A GOLDEN handshake - including a weekly stipend and rent-free accommodation - is being drawn up for Muslim cleric Taj al-Din al-Hilali as powerful community leaders head a push to oust the controversial imam. Sheik Hilali has been officially banned from delivering sermons, and his title as mufti of Australia is expected to be up for grabs when the nation's imams meet in coming weeks to discuss a potential successor.The future of the 66-year-old's spiritual position at Lakemba Mosque in western Sydney was thrashed out last week by more than 50 Sydney-based Muslim leaders during a secret meeting. The talks at the Lakemba Mosque last Thursday came after the Lebanese Muslim Association indefinitely banned Sheik Hilali - whose community support base continues to nosedive - from delivering sermons at the mosque following his return from Egypt last month. It is understood that Sheik Hilali, who came under fire from community leaders and politicians for comparing women to uncovered meat, initially resisted the ban before agreeing to abandon the pulpit on the basis of "mutual understanding" between him and the LMA executives.
Lebanese Islamic leader Mustafa Hamed said the LMA, along with 10 Sydney-based Muslim community organisations present at the secret meeting, were negotiating a "long-service" package for the Sheik. Under the proposed package, the LMA would allow the cleric to continue living in a house next door to Lakemba mosque, which is owned by the organisation. It is also understood the golden handshake would include an indefinite weekly stipend of several hundred dollars.
Mr Hamed, president of the Sydney-based community association Bhanin El Minieh, said yesterday that Sheik Hilali needed to accept that his position as Lakemba Mosque's spiritual head would be better served by someone less controversial. "If I didn't believe that it was in the best interest of the community, that the damage he's done is enough, I wouldn't say that he should leave," said Mr Hamed in an interview conducted in Arabic. "We are prepared to pay his long-service leave ... this is being currently negotiated in the community, among councils."
Sheik Hilali, returning to his home mosque shortly before 7pm (AEDT) yesterday, at first refused to comment and then said there were no problems between him and the LMA. "Everything is all right," he said. "There is no news. Everything is all right. I am all right with the Lakemba ... everything is the same."
Last October, The Australian exposed Sheik Hilali's inflammatory sermon, in which he suggested that rape victims who did not wear Islamic headdress were as much to blame as their attackers. And last month the cleric ridiculed Australia on Egyptian television while dismissing the furore over his insults to women. He said Westerners were "liars and oppressors" who had less right to live in Australia than Muslims.
Mr Hamed said Sheik Hilali had both benefited and damaged the community since his arrival in Australia 25 years ago. "My opinion is that in his 25 years here, he has made mistakes and made good," Mr Hamed said. "But I think it's time for him to rest and leave a place for the new generation to work for the new generation."
LMA president Tom Zreika yesterday said that Sheik Hilali needed to stop playing politics if the Muslim community was to recover from the damage his past remarks had caused. "He's a very useful and astute religious theologian, but we ask him to keep out of politics," Mr Zreika said. He said Sheik Hilali "unfairly implicated" the LMA every time the cleric strayed into the political arena because the organisation was in charge of Lakemba Mosque. "The community as a whole stands to lose more than they would gain by him pursuing this political dialogue," he said.
The Australian National Imams Council is expected to meet by April to thrash out the nature of the mufti position. It is understood that council members have told Sheik Hilali, who has held the title since 1989, that they cannot guarantee his position.
