Young Australian Muslims called yesterday for an end to “hell-fire and brimstone” Islamic teachings and for imams to be trained and accredited to ensure their teachings fit a modern, multi-cultural Australia.

In light of the London bombings by four young British Muslims, young Australian Muslims said the local Islamic community must modernize and further integrate into mainstream society, warning its isolated youth were vulnerable to radicals.

A day before Prime Minister John Howard holds an Islamic summit in the capital Canberra, he also called on Muslim leaders to take responsibility within their communities to prevent religious-based terrorism and violence.

“We do not believe there is a threat within the Islamic community of terrorism in Australia,” Kuranda Seyit, head of the moderate youth Forum on Australia’s Islamic Relations, told Reuters.

But Seyit, a former school teacher, said there were some Australian Muslims who sympathised with al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden and who had the potential to incite violence. Four British Muslim suicide bombers killed 52 people on July 7 when they detonated bombs on three trains and a bus.

Seyit said Australia’s smaller mosques needed to be brought into line with the country’s mainstream mosques. “The smaller mosques are the ones that are still using an archaic and dogmatic approach to teaching Islam — the hell-fire and brimstone approach,” he said. “What is needed is more dialogue with these imams.”

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said earlier in August that up to 60 suspected Islamic militants in Sydney and Melbourne were under surveillance. Australia sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan and has been on a medium-level security alert since shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. But Australia has never suffered a major peacetime attack at home.

<B>Accreditation</B>

“A common thread which has run through extremists’ attacks and ... declarations has been the use of a perverted interpretation of Islam,” Howard told reporters. Muslims have been in Australia for some 200 years, originally arriving as camel drivers to help explore the outback. Muslims currently make up 1.5 percent of the 20 million population and live mainly in Sydney and Melbourne.

Seyit called on Howard’s Islamic summit to consider the Forum’s “Modernising Muslims Six Point Plan”, which called for the accreditation and training of imams. He said imams who migrated from the Middle East came from very different societies to modern, multi-cultural Australia.

The Forum’s plan called on imams to have a certain level of competency to lead a mosque, pass a certain level of English fluency, have a basic knowledge of Australian society, its norms, traditions and politics, and undergo a character test.

It also called on the Australian government to help establish the country’s first Islamic institute which would produce home-grown imams. “The aim is to produce a new generation of home-grown Australian imams, fluent in English and accustomed to Australian society,” said Seyit.

<B>Michael PERRY</B>