Victoria's peak Islamic body has criticised Prime Minister Tony Abbott for "fearmongering" over his comments during his National Security Statement on Monday.

In his response to a review of Australia's counter-terrorism strategy, Mr Abbott called on Muslim leaders to speak up against violence against innocents.

"I've often heard Western leaders describe Islam as a 'religion of peace', I wish more Muslim leaders would say that more often, and mean it," Mr Abbott said.

"Everybody, including Muslim community leaders needs to speak up clearly, because no matter what the grievance, violence against innocents must surely be a blaspheme against all religion."

Islamic Council of Victoria spokesman Kuranda Seyit told 774 ABC Melbourne the Prime Minister's comments had alienated the Muslim community.

"I think it's fair to say that we're not happy about the Prime Minister, I think that it's more about how we as a community can work together to tackle some of the challenges that he's brought up," Mr Seyit said.

"I think it's important that we use a very inclusive style of language rather than a sort of divisive sort of language that he was using recently and in the past."

Mr Seyit said Mr Abbott had unfairly targeted the Muslim community, who he said regularly voiced their condemnation of extremism.

"I think that unequivocally the Islamic Council of Victoria, plus numerous other Islamic organisations, has condemned extremist, violence, terrorism - we've done it as much as any other person humanly, possibly could do," he said.

"The irony is we just keep going back to the same sort of situation where the Prime Minister will say, 'we're not hearing you, we're not hearing you do it'.

"But it's been done, it's been done over and over again, and I feel a bit miffed about why are we bringing this up, because we're there, we're condemning it, we're actively working with the Government trying to fix this problem.

"We're trying to do our best, but yet the Government's still fearmongering and still creating division in our community and that doesn't make sense to me."

Muslim community used as 'political football'

Mr Seyit accused Mr Abbott of being "facetious" in referring to Islam as a religion of peace and said the Prime Minister had used the Muslim community to distract from questions about his leadership.

"This is a very convenient distraction and I think that he's used the Muslim community as a political football in the past," he said.

"It always seems to be that the Muslim community gets thrown around and it's very convenient for the rest of Australian public to question the Muslim population's loyalty to this country.

"These are the types of issues that we have to face and I believe it's unfair and un-Australian to put other Australians through this feeling.

"We're all part of the Australian community and yet I can speak to people on the ground who don't feel accepted and it comes down from the top, leadership by the Prime Minister is paramount."

He said he did not believe the Prime Minister offered "any real solutions" to violent extremism in his speech.

"I was hoping to listen to some very practical solutions and policy changes that he was looking forward to introducing, unfortunately I didn't hear anything that I felt was really going to tackle the problem."