July 04, 2011 12:00AMDIGGERS fighting in Afghanistan are "fair game" and Muslims "have an obligation" to attack them, an Islamic radical said at a conference in Sydney yesterday.Uthman Badar from radical Islamic organisation Hizb Ut-Tahrir speaks at the Khilafah conference in Lidcombe, Sydney. Picture: Damian Shaw Source: AdelaideNow
Branding the Afghan war a Western invasion, Uthman Badar, from the radical Islamic organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir, said: "If our members exist in a country where an occupation has occurred, in (their) capacity as individuals they would have an obligation to resist."
Asked directly if he condoned the killing of Australian troops in Afghanistan, he replied: "If you are occupying someone else's land then those victimised people have the right to resist."
He also refused to condemn tactics such as suicide bombing, as long as "innocent, non-combatants" were not the targets.
Hundreds of Muslims gathered in Sydney to promote their call for the creation of an Islamic state ruled by sharia law, stretching from Spain to Australia.
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Mr Badar said Australia had no business being in Afghanistan.
"You have no business in interfering with the people of the Muslim world. Military occupation should be resisted militarily. People there have a right to resist."
Mr Badar also weighed into the debate about whether women wearing burqas who are stopped by police should be forced to show their faces, saying it was part of a concerted political attack on Islam.
"The issue is not really the burqa," he said. "The issue that policymakers have is with Islam itself."
Hizb ut-Tahrir claims to be the largest Islamic political party on earth, operating in 40 countries.
But the chairman of the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia, Keysar Trad, said the views of Hizb ut-Tahrir were not shared by the majority of mainstream Australian Muslims. Western support for Arab democracy movements was strengthening relationships with the Islamic community, he said.
Outside the conference, police called for reinforcements, including the dog squad, when a group of about a dozen members of the Australian Protectionist Party, chanting "no sharia law in Australia", almost came to blows with young men from the conference.
Protest organiser and APP NSW chairman Darrin Hodges said: "Hizb ut-Tahrir have been banned in most Islamic countries in the Middle East.
"We don't understand why they haven't been banned here," he said.
Afghans can attack Diggers, radical says | News.com.au
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