Controversial Muslim preacher who has been expelled from many countries is coming to TT

Bilal Philips - expelled from several countries

A controversial Canadian Muslim preacher, who lives in Qatar, is coming to Trinidad and Tobago for meetings in July 2011. His name is Bilal Philips.

A report in Canada's NATIONAL POST newspaper earlier this month said German officials kicked out Philips when he turned up in April to address a demonstration organized by a local Muslim leader.

They said they took the decision because Philips was advocating the killing of homosexuals, a charge the 64-year-old preacher called "nonsense". He said he never called on Germans "to rise up and kill homosexuals.”

However he admitted that he wrote that homosexuality is “evil,” that the Islamic punishment for it is death, and that AIDS is a form of divine punishment. Philips said his words were taken out of context to prevent him from speaking.

Such treatment is becoming familiar to Philips, the Post reported.

"Before Germany showed him the door, Britain and Australia took similar action, and he has avoided the United States since 1995, when a federal prosecutor named him as a suspected terrorist co-conspirator," the paper reported.

"He has also said that India has frozen his visa applications, and feminists in the Maldives organized a letter-writing campaign last year to prevent him from speaking, complaining that his preaching endorsed marrying off young girls as soon as they reached puberty, regardless of their age," the paper said.

The story on the Post relied heavily on information from J.M. Berger, the author of the newly released "Jihad Joe: Americans who go to war in the name of Islam".

The book examines the activities of Philips, who was born in Jamaica, partly raised in Toronto and Vancouver, educated in Saudi Arabia and who now lives in Qatar.

Berger's book describes how the Saudis approached Philips in 1992 to start a program that would send American Muslim ex-servicemen to Bosnia to train Muslim fighters battling Serbian forces.

Berger said the Saudis took the plan to Philips because he had helped convert hundreds of American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War.

“I was approached by a couple of military people and asked if I knew any of the troops that had accepted Islam, gone back to the States and had left the American military, you know, who might be willing to go to Bosnia to help train the Bosnians,” the book quotes Philips as telling the author.

“What they said they were looking for was something like an A-Team of specialists who would then go and train them to help in resisting the Serbian slaughter.”

Berger writes: “That request marked the start of a program that would soon spiral out of control, embroiling U.S. military veterans in a jihadist circle with links to al-Qaeda and to a stunningly ambitious homegrown plot to kill thousands of innocent victims in New York City.”

The Post article traced a whole trail of terrorist activities in which Philips is implicated. However the preacher, while not denying some of what the book reports, has sated that Berger has written a combination of fact and fiction.

Read the original story in the NATIONAL POST