The Outspoken Spiritual Leader

Preface: The Elusive Muslim Moderate

Last October, Sheik Taj Aldin al-Hilali was speaking about women wearing a hijab and used this analogy:

If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside ... without cover, and the cats come to eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat's?

The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.

Sheik Hilali also referred to women as the weapons of Satan and condemned women who wear cosmetics, improper adornments or "sway suggestively." His comments seem to reflect a prevalent position held by caliphatic Muslim patriarchs who justify the rape of women.

This particular incendiary wasn't preaching to some palaeolithic clan caught in No-where-istan (a common misconception in today's American culture is the remoteness of our enemies). Sheik Hilali is the head cleric in the largest mosque in Sydney and considered the highest-ranking Islamic preacher in Australia and New Zealand. He made his comments during a heated debate in Britain concerning the hijab, which was preceded by unrest in France regarding specifically same issue, but inequitable social amalgamation more generally.

This sheik sermonizes intolerance a mere 3,000 knots from the capital of the world's largest Muslim nation; a sprawling democratic archipelago which serves as the southeastern front in WWT. The GOP needs to stop talking in abstractions; start showing some depth and understanding while conveying the scope, difficulty and global nature of our engagement.