Western nations face an "emerging dilemma" over the need to engage Muslim leaders who hold conservative religious views on such issues as gender equality, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said last night.
Addressing the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, he said such leaders must be brought into the fold if the West is to succeed in combating extremist Islam and terrorism.
Some of their views would conflict with community standards but only those Muslim leaders could prevent fundamentalist views from submerging the true Islam, the Australian Associated Press reported Downer as saying.
This year, the Mufti of Australia, Sheik Taj Aldin Alhilali, caused an uproar when he blamed female victims of sexual assault for their own fate, likening them to meat left out for animals.
Downer, who met Sheik Alhilali on several occasions, said: "I didn't realise he held views as extreme as that -- it was an extreme and outrageous thing for him to say," but added such leaders had a role to play.
"The West faces an emerging dilemma. We might not necessarily agree with the views of all the Islamic preachers but we do need to harness the energies of people whose views we do not agree with.
"Some are not as moderate as we might hope. We have to be careful of writing off too many Muslims and saying "they are not our type of Muslims".
"Those who do not support (extremism) are those we have to engage with", he said.
Downer said the influence of extreme Islam in countries such as Indonesia is waning to the point where it is now an agenda of "a minority of ambitious reactionaries" while the general population is rejecting a "nihilistic ideology and its gruesome methods".
The bombings in Bali and the attack on Australia's Embassy in Jakarta were examples of Australia's vulnerability to Islamic terror, but Downer said governments in Islamic countries were the true targets for activists seeking to usher in Taliban-style regimes.
"To claim Australia is part of some Western anti-Islamic agenda is just absurd," Downer said.
He said Australia had helped Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, enormously.
"This is not a conflict between the West and Islam. It's a struggle for the heart and soul of Islam," he said.
He also urged the European Union to admit Turkey, saying the reticence of some EU nations to admit a Muslim-majority country jeopardised the opportunity to engage Islam rather than isolate it.
