Sheikh Taj el-Din el-Hilali, Australia's most senior Muslim cleric, gave a sermon recently in which he essentially said scantily-clad women, out in public without a hijab, invite sexual assault.
"If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside ... and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat?" he is reported to have said.
The imam is now engaged in some serious damage control.
An excerpt from the BBC story:
In a statement released on Thursday, Sheikh Hilali said he had been quoting another, unnamed, source and did not mean his words to condone rape.
"I unreservedly apologise to any woman who is offended by my comments. I had only intended to protect women's honour," the statement published in The Australian said.
"Women in our Australian society have the freedom and the right to dress as they choose.
"Whether a man endorses or not a particular form of dress, any form of harassment of women is unacceptable."
A spokesman for Sheikh Hilali earlier said the quote had been taken out of context and referred not to sexual assault, but to sexual infidelity.
The sermon was targeted against men and women who engaged in extra-marital sex and did so through alluring types of clothes, he said. ...
A copy of the cleric's comments delivered in a sermon to some 500 worshippers in Sydney last month during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan was initially published in The Australian.
"If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside... and the cats come and eat it... whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat?" he asked.
The uncovered meat is the problem, he went on to say.
"If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred," he added.
Sheikh Hilali also condemned women who swayed suggestively and wore make-up, implying they attracted sexual assault.
"Then you get a judge without mercy... and gives you 65 years," he added.
Sigh. :(