{"id":466001,"date":"2025-12-23T06:06:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T06:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/466001\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T06:06:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T06:06:15","slug":"canterbury-bankstown-council-shuts-down-prayer-hall-linked-to-notorious-preacher-wissam-haddad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/466001\/","title":{"rendered":"Canterbury-Bankstown Council shuts down prayer hall linked to notorious preacher Wissam Haddad"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Sydney council has moved to shut down what it says is an illegal prayer hall linked to notorious Islamic preacher Wissam Haddad.<\/p>\n

The City of Canterbury Bankstown Council issued a “cease use” directive at the Bankstown Al Madina Dawah Centre in the city’s south-west on Monday.<\/p>\n

The council said a review of council records dating back to the 1970s found the site on Kitchener Parade had never been approved to run as a prayer hall, and had only recently received approval to operate as a medical centre.<\/p>\n

“Our recent surveillance indicates there is a strong suspicion the premises is being used contrary to its intended use,” a council spokesperson said in a statement.<\/p>\n

“We have issued the cease use notices which will be effective immediately. There are no compromises, and we will be taking further action if they don’t comply.”<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The illegally run prayer hall in Bankstown will be shuttered by council. (ABC News: Greg Bigelow)<\/p>\n

Mr Haddad was previously issued with a directive to shut down premises unauthorised to conduct prayer meetings at other sites, according to council.<\/p>\n

Mr Haddad, who is also known as Abu Ousayd, is a notorious Islamic preacher recently found by the Federal Court to have breached the Racial Discrimination Act in a series of antisemitic lectures<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last week counterterrorism officials told the ABC one of the alleged Bondi gunmen, Naveed Akram, 24, was a follower of his preachings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Through a lawyer earlier this week, Mr Haddad says he “vehemently denies any knowledge of or involvement in the shootings that took place at Bondi Beach” on December 14.<\/p>\n

Organisation questions ‘timing and motivation’<\/p>\n

The Al Madina Group, the company that manages the site, said in a statement on Tuesday Mr Haddad did not have any involvement in its operation and it has “acted in good faith” since taking over the premises.<\/p>\n

“And was under the reasonable impression that no development Application (DA) was required, given that the former organisation AMDC [Al Madina Dawah Centre], had operated at the same location for nearly four years without issue or enforcement action.”<\/p>\n

The company said it questioned the “bases, timing and motivation behind Bankstown Council’s sudden order to cease operations”.<\/p>\n

In statement last week Al Madina Group said: “His [Mr Haddad’s] involvement is limited to occasional invitations as a guest speaker, including delivering lectures and, at times, Friday sermons.”<\/p>\n

Premier Chris Minns said Mayor Bilal El-Hayek had been in contact with the government and NSW Police over a number of days.<\/p>\n

“He’s taken decisive action \u2026 this is a kind of leadership that we need right now,” Mr Minns said.<\/p>\n

“Bilal has led that community through a number of years, he’s obviously decided this can’t can’t go on. It’s not being used for the purposes in which the permit had been released.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Sydney council has moved to shut down what it says is an illegal prayer hall linked to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":466002,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[212043,4740,124261,212040,212042,102899,50,212041,13048,24986],"class_list":{"0":"post-466001","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-al-madina-dawah-centre","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-bankstown","11":"tag-canterbury-bankstown-council","12":"tag-cleric","13":"tag-extremism","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-prayer-centre","16":"tag-sydney","17":"tag-wissam-haddad"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115767384297218855","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}