Last Friday, I rang a columnist to ask about his claim that a minimum 30% of Australian Muslims obeyed Hilaly. I asked him whether his guess involved a presumption that Aussie Muslims were more serious about obeying religious leaders than their fellow Aussies of other faiths. He said yes. I asked him what evidence supported this. He said he had none.

For some reason, it has become fashionable to deem Aussie Muslims more religious than other Aussies, despite there being no research supporting this.

Aussie Islam is an ethno-religious (as opposed to a religious) phenomenon, and Muslims come from over 60 different ethnic and language groups (each having a unique set of religiosity measures). Measuring the degree of observance among Muslims is almost impossible.

Our politicians also presume with little evidence that Muslims obey their sheiks more than followers of other faiths obey clerics or pastors. Some months ago, I used a Melbourne newspaper to ask why hate-speech of sheiks Hilaly and Feiz was intolerable to politicians prepared to condone Christian pastors like Danny Nalliah guilty of similar types of hate-speech.

Of course, some will say that the case of Sheik Feiz is different. According to Attorney General Phil Ruddock, Feiz calls on young men to pray that God makes them martyrs for some kind of militant jihad, though Ruddock is honest enough to admit he hasn’t seen the entire “Death Series” of Feiz lectures.

Neither have I. Though I know it has been on sale for well over two years. It was from this series of lectures that the April 2005 controversy over Feiz’s disgusting rape comments arose. It’s a bit late now for politicians to be complaining about the classification of this lecture series now.

While Nalliah hasn’t asked his congregation to pray for martyrdom, he does ask them to pray that Hindu, Buddhist and Masonic temples (not to mention mosques) be torn down.

Now remember that this is the man for whom John Howard recorded a special Australia Day message.

I’d love to see John Howard try explaining this to Freemasons, Hindus and Buddhists in his electorate.