Muslims meet radical cleric

Australia's most senior Muslim called a meeting in Sydney last night with Perth's pro-Islamic State preacher, Mohammed Junaid Thorne, amid fears that his Millatu-Ibrahim group is attracting young men to the terrorist movement.

Thorne posted on social media that he "and some other brothers" were meeting the Grand Mufti of Australia, Ibrahim Abu Mohamed, and other senior members of the National Council of Imams.

The Perth-born 25-year-old, who was reportedly deported from Saudi Arabia after his brother was jailed on terrorism charges, is believed to be conducting sessions this week with a radical group based at an Islamic bookstore in western Sydney.

Thorne made headlines on arrival in Sydney this week because of his pro-Islamic State preaching, that has been denounced by Perth imams. He has previously been disparaging of mainstream imams, calling them "government puppets and tools of the fools".

In June, Thorne denounced a statement by the council rejecting claims that senior members of the Muslim community had not worked hard enough to discourage young Muslim men from joining the jihad in Syria.

He labelled it a "statement of embarrassment" from "government scholars who live sit and stand by the order of such a government".

Thorne, who routinely ridicules Muslim scholars who do not support the Islamic State terrorists, accused the council of being servants of "the kuffar", which is a derogatory Arabic term for non-Muslims.

"The cries and calls for help from our suffering brothers and sisters seem to fall on the deaf ears of our so called 'imams' as they continue to abandon their religious duties, replacing it with betrayal and loyalty to their masters from the kuffar," he wrote in June.

Thorne's tone towards the council appeared to have changed on his Facebook page yesterday.

"We were always ready to sit and talk Islamically, and have knowledge-based discussions but no one agreed to ever hearing from us (sic)," he wrote.