of the Australian government, "to Baghdad to deliver an extraordinary offer to Mr Wood's captors, on their behalf." Hilaly said later, "There was a point where the abductors wanted $25 million. Eventually, we managed to convince them to drop this demand and a figure, in the thousands, was agreed." Hilaly also claimed to have spoken to Douglas Wood via telephone, yet after Douglas Wood was rescued following a raid by the Iraqi army, Wood denied ever having spoken to Hilaly. 2005 Australian Muslim Achievement Award In July 2005 Hilaly was named "Muslim Man of the Year" for 2005 at the first Australian Muslim Achievement Awards by Mission of Hope (Muslim Community Solutions for Health and Well-being). Controversial statements 1988 speech regarding Jews Australian Jewish organisations have regularly accused Hilaly of antisemitism, a charge he denies. The charges began in 1988 when Hilaly delivered a lecture to a group of Muslim students at University of Sydney on the topic "The Disposition of Jews in the light of the Qur'an." He was quoted as saying: Hilaly has not since apologised nor retracted his comments, in which he accused Jews of "causing all wars." February 2004 sermon In February 2004 Hilaly gave a sermon at a mosque in Sidon, Lebanon, whilst overseas the text of which was translated by the Australian Embassy in Beirut. It appeared to show him supporting terrorist attacks. In his sermon, Hilaly said: In his speech, he also predicted that Muslims would control the White House and appeared to support Hezbollah. The Australian Federal Police declined to investigate his activities overseas. 2006 Holocaust denial In July 2006 Hilaly was sacked from Prime Minister of Australia John Howard's Muslim Community Reference Group following comments he made in which he denied the Holocaust, calling it a "Zionist lie". He also referred to Israel as a "cancer". This prompted calls for legal action to be pursued against him in a country which has the highest per-capita number of Holocaust survivors in the world outside Israel. October 2006 sermon Comments concerning dress and rape In October 2006, Hilaly delivered a Ramadan sermon in Arabic in which he made statements concerning female clothing which proved highly controversial. The key part of these was: He also said, "in the state of zina, the responsibility falls 90 per cent of the time on the woman. Why? Because she possesses the weapon of enticement (igraa)." Hilaly later