A firebrand Muslim cleric is being allowed to broadcast hate sermons to the Middle East from a pretty Home Counties village because the regulator Ofcom is powerless to act.
Sheikh Yasser al-Habib, 34, is accused of stirring up bitter sectarian tensions in the Islamic world via his UK-licensed satellite channel, which is based in a former Christian church hall in a leafy corner of Buckinghamshire.
His station, Fardak TV, is required to comply with Ofcom’s strict rules banning hate speech for any programmes that can be watched by British or European viewers.
But the communications regulator can place no restrictions on what he broadcasts to the rest of the world because this is out of its jurisdiction.
Sheikh al-Habib, who belongs to the minority Shia branch of Islam, has allegedly made remarks on air that are considered deeply offensive to the rival Sunni sect.
He was granted asylum in Britain in 2004 after being jailed in his native Kuwait for insulting some of the most revered figures for Sunnis.
Tensions between the two branches of Islam are at the root of much of the bloodshed that has plagued the Middle East for centuries, right up to the current conflict in Syria.
An MP warned that problems between Sunnis and Shias would also ‘bubble up’ in Britain unless action was taken to stamp out hate speech aired with impunity from the UK.
Last year Sheikh al-Habib led a campaign that raised £2 million to buy a former evangelical Christian retreat in the idyllic village of Fulmer in the Buckinghamshire commuter belt.
The large hall has been turned into a mosque that also houses Fadak TV, which is broadcast across the world by different satellites.
In a recent programme, Sheikh al-Habib was filmed cutting a cake to celebrate the death of one of the most important historical figures in Sunni Islam, the BBC reported.
The radical cleric also allegedly said: ‘Stay away from Shia, or the hand that helps fund those in Syria, we will cut it off, and I know what I mean.’
Khalid Mahmood, the Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Bar, said Sheikh al-Habib had also claimed on air that two male early Islamic leaders who are revered by Sunnis had a sexual relationship together.
Ofcom is investigating whether any of these remarks were broadcast to British viewers.
A second satellite TV channel, Wesal Farsi, based in north-west London, which is targeted at Iran’s Sunni minority, is accused of transmitting a programme in which a presenter called Shia clerics ‘devils’ and accused them of stealing from God. This station is not licensed by Ofcom.
Mr Mahmood described the material being aired on Fadak TV as ‘ten times worse’ than the sections of Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses that led to the British author facing death threats.
He added: ‘If somebody was being anti-Semitic, we would take action. If somebody was being racist we would take action – even if it was an Asian person having a go at a black person. And it’s quite right to do that.
‘Because this is seen as intra-faith, nobody seems to be bothered. It is already causing problems in the Gulf and the Middle East. It will start to bubble up here as well.’
The MP called on Ofcom to stamp out sectarian hate speech, and said that the regulator should if necessary be given more powers and resources to investigate foreign-language channels broadcast from the UK.
‘We have got to put a stop to it, and it’s the responsibility of Ofcom to do that. If they can’t deal with it, then the police should step in,’ he said.
Ofcom investigated Fadak TV in 2012 after Sheikh al-Habib broadcast a sermon in which he questioned the sexuality of a Sunni successor to the Prophet Muhammad.
But the regulator concluded that there had been no breach of its broadcasting code and issued the station with ‘formal guidance’.
An Ofcom spokesman said yesterday: ‘Ofcom has strict rules forbidding the broadcast of hate speech on TV and we take this extremely seriously. When channels break these rules, we take robust action and have recently fined broadcasters.
‘We are examining the allegations made against Fadak TV, and if it is breaking our rules then we will act swiftly.
‘While people in the UK can watch programmes on the internet or on satellite from around the world, Ofcom has jurisdiction to investigate and take action when a channel is licensed to broadcast in the UK.
‘If individuals are preaching hate in the UK, this is a criminal act and should be reported to the police.’
Sheikh al-Habib could not be contacted yesterday, but he declined to comment when approached by the BBC.