Justifying rape? Most Muslims won't defend the indefensible

Meanwhile, your average Muslim will be too busy organising his or her business, or career. Most Muslims are too busy getting on with life to worry about what some religious crackpot is saying.

So let me state for the record what I think most Muslims believe. Like other Australians, most Muslims believe rape is a crime; that rapists should and must be punished. Women and men are subject to sexual assault regardless of what they wear. And sadly, idiots of all religious denominations sometimes claim that women could avoid being raped by dressing more modestly, but I am yet to read any scripture or learn of a religion that justifies rape.

Muslims have to speak out. We cannot afford to rely on our non-English-speaking imams and feuding leaders to make incoherent noises while we are busy getting on with our lives.

In the present environment, where shock jocks and columnists are quoting our incompetent leadership, our silence will be treated as an admission of guilt.

More than 90 per cent of programs broadcast on Sydney Muslim radio stations are in Arabic, not English. Yet I doubt any of them will say a word about Faiz.

And if they do, it will be in a language most Muslims, indeed most Australians, will not understand.