Drought blamed on lack of faith | NEWS.com.au
A LEADING Muslim cleric has blamed the devastating drought, climate change and pollution on Australians' lack of faith in Allah.
Radical sheik Mohammed Omran told followers at his Brunswick mosque that out-of-control secular scientific values had caused environmental disaster.
"The fear of Allah is not there. So we have now a polluted earth, a polluted water, a wasteland," he told a meeting this year.
"What are the people now crying for? The prophet told you hundreds of years ago, 'Look after the water'."
A Sunday Herald Sun investigation also found clerics railing against "evil" democracy, vilifying Jews and Christians and encouraging jihad and polygamy.
And in a popular DVD selling locally, a foreign sheik exhorts Muslims to take control of Australia by out-breeding non-believers.
British-based Sheik Abdul Raheem Green forbade Muslims from having fewer than four children so Australia would become an Islamic state.
Behind the closed doors of some Melbourne mosques and bookshops, sheiks push for Sharia law, declare Islam at war with the "sick" West and gloat that September 11 boosted Muslim numbers.
At a Muslim information centre in Coburg, extreme literature shares shelves with DVDs by firebrand sheiks from around the globe.
The centre, run by Abu Hamza, serves Muslims in the northern suburbs.
Many CDs and DVDs there feature London sheik Abdul Raheem Green, who is on an Australian Government watchlist.
On one he tells his audience to Islamise Australia through a Muslim baby boom.
"The birth rate in the Western countries is going down. People are more interested in their careers . . . they don't want to have babies," Sheik Green says in one DVD.
"So don't you think, Muslim brothers and sisters, we've got a bit of an opportunity here? They're not having babies any more. So what if, instead, we have the babies?
"In Canada one in three or one in four children being born is a Muslim. What does that do to the demographic shift of a Muslim population in 20 years' time?
Islamic Council of Victoria spokesman Waleed Aly said he was disappointed though not surprised by the Sunday Herald Sun's discoveries.
But he said extremist speech and literature was confined to only a couple of Melbourne groups.
"If I walked into (Omran's group) or (Hamza's centre) it wouldn't surprise me," he said.
Mr Aly said he believed Muslims were radicalised by "cult-like peer groups", not hate literature.
Copyright 2007 News Limited. All times AEDT (GMT +11).
What will people come up with Next? I wonder if we will get a Catholic Priest to say that Global warming is due to people's lack of faith in Christianity?
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