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 == Here are the answers from Australia to highlight the REALITY, practice of ""Taqqiyya"" and the culture of Al-Ahbash / Habashies == 

 ICPA-AFIC connection: Pathetically Flawed  

 by Dawood Yusuf 

 The MCR alleged that the Liverpool-based Muslim organisation, the ‘Australian Islamic House’, has ‘affiliation with some people, with some ideas, terrorist linkage’; and the Bangladesh Islamic Centre had ‘ties with Libya’. 

 In what could only be seen as a sinister move, the national Muslim organisation in Australia went to great lengths to recognise and legitimise a  fringe group that, in the past fewyears, had been a source of divisionand confusion in the Muslim community of New South Wales. 

 In its October issue of the Muslim News newspaper, the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils(AFIC) ran two articles, titled New South Wales Muslims Form New State Council and Children’s Carnival 2000. On the surface, they seemed unconnected. But at a closerlook, these two articles revealed thatthey were crafted to demonstratewhat were the official tactical lines ofAFIC.  

 In the article titled Children’s Carnival 2000, nothing seemed unusual. AFIC was simply promoting an organisation, the Islamic Charity Projects Association (ICPA), which represented the ‘Sydney Arabic com-munity’ in an annual carnival. But was it? The Muslim News is the official mouthpiece of AFIC. In the last two years AFIC had been struggling to impose itself as the leader of the Australian Muslim community. The repeated sackings of its members such as Bilal Cleland and Zakariah Mathews (to name just a few), sus-pension of a state member council (Islamic Council of NSW) and alle-gations by its former Treasurer (Mr Iqbal Tahir) of misappropriation of funds and mismanagement were blunders of AFIC presented asachievements.  

 AFIC got away with all them. In a letter, the former Treasurer Mr Iqbal Tahir outlined this reasons for resigning from AFIC saying that in his 20 years of involvement withAFIC, he had never come across such contemptuous treatment of the AFIC Constitution and its Federal Council. The business of the AFIC hadn’tbeen that good!.  

 It would be sheer naiveté to think that, as an organisation with the only Muslim newspaper, the AFIC was unaware of the nature of this particular local organisation. AFIC just as many others knew very well the nature of the ICPA.  

 The issue that obviously had triggered AFIC and the Muslim News to promote the ICPA was the dispute between a handful of officials of AFIC and the chairman of the Islamic Council of New South Wales. As it has been suggested, the dispute should not have led the AFIC and the Muslim News to promote such a deviant group as the ICPA and to publish an article about their activ-ities.  

 The Muslim leaders could have sought a retraction. But whether the AFIC would allow it to be published in the next issue the Muslim News is just another matter. The point that needs to be made is about the disruptive and dangerous ICPA-AFIC connection. 

 The ICPA is a group that is also known as the Ahbash, or Habashies who are a deviant misguided sect much similar to the Qadianis. It is part of a wider circuit, with bases in various parts of the world. For an indepth look at the group, their teachings and their beliefs, readers may refer to an article written in the 5th issue of the Nida’ul Islam magazine (October-November 1994).  

 The Australian-based ICPA came out of oblivion, following the allocation of temporary or Special Event radio licences by the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA). Through their Muslim Community Radio (MCR), the ICPA began to broadcast in English and Arabic their twisted religious messages and political agenda.  

 The group had successfully made a case of representing Muslims in NSW to the ABA until in 1996 when the Islamic Council of NSW (ICNSW) representing twenty Muslim organisations and mosques, decided to apply for these temporary or Special Event licences. Since then,the ABA had been thrown into somekind of uncertainty or confusion as to which organisation — the ICPA or the ICNSW —to allocate the licences. And on the other hand, the two organisations had been locked in a bitter struggle to secure temporary or Special Event licences, especially during Ramadan season.  

 The struggle came to a head in recent months when the ABA decided to allocate three permanent Sydney-wide Community Broadcasting Licences. Under the ABA guidelines, aspirant groups would make a written submission, followed by a hearing whereby applicants would be given the opportunity to make their case orally to an ABA panel.  

 Both the ICNSW and the ICPA made their submissions for a permanent licence and both claimed to representthe same target groups — the Muslimc ommunities of NSW.