EDITORIAL: Put bigot on slow boat to Coventry

LOUIS PIERARD
One reassuring point that emerges from the ravings of the self-styled Mufti of Australia and New Zealand, Taj Din al-Hilali (who compared women to meat and suggested they be covered up and locked away for their own protection), is the universal condemnation he has earned.
In the past and on both sides of the Tasman the most ardent practitioners of multiculturalism, anxious to preserve their reputation for broadmindedness, have paradoxically tolerated intolerance. Now the Mufti's Ramadan sermon, which exonerates rapists and tells their victims they are the agents of their own misery, together with his praise of Islamic suicide bombers, has caused widespread disgust.
The medieval bigot has a 20-year record of outrageous and provocative statements in which he has attacked women and Jews and praised terrorism. Until now his views have been marginalised as those of a crackpot - at one point he was asked to apologise for saying the two cheapest things in Australia "are the flesh of a woman and the meat of a pig". However, such a primitive view has become frighteningly familiar.
The cleric is one who, from a position of religious authority, gives strength to those deluded enough to believe he is right. He exploits the fact that in a liberal society he is free to say what he likes, however poisonous, while in Muslim theocracies where his views have the force of law, such challenges are outlawed and cruelly punished.
In the state Sheik Hilali seeks, values are imposed, not shared, and women are objects who must ensure that men's weaknesses are never put to the test.
And the cleric wants it both ways. If the women in the sheik's world are held singularly responsible for the outrages they provoke on themselves, does it not follow that his own inflammatory statements must indemnify any action taken by those deeply offended by them? However, in the civilised community in which the sheik shelters, that would be unthinkable and his barbarous beliefs are enough to condemn him and those who allow him to represent them.
It must be humiliating and cringe-making for moderate Muslims for whom their purported spiritual leader should be such an insulting liability. And, ultimately, it is up to them to ensure they distance themselves from him.
All are judged, from the outside, by the words and deeds of those who represent them. If an Anglican archbishop had made similar obnoxious remarks, every congregation in Australasia would be jostling to be first in line to disown them.