Almost half of Australians want Muslim immigration to be cut following the Melbourne terrorist attack, a poll has found.

The Fairfax-Ipsos survey was conducted after Islamic State sympathiser Hassan Khalif Shire Ali attacked random people on Bourke Street, Melbourne, on November 9, knifing three and killing one.

The poll found 46 per cent of Australians believe that Muslim migration numbers should be reduced.

Nearly one in two Australians support a severe reduction in Muslim migration to Australia (file picture)

Of those surveyed, 35 per cent believed the intake should remain the same and only 14 per cent of voters supported an increase.

The telephone poll of 1200 respondents conducted nationally found that a majority of Coalition voters and one third of Labor voters backed the cut.

Muslim leaders deflected criticism of Islam in the wake of the Bourke St attack by stressing that Shire Ali's actions were caused by mental illness and not by religion.

Many Australians are concerned about the rise of Sharia law – the Islamic set of laws that are drawn from the Koran and Hadith.

Islamic State and other Islamist groups are fighting to establish Islam as a political system not just a religion, with the rule of sharia law.

Secular Muslims oppose the implementation of Islam as a set of laws.

Overwhelming majorities of Muslims in countries including Iraq, Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Malaysia, want sharia to be the law of the land, according to Pew Research survey results published in 2013.

Islamist jihadi Hassan Khalif Shire Ali (pictured) listed his occupation as 'God willing at Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham' before he launched his deadly attack on random people in Melbourne's Bourke St. Islamic leaders say he was mentally ill

Some elements of Sharia are applied in varying degrees in the legal codes of several Muslim-majority countries.

The Fairfax-Ipsos poll also found 45 per cent of voters would like to see overall immigration numbers reduced, with 23 per cent arguing for a rise and 29 per cent happy with the status quo.

The 2016 Census revealed Australia’s population grew by 1.9 million people in the five years to 2016, driven by a 1.3 million increase in new immigrants.

Of those, 86 per cent or 1.11 million settled in Australia's major cities, according to government data, causing strain on infrastructure in Sydney and Melbourne.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has called for a return to Howard-era immigration levels of about 45,000 a year.

Fairfax reported that Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton reduced permanent migration from the official estimate of 190,000 to an actual intake of 163,000.

Data from the 2016 Census showed the Muslim population in Australia has soared to more than 604,000 people, overtaking Buddhism as the most popular non-Christian religion.

The number of Muslims living in the country has almost doubled from 341,000 in the the 2006 census.