Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has called on a Muslim cleric to apologise for comments in which he condoned marital rape and advised men to 'shape up' their wives by beating them.

In a lecture on marriage, Samir Abu Hamza told his male audience that they were allowed to force their wives into sex and hit them if they were disobedient, as long as they didn't draw blood.

Mr Hamza, a self styled cleric with no formal training in Islam also ridiculed the law that prohibits rape within marriage.

"Amazing, how can a person rape his wife?" he asked.

His comments were made during a lecture in Sydney in 2003 but emerged today after they appeared in a video posted on the internet. In his lecture, entitled "The Keys to a Successful Marriage", Mr Samir argued that Islamic law allowed men to use force to punish a disobedient wife, as long as they did not cause bruising or bleeding.

He added that if a husband demanded sex, his wife must respond immediately, even if she was in the middle of chores.

"If the husband was to ask her for a sexual relationship and she is preparing the bread on the stove she must leave it and come and respond to her husband," he says in the sermon.

"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," he adds. "Amazing, how can a person rape his wife?"

Telling his listeners that Islam allows them to hit their wives, he says: ``After you have advised them for a long, long time, then you smack them, you beat them and - please brothers, calm down - the beating that the Muhammad showed is like the toothbrush that you use to brush your teeth.

"You are not allowed to bruise them; you are not allowed to make them bleed. You don't go and grab a broomstick and say that is what Allah has said.''

He adds: "This is just to shape them up, shape up women - that is about it."

Mr Rudd condemned Mr Hamza's comments today, saying violence against women was permissible "under no circumstances."

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