MUSLIMS in Australia were urged yesterday to join the uprisings that have toppled regimes across the Middle East, to renounce moderate forms of the religion and to reject democracy, during a day-long conference sponsored by a radical Islamic organisation.

Hizb ut-Tahrir, a fundamentalist group that calls for the establishment of a caliphate stretching from the Middle East to Indonesia, hosted the event at Lidcombe, which drew about 1000 people.

Twentieth-century Islam ... Bilal Merhi speaks at the Uprising in the Muslim World Conference in Sydney. Credit:AFP

Talks included ''The Muslim World in the 20th century: totalitarian Western oppression'' and ''Western endeavours to frustrate the Islamic revival''.

The group maintains a stance against violence, but says Muslims are obliged to engage in armed resistance against Israel and against the presence of foreign troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. ''If it [the land] is occupied, they [Muslims] have a right and a duty to resist that occupation,'' its spokesman, Uthman Badar, said.