TILBURG, 24/11/04 - Ahmad Salam will not shake hand with women in the future either, he said yesterday at a press conference. Last Saturday, the Imam caused much commotion by refusing to shake hands with Integration Minister Rita Verdonk.

A man may not shake a woman's hand, in order to "stabilise the contact between man and woman and to prevent temptation," Salam explained. The Syrian imam, who preaches for a Tilburg mosque, stressed that he nonetheless wants to enter a dialogue with Verdonk.

"I would like to discuss my views on integration with the minister, but it appears that integration is for Minister Verdonk something that leads to people from outside Islam saying how Muslims must experience Islam," said Salam. "She says in words that we are equal, but she asks me to leave my choices behind and take on those of hers. That does not make sense, does it?", he wondered.

During yesterday's meeting in his Tilburg mosque, the Imam took various passages from Islamic sources to underpin his conviction. It is, according to Salam, impossible for him to change his behaviour. The fact that other Imams do shake hands with women, he maintained, is because they do not know the Islamic law. "They know the Koran by heart, but not the laws."

Salam is one of several Imams from whom television programme Nova recorded radical sermons two years ago. The Syrian had said that men may reprimand women with physical violence and that working outside the home for women is the beginning of disobedience. On this, the then Mayor Stekelenburg of Tilburg decided the Imam's sermons would be recorded for some time.