From the Swans to Scots: Blaming the alleged victim means a harrowing truth can be avoided

August 23, 2026 — 3:00am

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In 2006, the now-deceased Muslim cleric Sheik Taj Aldin al-Hilali caused outrage when he gave a sermon comparing women who do not wear a headscarf to “uncovered meat” who invited sexual assault.

“If you take uncovered meat and place it outside … without cover, and the cats come and eat it … whose fault is it, the cats’ or the uncovered meat’s?” he lectured a group of about 500 worshippers at a Ramadan sermon.

“The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.”

According to reports, Sheik al-Hilali alluded, in the sermon, to the crimes of the notorious Skaf brothers, who, along with others, received long jail sentences for the gang rapes of four young women in a series of brutal attacks in Sydney’s south-west in 2000.

He talked about women who “sway suggestively” but then “you get a judge without mercy and he gives you 65 years … but the problem all began with who?”

Following a public uproar, al-Hilali clarified that “I condemn rape”, and said that “women in our Australian society have the freedom and right to dress as they choose; the duty of the man is to avert his glance or walk away”.

I was reminded of these egregious comments this week, following the arrest of three Scots boys for aggravated sexual assault – the most vicious category of sexual assault on the statute books.

The alleged crime has deeply upset the close-knit, highly privileged Scots community, although not all, apparently, are upset for the alleged victim, who is 14.

The focus of much of the hand-wringing has been the school’s management of the alleged rape, particularly its handling by the school principal, Ian Lambert, whose two-metre-tall oil portrait........

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