Controversial hardline Muslim cleric Yahya Ibrahim, who is banned from visiting the United States, is planning a speaking tour of Britain universities.
Yahya Ibrahim, who has described Jews as “monkeys and pigs” and is accused of advocating conflict with the West, is due to speak at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff (UWIC), next month and at Birmingham University in March.
He is one of at least five extreme Islamists who have been allowed to enter the UK in recent years despite being banned by countries such as the United States or Australia.
They include a Jamaican-born Muslim preacher who the US claims is linked to the group behind the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, and a former Pakistani senator who has praised the Taliban.
The revelations come amid continuing fears over the influence of Islamist extremists on young Muslims in Britain in the wake of the failed Detroit bomb plot, over which Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a former student at University College London, has been charged.
The governing body for British universities, Universities UK, has launched a review of the activities of violent extremists on campuses, following revelations by The Sunday Telegraph over the activities of a number of ‘preachers of hate’ in the UK and their suspected influence on Abdulmutallab’s radicalisation.
The Government will face further questions as this newspaper today identifies five foreign radical Islamists who have been allowed in to Britain in the past four years, despite being banned from entering other countries.
These are Mr Ibrahim, Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips, Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais, Tariq Suweidan, and Sheikh Qazi Hussain Ahmed.
Mr Ibrahim, a Canadian citizen who works as an academic in Perth, Australia, was barred from entering the US in 2005 while travelling to Texas to deliver a lecture entitled Muslims Beware of Extremism.
He has preached in Mecca that Jews were “monkeys and pigs”, “rats of the world” and the “offspring of apes and pigs"; that Christians were “cross worshippers ... those influenced by the rottenness of their ideas and the poison of their cultures, the followers of secularism"; and that Hindus were “idol worshippers”.
He has also claimed that Aids is a punishment from Allah.
Mr Ibrahim is due to speak at a two-day course organised by the Al Kauthar Institute at UWIC on February 13 and 14, and at the School of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Birmingham, in Edgbaston, on March 6 and 7.
Participants will be charged £60 a head at both events.
It is thought the cleric is hoping to speak at other UK venues, including mosques, during his latest visit.
David Ouellette, a Canadian commentator who has studied Ibrahim’s lectures and speeches, said: “In Australia, Ibrahim is widely considered as a ‘bridge builder’ between Muslims and non-Muslims.
“Yet publicly-available information on Ibrahim appears to point to the profile of a hard-core activist of the Wahhabi strain working to spread in the West the hateful, terror-inspiring Salafi ideology, the likes of whom should not be welcome in free societies fighting Islamic extremism.”
Last August Mr Ibrahim spoke at a conference organised by the Green Lane Mosque in Birmingham – one of 10 in the city which benefit from funding as part of the Government’s Prevent strategy to stop the spread of extremism.
The same month he was also invited to lead prayers at the East London Mosque, in Whitechapel, and spoke to audiences in Banbury, Oxfordshire, and Blackburn, Lancashire
In February last year the Federation of Student Islamic Societies organised a speaking tour for Ibrahim around British universities, including Birmingham, Warwick, and two London colleges, Goldsmiths and Queen Mary.
Birmingham University was embroiled in controversy when it refused, on freedom of speech grounds, to ban an appearance by Azzam Tamimi, a radical Islamist and Hamas supporter, at a seminar organised by the university’s Islamic Society last Wednesday.
Denis MacShane, a former Minister for Europe, had urged the university’s vice chancellor, Professor David Eastwood, to cancel the meeting.
In a letter to Prof Eastwood he described Mr Tamimi as a “notorious Jew-hater and supporter of terrorist attacks on Jewish women and children in Israel”, accusing him of “glorifying Jihad and the killing of those opposed to his fanatical Islamist world view”.
A spokesman for Birmingham University said of the latest invitation: “We have a policy of freedom of speech within the law and we are considering a request by the university Islamic society for Mr Ibrahim to be allowed to speak here. No decision has yet been made.
“Universities are plural societies which are home to differences of opinion, debate and views. We respect the right of all individuals to exercise freedom of speech within the law; we are also intolerant of discrimination of any kind.”
Rob Cummings, UWIC’s Dean of Students, said last night: “The proposed event is being organised in association with an international institute which has a reputation for being moderate and positive.
“The event is currently being assessed in accordance with our Freedom of Speech policy and during this process we will be liaising with the organisers and taking advice from relevant advisory bodies.”
He said that the names of the proposed speakers were made available to UWIC on Thursday, and that process of assessing the event would be completed by the end of this week.
Also among the Green Lane speakers last year was Mr Al-Sudais, an imam at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, who, despite denouncing terrorism, has described Jews as “the scum of the human race” and “monkeys and pigs and worshippers of false gods”.
Mr Al-Sudais was banned from entering Canada in 2004 and has been barred from attending conferences in the US.
The pair were joined at the Green Lane event by Mr Philips, a Jamaican-born Canadian citizen who has said that Islam condones marital rape, believes Aids is “divine retribution” on gays and has said that “Western culture led by the United States is an enemy of Islam”.
Mr Philips was also invited to speak at the annual dinner of the Islamic student society at Queen Mary last March, where he was praised for his “deep study and understanding of Islam”.
Yet he was deported from the US in 2004 and refused entry into Australia in 2007 after the American government linked him to the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing in New York, which killed six and injured 1,000.
No attempt has been made by the US to have him extradited from Canada.
Sheikh Qazi Hussain Ahmed, 71, is a senior figure in the Jamaat-e-Islami fundamentalist party in Pakistan and a former senator in that country, who has praised the Taliban as “just and honourable men who brought peace to Afghanistan”.
He was denied entry into Belgium and the Netherlands in 2004 after being classed a security risk, but travelled to London in 2006 to attend the two-day Islam Expo conference.
Mr Suweidan, a Kuwaiti-born radical, told a meeting in Chicago in 2000: “Palestine will not be liberated but through Jihad. Nothing can be achieved without sacrificing blood. The Jews will meet their end at our hands.”
He was subsequently banned from the US. Despite this he was invited by the Home Office to take part in a UK roadshow against extremism in 2006.
Critics have called on the Government to take a tougher line on barring extremists from Britain.
Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, research fellow at the Centre for Social Cohesion, said: “In the UK, both national security and community cohesion are greatly damaged when extremists come into the country and are allowed to be presented by their supporters as moderate voices of the mainstream.
“For some time now, the United States has been far more effective than us at identifying people who overstep the boundaries of free speech, and they have more often than not taken the appropriate measures against them.”
Mr Meleagrou-Hitchens added: “Although we should be proud of the freedom we have in our society, we should not let this blind us when we are dealing with those who intend to use that freedom in order to subvert and destroy our way of life.”
Paul Goodman, shadow communities minister, said: “Ministers have a duty to apply exclusion criteria consistently. There must be zero tolerance for racism, extremism and anti-semitism.”
A Home Office spokesman said: “The Home Secretary will continue to exercise the power to exclude when and where justified and based on all available evidence.
“In all matters the Home Secretary will act reasonably, proportionately and consistently. The Government will challenge any views that support terrorist violence, or reject and undermine our shared values.
“Where we can exclude people, we do, which is why our unacceptable behaviours policy is directed at those who advocate hatred or violence in support of their beliefs, helping prevent those who want to spread extremism, hatred and violent messages in our communities.”