Self-styled cleric Samir Abu Hamza, who runs the Islamic Information and Services Network of Australasia in Melbourne, advised a male audience in Sydney in 2003 that they could force their wives to have sex and beat them if they were "disobedient".

In a lecture titled "The Keys to a Successful Marriage", which has since been posted on the internet and viewed thousands of times, Mr Hamza said men could beat their wives, "to shape them up", but should try not to draw blood or bruise them.

He also said women "must respond" if their husbands wanted to have sex, and ridiculed laws that prohibit rape within marriage.

"In this country if the husband wants to sleep with his wife and she does not want to and she hasn't got a sickness or whatever, there is nothing wrong with her she just does not feel like it, and he ends up sleeping with her by force ... it is known to be as rape," Mr Hamza said.

"Amazing, how can a person rape his wife?"