"It's time we stopped just saying he should apologise. It is time the Islamic community did more then say they were horrified. I think it is time he left." Treasurer Peter Costello said comparing women to uncovered meat invites people to treat them in a degrading and dehumanising way.

"This is totally unacceptable. This is comparing women to uncovered meat,'' Mr Costello told the Seven Network. "We really need political leaders to speak out against it. "But I hope that the moderate Muslim leaders will speak out today and condemn these comments.

"Make it clear to Muslims that this is not the view of Islam and that they will really take some kind of action to disassociate themselves from the comments which Sheik Alhilali has made. Health Minister Tony Abbott echoed the Treasurer's comments.

"Certainly I think if a religious leader in the Catholic Church or the Anglican Church or in Judaism was to make these sorts of statements, they would be getting a very severe rap over the knuckles, at the very least,'' he told the Nine Network this morning. "He's wrong. He should be reprimanded and it's up to ordinary, decent Australians to make it clear that he is wrong. Sheik Alhilali's comments were delivered in a Ramadan sermon to 500 worshippers in Sydney last month, a News Ltd newspaper reported.

"If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat," he said in the sermon. "The uncovered meat is the problem.

"If she was in her room, in her home, in her hajib (Islamic headdress), no problem would have occurred." Ms Goward said this was an ugly comparison and that was vile enough.

She said the real issue was that he was excusing Muslim men for crimes against women on the grounds that women asked for it. Ms Goward said Australia had moved on from that thinking a long time ago.

"I repeat, I think it was time he was asked to go and I would encourage the authorities to consider whether a man who incites young Muslim men to crime, because that is essentially what he has done, should be allowed to stay," she said. "This is encouraging young men to a violent crime on the basis that it is okay because it is there, it is the women's fault. This is against Australian law."

Ms Goward said she was unaware of the conditions under which the sheik was in Australia. "We have got past the stage of everybody rushing around being upset and saying he should apologise and the Islamic community understandably and rightly being annoyed and embarrassed," she said. "If we are really serious about Islamic and Islamic Australia being part of Australia, then I think there has got to be a bit more leadership shown and he has got to leave.

"The next step is for the authorities to consider whether somebody who incites from a position of very important leadership in that community ... ought to go. I don't know his visa arrangements, I don't know the status of his citizenship and that might be more difficult." Sheik Alhihali told the Australian that he only meant to refer to prostitutes as meat, and not any scantily clad woman without a hijab.

AAP