SOME Muslim religious leaders are condoning rape within marriage, domestic violence, polygamy, welfare fraud and the exploitation of women, a report on imam training has found.

The report, by the Islamic Women's Welfare Council of Victoria, says some imams perform polygamous marriages knowing that the second wife, a de facto under Australian law, can claim Centrelink payments.

It found that some apply sharia when it benefits men but not when it benefits women, and that they hinder police from pursuing domestic violence charges.

Keysar Trad, a spokesman for the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia, said last night that there might be "isolated incidents" of such cases "but in a community as large as ours there will always be some people who do the wrong thing".

The report, which has been rejected by the Victorian Board of Imams, also found that women seeking divorces had been told by imams that they must leave "with only the clothes on their back" and not seek support or a share of property because they can get welfare payments.

The report, based on a study commissioned and funded by the Howard government and its Muslim advisory group, was presented at a conference of the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies in Melbourne yesterday.

It is the result of interviews with police, lawyers, court workers and academics, and meetings with and questions to the Victorian Board of Imams, whose role is to provide an Islamic view and religious guidance to the community and represent it to the media.

The report says the 24-man board ignored or did not directly answer many of the questions. It says women, community and legal workers and police were particularly concerned about domestic violence and suggested that imams aimed to preserve the family at the cost of women.

It says the husbands of some women who were legally separated but not religiously divorced entered their houses, demanded sexual intercourse and took it by force. "Workers who have assisted women in this situation said that the advice women received from the imams was that it was halal - permitted - because there was a valid nikah - marriage," the report says.