SYDNEY – Leader of the Australian Muslim community have urged unity to combat rising fears as well as Islamophobic “attack on Islam”.

“Especially these days, we want others to tolerate us and we don’t even tolerate each other,” Sheik Shady Alsuleiman, the founder of Lakemba-based Australian New Muslims Association, told a panel of five Muslim religious leaders, The Daily Telegraph reported on Monday.

“That is the issue that we’ve got. We want the outsiders, we want the non-Muslims and other countries, we want others to tolerate us as Muslims and accept us and embrace us and welcome us and deal with us with great acceptance and understanding, but at the same time we as imams, we as Muslims … sometimes we don’t even tolerate each other.”

Alsuleiman is one of five sheikhs who appeared on a panel discussion on the Western Sydney-based One Path Network Muslim television station warned that the community had to unite if it wanted acceptance in Australia.

The panel also included Sheikh Abu Bakr Zoud, Sheikh Ahmed Abdo, Sheikh Aref Chaker, and Sheikh Omar Elbanna.

Acknowledging fear and suspicion attached to Islam in the community, Lakemba Mosque lecturer Abu Bakr Zoud said that imams were united in addressing extremist views existing among the members themselves.

“You will rarely find a sheikh or imam that does not agree that this is something that needs to be addressed and discussed … issues with the youth and how they are interpreting certain aspects of Islam,” he said.

Sheikh Ahmed Abdo, who became NSW’s first Muslim police chaplain, said that stamping out Islamophobia needed to be a “priority”.

“There are challenges that people are no longer seeing the truth of Islam because of the way it is being misrepresented,” he said.

“We have our own Muslim brothers and sisters that are being persecuted, tortured, not feeling safe to ride trains or buses … not feeling safe to send their children to a local park to play on the slides and the rides.

“Why? Because they might be identified as being a person of Muslim faith. How is it that we are going to combat that?

“Is it through a re-education process, is it through Muslims being first and foremost to offer their benevolent services to the wider community?”

Muslims, who have been in Australia for more than 200 years, make up 1.7 percent of its 20-million population, according to CIA Factbook.

Islam is the country’s second largest religion after Christianity.