Fed: Hardcore Islamists invited to Muslim leaders conference

AAP General News (Australia)
08-31-2006
Fed: Hardcore Islamists invited to Muslim leaders conference

SYDNEY, Aug 31 AAP - Several hardcore Islamists have been invited to a taxpayer-funded
Muslim leaders conference run by the Howard government.

The Prime Minister's Muslim advisory board chairman, Ameer Ali, says invitations to
the Conference of Australian Muslim Religious Leaders next month were sent to extremist
clerics including the ultra-radical Sheik Abdul Salam Mohammed Zoud, The Australian newspaper
reported today.

Sheik Zoud heads the Sydney arm of the fundamentalist Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jammaah association.

Dr Ali said the aim was to help bring the clerics into the mainstream.

"Once you marginalise these people, keep them outside the fold, then they will continue
with their opposition and with their radical ideas," Dr Ali told the newspaper.

"Once they come into the fold and realise that the vast majority, mainstream imams
are against those views and they are minority views, there's a good chance of them turning
to ... new views (on) life."

The hardliners who have been invited to the conference, believed to cost taxpayers
around $300,000, practise Wahabbism, a fundamentalist teaching of Islam that is preached
by Osama bin Laden, and inspired by the fanatical Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

AAP acb/

KEYWORD: MUSLIM

) 2006 AAP Information Services Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors.