An Australian Islamic cleric says he is constantly being approached by Muslim university students looking for his approval to kill infidels: Muslim students seek clerics’ jihad advice.

AUSTRALIAN Muslim university students eager to become jihadis are regularly seeking advice from Islamic spiritual leaders in the hope of winning religious approval to travel overseas and fight.

Leaders have warned that the obsession among some young Muslims to become holy warriors was also driving them to “shop around” for fatwas - religious rulings - should their initial request be turned down.

Moderate Sydney-based Islamic cleric Khalil Shami said young Muslims, “predominantly university students”, frequently asked his advice on travelling to war-torn countries to fight in the name of Islam.

This comes two years after hardline Islamic university students were involved in the London bombings that killed 52 people and injured 700 others. It also follows The Australian’s revelations in January that a 25-year-old Somali Australian, Ahmed Ali, died fighting alongside Islamists in his country of birth in December last year.

According to Sheik Shami, he always told the would-be jihadis not to do it; not because it’s wrong to kill infidels, mind you, but because the leaders of Muslim countries are “corrupt.”

But we have only his word for this, and he openly admits he wouldn’t tell authorities in any case.

Sheik Shami said he always warned aspiring Islamists against fighting because he believed Muslim countries were being run by corrupt leaders who were more interested in making money and advancing their political profiles than liberating their people.

“There are some people who would like to go and perform jihad,” he told The Australian in an Arabic and English interview. “I say don’t go. Because those fighting aren’t truly fighting in the path of God. I’ve been asked numerous times and I’ve advised against going,” added Sheik Shami, an imam at Penshurst Mosque in Sydney’s southwest.

He said young Muslims interested in jihad either called him anonymously to ask his advice or approached him at the mosque. Sheik Shami, who is also an Australian Federal Police chaplain, said he had not notified authorities about Muslims interested in jihad because he did not want to betray the trust of people making the inquiries.

“If you come to me and tell me about something, it’s not nice for me to go and tell the authorities about you because you trust me and I have to just keep your secret,” he said.