SYDNEY,
September 11, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) –
Australian Muslims condemned on Sunday, September 11, terrorist
attacks against civilians and pledged loyalty to the country, while
accusing new anti-terror measures of fueling anti-Muslim hysteria.
"These
were warriors from an Islamic background that hijacked Islam,"
Keysar Trad, the president of the Islamic Friendship Association of
Australia, told the National Security and Harmony Summit in Sydney
University Sunday, reported Agence France Presse (AFP).
"They
hijacked our lifestyle and our freedoms. And the spin machine of
Western governments is exploiting these hijackers of Islam, these
murderers."
Australian
Muslim leaders gathering for the meeting observed a minute of silence
to remember the victims of 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and
Washington, which claimed almost 3,000 lives.
Muslims,
estimated at 300,000, make up just 1.5 percent of Australia's
population of 20 million.
Not
Scary
The
summiteers underlined the need to draw a clear line between
law-abiding Muslims and those who take law into their own hands in
violation of the tenets of Islam.
"I'm
not a scary person and my children are not scary people. We have just
the same aims and hopes and ambitions as everybody else," Trad
said.
Ali
Roude, Vice-president of the New South Wales Islamic Council, echoed a
similar position.
"They
are not us, nor will they ever be," he was quoted as saying by
the Australian Associated Press (AAP).
"Free
nations must defend themselves and our mosques must pray for peace.
Anything less is un-Islamic and un-Australian."
Anti-Muslim
Hysteria
The
Muslim leaders, meanwhile, criticized the new anti-terror measures,
saying they fuel anti-Muslim hysteria.
"If
(Prime Minister) John Howard gets his way with these diversionary laws
... we will not be able to criticize, we will not be allowed to
dissent," Trad told the summit.
"We
will be tagged and monitored and maybe, eventually, interned - that is
if we don't speak up and dissent now and try and do something about
the predicament that we are in."
Howard
announced Thursday, September 8, new anti-terror laws under which
suspects could be fitted with tracking devices and holding people for
up to 14 days without charge.
The
Australian Premier has defended his government's right to send spies
into mosques and Islamic schools under the pretext of fighting
terrorism.
