Mutallab invited jihad cleric to address students at UCL

Adding weight to the belief that the suspected al-Qaeda operative Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was radicalised during his stay here,a media report said.

Adding weight to the belief that the suspected al-Qaeda operative Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was radicalised during his stay here,a media report today said a radical cleric invited by him to speak at the University College London had advocated dying while fighting jihad.

Abdulmutallab,who failed in his bid to blow up a Detroit-bound US airliner on Christmas Day,had arranged Abdur Raheem Greens address while he was president of the Islamic Society at the university,the Daily Mail reported.

The 23-year-old Nigerian national studied mechanical engineering and business at UCL between 2005 and 2008.

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The cleric,who converted to Islam from Roman Catholicism in 1987,has written that conflict between Islam and the West is ordered in the Koran and that Muslims and Westerners cannot live peaceably together,the newspaper reported.

Green had also claimed: Dying while fighting jihad is one of the surest ways to paradise and Allahs good pleasure.

In 2005,shortly before Abdulmutallab arranged for him to address UCL,Green was barred from entering Australia due to his inflammatory comments.

Green,44,was born to Anthony Green,the son of a colonial administrator in Tanzania. He was brought up a Roman Catholic but converted to Islam in 1987.

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He works at the London Central Mosque and Islamic Cultural Centre as the Visits and English Dawa Co-ordinator.

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