Excerpt:
An al-Qaeda recruiter, described as the No. 1 terrorist threat to America, was engaged by a Sydney youth group to address hundreds of young people - a decision that has caused deep divisions at one of Australia's largest mosques.
At the same time as Anwar al-Awlaki was advising the extremist later charged with killing 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas, he was in talks with a group, Sydney Muslim Youth, about delivering a sermon to young Australians. He was already well known to security agencies as the spiritual guide to three of the hijackers on September 11, 2001.
"Anwar al-Awlaki is like a virus produced by the body wanting to fight a microbe," said Taj el-Din al-Hilaly, condemning the sermon, which was delivered at his mosque by phone link from Yemen.