None of the Muslim clerics consulted by a senior Australian imam ever saw Man Haron Monis at their mosques, an inquest has heard.
Associate professor Mohamad Abdalla also said on Monday the Sydney siege gunman’s claims to be a senior Islamic scholar – including that he had attained the rank of ayatollah – were “quite difficult” to believe.
The deaths of Monis and hostages Tori Johnson and Katrina Dawson are the subject of a coroner’s inquest in Sydney.
Monis claimed at various times to have been a sheikh, an ayatollah and a hojjat al-Islam, a honorific title given to someone of high standing.
But Abdalla, of Griffith University, said he believed it was “quite difficult for a person of [Monis’s] age and that experience to achieve hojjat al-Islam”.
He said the term sheikh – properly reserved for someone of “a very high scholarship rank”, usually aged at least 55 – had come to be used “by lay people or even backyard imams”.
Abdalla had “extensively” consulted imams around the country but none could recall ever seeing Monis at their mosques, he said.
This meant he would have only rarely attended prayers, “because even nominal people who attend a mosque on a regular basis would become known to the mosque”, he said. “I think a person of Monis’ figure would have been noticed.”
Also on Monday, a DPP solicitor who opposed one of Monis’ bail applications was accused of “fundamentally misunderstanding” the way bail operated in murder cases.
The solicitor, whose identity has been suppressed, told a magistrate in a December 2013 hearing that the law was neutral on whether Monis should be granted bail.
The gunman was facing charges of being an accessory to a murder before and after the fact.
But Gabrielle Bashir SC, appearing for the Johnson family, said the law in fact required “exceptional circumstance” for Monis to be granted bail.
The inquest continues.