Sydney, Australia - The Australian government kept up the pressure on local Muslims to denounce terrorism, learn English and accept women as equals, despite warnings of racial unrest.
Prime Minister John Howard's repeated demands last week that Australia's 300,000 Muslims fully integrate into Australian society were backed by his heir-apparent, Treasurer Peter Costello, in a television interview.
Just days after 11 Australian Muslim men were committed for trial on terrorism charges, Costello said Islamic leaders needed "to make it clear that terrorism is never justified under the cover of religion".
A minority in the Islamic community had been radicalised and was preying upon young people with dangerous ideologies, he said.
"You have seen under the cover of a radical form of Islam, terrorism being perpetrated. You have seen it with September the 11th, you have seen it in Bali, you have seen it with the London bombings.
"It is very, very important that the leadership of Australia are very clear and very precise that this is not real Islam, that terrorism is always wrong."
Prosecutors said Friday 11 men arrested last November in Australia's biggest-ever counterterrorism operation were inspired by Osama Bin Laden, had formed a terror cell and been urged to wreak havoc and wage holy war or jihad.
Howard's initial comments, in which he said "the societies that some people have left were not as contemporary and as progressive as ours", provoked criticism in the Islamic community.
Ameer Ali, the head of the government's own moderate Muslim advisory committee, said Howard risked inflaming tensions seen in rioting between white youths and Arab-Australians in the Sydney beachside suburb of Cronulla last December.
The prime minister also said that "people who come from societies where women are treated in an inferior fashion have got to learn very quickly that that is not the case in Australia."
The leader of the Islamic Friendship Association, Keysar Trad, told AFP the prime minister was engaging in "gratuitous Islam bashing".
"On the radicalism issue, they have acknowledged that it is a small fraction of less than one percent," he told AFP.
But Costello again defended Howard.
"I think the prime minister has a point that migrants who come to Australia are expected to speak English and endorse basic Australian values, and it's going to be a problem for future generations if they don't," he said.