WA Islamic leaders must do more
WA's Islamic leaders needed to do more to condemn extremist violence, the State's Arab community and a local Muslim academic said yesterday.
Salim Youssef, founder and president of the Australian Arab Association, said attacks in the name of Islam gave Muslims everywhere a bad name and the faith's leaders needed to unequivocally denounce violence.
He described Wednesday's attack in Paris as "a criminal act" and "unjustified".
"As a Muslim, I really don't know how these people think," he said. " I mean, to kill for your religion is unislamic."
The Australian Arab Association has 900 mostly Muslim members in WA from 24 Middle Eastern countries.
Mr Youssef said it was a non- political, non-religious body and he was disappointed it fell to it to condemn Islamist violence.
"All the young listen to the Muslim leaders, so they need to speak out and say this is an un- islamic act and it's a terror act and our religion doesn't carry this violent ideology," he said.
The WA Islamic Council did not respond to requests for comment yesterday.
Mr Youssef said more needed to be done to reach out to the community's youth before they became isolated and in danger of radicalisation via the internet.
He said Muslims were widely respected in WA and repaying that respect was the key to integration.
"I have been working in the community the last 15 years. I never experienced any racism in the government or non-government sector," he said.
"They all respect, so you have to give some respect back to the community, otherwise you won't belong to the Australian society."
Mr Youssef said he did not condone negative depictions of the prophet Mohammed.
"We did previously condemn a cartoon in a media release but you can't go more than that because you are living in Western society, freedom of speech," he said.
Ameer Ali, lecturer at Murdoch University's school of management and governance and former chairman of John Howard's Muslim reference group, said the leaders needed to go further than condemning the attack.
"Not simply condemn this event, but condemn the puritanical Islam that is driving it," he said.
Dr Ali said Islam had a long history of tolerating satire, which seemed to have ended.
