The mufti we love to hate

Stirring the pot … Hilaly cooks dinner at his Greenacre home. He says he is happiest in the kitchen.

The Age
May 2, 2007


Age and experience have softened the outspoken Sheik Taj el-Din al Hilaly, who talks to Ben Cubby.

SINCE arriving on a tourist visa in 1982, and overstaying, Sheik Taj el-Din al Hilaly has lurched from scandal to opprobrium in a way that would have embarrassed Anna Nicole Smith. The holder of the disputed title of Mufti of Australia has politicians falling over each other to tell people how much they dislike him.

A stream of contentious public comments - comparing scantily clad women to uncovered meat, questioning the Holocaust, attacking the sentence given to the gang rapist Bilal Skaf and cracking jokes about Australia's convict heritage - has given even potential supporters cause to edge away from the sheik.

More recently, he has faced claims that donated Australian money which he passed on in Lebanon might have ended up with terrorist groups.

Yet in parts of the Muslim community, especially among elements of Lebanese Australian society, support for Hilaly remains strong.

Away from the spotlight, Hilaly lives a relatively unglamorous life in the south-western suburbs of Sydney. The former sharia court judge is happiest in the kitchen, cooking. He adores his adopted country, he says.

"I have fallen in love, after the age of 40, with a beautiful lady named Australia," Hilaly told the Herald. "What many of those who do not know me, who are angered by some of my comments, are ignorant of, is that I am a person who loves literature, in particular satirical poetry."

His outspoken comments, whether in a public sermon at his Lakemba mosque, on television or in interviews with journalists, are twisted out of recognition by politicians and the media, he says.

"They scrutinise parts of my comments without looking at the overall meaning or the heart of the topic. This is second nature to the section of the media that seeks to market its products through controversial or sensational headlines.

"As for the politicians, they are like addicted gamblers looking for the card that will give them a win."

He believes Australia's close alliance with the United States is one of the greatest failings of the Federal Government. "I acknowledge that Mr Howard is very successful as a leader internally and economically, thereby achieving affluence and happiness for Australians living inside Australia. However, I oppose his foreign policy, which had hurt our reputation and position externally and which had also hurt our national interest," he says.

"We know that America is only concerned with its own interests. The American people have come to realise that [George] Bush's foreign policy is a failure, so why do we not learn from that?"

Wry, charismatic and otherworldly, Hilaly has managed to mould himself into a symbol of resistance to the more materialistic elements in Australian culture, a stand that apparently appeals to many who follow Islam here.

Hilaly says this doesn't mean he has become a kind of politician himself. "My last post before coming to Australia was Lebanon. I confess that my approach to the policies of Arabic countries is that of outspoken, harsh criticism. This approach has created many problems for me with the security services whose role has been to protect these regimes."

As a 10-year-old in Egypt, Hilaly memorised the Koran - the beginning of 22 years of Islamic study that included a degree at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. He became a university lecturer in Egypt and Libya before travelling to teach in Lebanon.

"There is no doubt that I came to Australia filled with outspoken revolutionary thought and that I have taken some positions and expressed opinions that had upset some people," he says. "Some of these opinions I no longer accept or agree with now that I am older and have learnt much more from my life experience, in particular, about other cultures."

Generally reviled in Jewish circles for his comments on Israel and the Holocaust, Hilaly says he is now prepared to take a more conciliatory line. "What our Jewish brothers and sisters in Australia and the world over need to know is that I respect Judaism as a faith and I would not be a Muslim unless I believed in and respected the prophet Moses, peace be upon him. As an Arab, I am a Semite one hundred per cent."

But he still treads a fine line that many may continue to see as racist. "I condemn and deplore the Holocaust and all the massacres that the Jews faced at the hands of the Nazis," Hilaly says. "However, I, like many researchers in the world, shy off the number of innocent victims that had been estimated at 6 million. I, along with many rational Jews, reject the Zionist ideology that is based on racism and looking down on those who are not Zionist."

He says he has written to various rabbis in Australia proposing the need to open dialogue about the future of Palestine.

Hilaly's dabblings in international politics may seem grandiose. In Sydney's Muslim community, he is probably more respected for his grassroots work. "I find the work of a man of God to be like an ambulance or a fire truck, 24 hours a day, seven days a week," the sheik says. "I am an emotional person, I am shaken by the cries of a little baby or if I were to see a person undergoing difficulties."

Devotees tell an anecdote they believe shows the mufti's character: Hilaly took a troubled young man into his home to offer him guidance, only to have his wallet stolen by the youth. "When I saw him and saw the wallet with him and the police came and placed him on the ground, I began to feel sorry for him and wept in sadness," Hilaly says.

"I decided to divide my money with him and gave him $400. I asked the police to let him go and I agreed to forgo my rights against him."