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 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.
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.
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.