MUSLIMS in Australia were urged yesterday to join the uprisings that have toppled regimes across the Middle East, to renounce moderate forms of the religion and to reject democracy, during a day-long conference sponsored by a radical Islamic organisation.
Hizb ut-Tahrir, a fundamentalist group that calls for the establishment of a caliphate stretching from the Middle East to Indonesia, hosted the event at Lidcombe, which drew about 1000 people.
Talks included ''The Muslim World in the 20th century: totalitarian Western oppression'' and ''Western endeavours to frustrate the Islamic revival''.
The group maintains a stance against violence, but says Muslims are obliged to engage in armed resistance against Israel and against the presence of foreign troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. ''If it [the land] is occupied, they [Muslims] have a right and a duty to resist that occupation,'' its spokesman, Uthman Badar, said.
Asked if that meant the targeting of Australian troops, Mr Badar said, ''I would not go beyond saying that a military occupation is rightly resisted militarily.''
''The role of the Australian government has … been intrusive and exploitative.''
The group is proscribed in Germany for anti-Semitism, and Russia declared it a criminal organisation in 1999.
There have been unsuccessful calls to ban the group in Britain and Australia.
Wassim Kabbara, 33, said he had come to the conference as a ''litmus test for me … to see what these guys are doing versus what the West is trying to do''. He agreed with themes at the conference that ''Islam and democracy do not come together''.
The keynote speaker, Dr Mohammad Jeelani, said the West had decided to ''plant a cancer in the Muslim world'', and that cancer was the state of Israel.
The group openly rejects democratic government and tells Muslims in Australia to boycott elections.
