................Sheik Abdul Salam Zoud

Head of the Sydney radical sect al-Sunnah wal Jamaah, which has links to Sheik Omran's group. Also a Wahhabi, he was approached by the convicted Australian terrorist Zak Mallah, who wanted his blessing before conducting a planned suicide mission to Lebanon in 2002. In 2000, between 50 and 100 of his supporters attacked Sheik Hilaly, trying to wrench him from his car, after the mufti threw Sheik Zoud's group out of his mosque for their extreme views.........

...........National security sources told The Australian they were aware of at least 10 hardline clerics around Australia, including Sheik Bilal, who were propagating a Wahabi ideology espoused by al-Qa'ida leader Osama bin Laden.

Other Wahabi clerics include Melbourne-based Mohammed Omran and Harun Mehicivic; Sydney's Abdul Salam Mohammed Zoud, Hatim Eissa, Khaled Eissa and Feiz Mohammed; and Canberra's Mohammed Swaiti.......

Sydney based Islamic leaders have warned of splits within the fundamentalist Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jammaah association which has branches in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. This Wahhabist groups'current spiritual leaders apparently want to 'tone down' its rhetoric and present a 'better' image to the public. A spokesman for Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jammaah, Abu Yusuf, denied any split had taken place. He admitted some members disagreed with the views of one of its leaders, Sheikh Omran, that Osama Bin Laden is a 'good man'.

Another Sydney-based Muslim leader Fadi Rahman said that splinter groups had broken away  to follow a more fundamentalist line of Islam and were now meeting in private houses.

Neither radical Muslim cleric Abdur Raheem Green nor Sheikh Abdul Salam Zoud should be allowed to enter this country to preach their messages of hate

A call to hate and to prayer

The Australian

Support for holy war is being urged by Muslim preachers spreading their message in Australia, reports Richard Kerbaj, who visited mosques and heard voices shrieking with angst and passion

04nov05

A VOICE explodes through the speakers at Lakemba's nondescript Haldon Street prayer hall in Sydney's southwest during a Friday qutbah (sermon). About 400 men - Saudis, Indonesians, Somalis and Lebanese among them - are huddled shoulder to shoulder, seated or kneeling on the floor of the hall, above a gym. A few stare blankly ahead, others have their eyes shut and faces cupped with their palms, almost in a trance-like, meditative state.

It's October 21, the middle of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, and Sheik Abdul Salam Mohammed Zoud, who has been living in Australia since the mid-1990s, stands on a platform at the front of the room reading his sermon in Arabic.

"Ramadan is not a month for indolence," he screams through a lapel microphone, drawing on Koranic parables about the importance of annihilating al-adou (the enemy) and stressing the Koranic obligation of jihad (spiritual struggle or holy war) during the month of fasting. His voice can be heard clearly in the car park outside.

"Ramadan is a month for jihad upon oneself and jihad upon the enemy," he says, a time when followers must become more disciplined in adhering to the message of the Koran, and more willing and prepared to topple the enemy of Islam: the West.

Listeners nod approvingly as Zoud praises mujaheddin - guerilla warriors engaged in holy war - who are waging bloody battles against Western troops across the world, and implores Allah to grant them victory in their fight against the enemies of Islam.

"Allah yinsur el-mujaheddin fe-Iraq (God grant victory to the mujaheddin in Iraq)," he screams, his voice crackling as he defies his own vocal range. He then repeats the message three times, each time screaming it louder and with more intensely.

Twice at the end of the 35-minute oration in front of the men, who are mostly in their 30s and 40s, the sheik exclaims in a voice filled with angst and passion, blame and hate: "Inshallah (God willing) dark days will descend upon America soon."

Two Fridays earlier, at a prayer centre at Michael Street in Brunswick, Melbourne's Muslim heartland, the man regarded as Australia's most radical imam, Sheik Mohammed Omran, stands before his mixed band of followers.

Earlier, the men had left their shoes in the corridor and walked into the room. On entering the mussalah, they're greeted by whoever they make eye contact with.

"Assalam alaikum" (peace be with you) is acknowledged by the person being greeted with "Wa-alaikum assalam" (peace be with you too). An A4-sized piece of paper on the wall reminds attendees to switch off their mobile phones.

Some kneel and pray, others grab a copy of the Koran off the bookshelf at the back of the room, and read it quietly.

Off-duty taxi drivers, suited businessmen on their lunch breaks and youngsters wearing baseball caps and tracksuits sit among the traditionally clad listeners wearing dishdashas (gowns) and sporting beards. Several Western converts, with fair hair and blue eyes stare at Omran, listening intently. While the 150 or so men watch the sheik, who stands on an elevated podium, hands gripping a railing, delivering a qutbah, women sit in a room adjacent, listening through a speaker.

In the week following the second Bali attacks, Omran's Friday sermon, conducted in Arabic and English, talks about the fear Westerners have of Ramadan, as history has shown an increase in militant insurgencies and attacks across the world during that month. "The West know the meaning of Ramadan more than we do it seems," says the imam, who migrated from Jordan in the 1980s. "They fear the worst: unity. So what are we doing to unite and defeat evil?"

He says Islamic unity and victory in the face of the West cannot be "stopped by George Bush or Tony Blair or John Howard".

"If you don't unite, your faces will be smeared in dirt," he adds.

Both Zoud's and Omran's prayer groups teach Wahhabism, a fundamentalist branch of Islam founded in Saudi Arabia in the 1700s that inspired the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan and is preached by the world's most notorious terrorist: Osama bin Laden, leader of al-Qa'ida.

Yet the voices of such home-based extremists by no means define the majority of Islamic messages being preached by Muslim clerics across the country.

Sheik Fehmi Naji al-Imam, one of Australia's most prominent Muslim leaders and the head of the Preston Mosque, Victoria's largest mosque in Melbourne's inner-north, isn't discussing politics during a Friday sermon last month. Instead, he is leading a group of more than 50 men through an Arabic prayer from the Koran. On completion, he sits at the front of the room and faces his followers.

A junior cleric then sits beside Naji al-Imam and discusses the importance of praying to God and of not feeling a sense of helplessness or hopelessness should one suspect their personal prayer is not being answered.

The cleric says people are often disappointed when their prayers for more financial wealth don't come to fruition.