The Islamic Council of Victoria has accused the nation's peak Islamic body of being an 'old boys' club' that neglects the concerns of women and young people.
Community consultations have revealed strong levels of dissatisfaction about the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils.
The criticisms come ahead of the federation's elections next week.
Waleed Ali from the I-C-V says the community feels strongly the federation is unrepresentative and therefore irrelevant.
"The way the community seems to feel is that you see just the same faces going around and you don't tend to get much youth representation, which is a problem because you're talking about a community that's got something like 40 per cent under the age of 20."
He says; "So it's a really young community and you've got very little youth representation, and also very little representation from women."