Controversial anti-Islam activist and former Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali says authorities need to more effectively "assimilate" Muslim migrants in Australia and prevent Islamists and would-be extremists from arriving.
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Speaking days after she cancelled a visit to Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney citing security threats, Ms Hirsi Ali said she was unfazed by planned large protests, but poor security planning had made the trip impossible.
In a friendly interview with conservative Sydney radio host Alan Jones on Wednesday, the atheist author said the government needed to intervene to prevent extremists preying on young men in religious schools and promoting their attitude of hostility towards Australian society.
"The national government should start first by developing effective programs to assimilate those Muslims who are already accepted into Australia, those with citizenship, those with permanent residency, those with visas," she said.
"When it comes to those who are not in the country, I think the government is responsible to the citizens of Australia to make sure that Islamists do not come to Australia."
The controversial author was raised a Muslim in her native Somalia, before she renounced her religion and sought political asylum in the Netherlands in the early 1990s.
About 2000 tickets had been sold to events where the former Dutch politician was due to speak.
Hundreds had signed an online petition opposing Ms Hirsi Ali's visit, and a social media campaign fronted by a group of Muslim women accused her of hate-mongering and denigrating their faith.
Ms Hirsi Ali would not discuss specific security concerns related to her tour. She lives with round-the-clock security protection due to her high profile criticism of radical Islam.
A spokeswoman for Ms Hirsi Ali's charity has previously said Ms Hirsi Ali would be unlikely to grant an interview to Fairfax Media because it had published a previous story that was "very negative of her reputation and encouraged people to protest her visit". She wouldn't comment on a possible future visit to Australia.
Ms Hirsi Ali told Jones - who has previously been found guilty of vilifying Lebanese Muslims - that the risk of radialisation in Western countries amounted to who could "shape the hearts and minds" of young people.
"We need to speak out and speak openly. We need to stop with the self-censorship, we need to advance our own ideas and principles," she said.
"I think the ideas of freedom, of tolerance, of equality, of free enterprise - these ideas are superior to the ideas of total submission to a god who demands that of forcing women to completely submit to men, the intolerance toward people of other religions, the homicidal attitude to homosexuals. This is what Sharia law, what Islamic law, advocates."
She claimed that Islamists were winning the hearts and mind of every day Muslims. "We used to talk of minorities but I am not sure that people with Islamist attitudes are any longer minorities.
"If you look at the statistics of attitudes in Muslim-majority countries, and it is stunning, when you see numbers of people who want Sharia as the law of the land, or who want to kill Muslims who leave Islam or who are OK with honour killings, or who are OK with cruel and unusual punishments in the name of Sharia," she said.
A recent study by the Pew Centre in the United States found that the overwhelming majority of Muslims worldwide reject Islamic State and other extremism.
