuhammadÂ…"
http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP66404
As far as I'm aware circumcision, marriage ceremonies, respect for tribal elders, and burial of the dead are all common to a few more religions than just Islam and he skipped over of the differences Aboriginal culture and religion has from Islam. For example the genital procedure that's even more brutal than circumcision, known as subincision (WARNING: that procedure is probably something you don't want to know about). It's very difficult to believe any female indigenous Australias wore hijabs and religion-wise - the religious beliefs of Aborigines regarding The Dreamtime, multiple gods etc. and Islam are about as disparate as two religions can get.
At least I found his claims about Mecca in Australia entertaining but I don't think there's anyone who can say the same about his recent claims. Unless you include the Australian media who love to flog issues like that one continuously until they get someone sacked, divorced, fined or jailed all so they can keep their publications popular for as long as possible.