British universities are advertised as exam centres for online college set up by Islamist hate preacher banned from UK for ‘extremist views’ including saying gays should be put to death

Four British universities have today distanced themselves from a radical Islamic preacher – who was banned from the UK for his extremist views – after they were listed as ‘approved exam centres’ for an online college he runs. 

Loughborough, Surrey, Gloucestershire and Cranfield in Bedford are listed on the website of the International Open University, which is run by Dr Bilal Philips, a cleric who has claimed that homosexuals should be put to death and there is no such thing as rape in marriage.   Surrey University and the University of Gloucester were advertised as exam centres on the IOU site as of May 27 this year, while entries for Loughborough and Cranfield listed their student-run Islamic societies under the same category. 

All four universities told MailOnline they had no relationship with the IOU. Surrey said two IOU exams took place on their campus but without the university’s knowledge and vowed the ‘private arrangement’ would not be repeated.

Another 83 UK institutions also appear on the site, including schools, mosques and Islamic community centres in London, Birmingham, Cardiff and Edinburgh. 

Philips was blocked from entering Britain in 2010 by Theresa May after preaching hate, including condoning suicide bombing as a legitimate military tactic. He was also named by the US government as an ‘unindicted co-conspirator’ in the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, when a truck bomb killed six people and injured more than 1,000. 

Philips, 72, who has also been banned from the US, Germany and Australia, has dual Canadian-Jamaican citizenship and lives in Qatar. He set up the IOU, previously called the Islamic Online University, in 2007 and remains its chancellor. The organisation has no connection to The Open University, the British public university.

Philips has always claimed to abhor violence and denied involvement in any terrorist attacks, including the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing.  But Joshua Lipowsky, senior research analyst at the Counter Extremism Project, warned that the IOU’s teaching risked radicalising students as he urged mainstream institutions to disassociate themselves from it. ‘Philips claims to abhor violence but he preaches an ultra-conservative form of Islam that leads people down a path to radicalization that concludes violence is necessary for the greater good,’ he told MailOnline

One unnamed pupil posted on the social media site three years ago: ‘When I took courses there it felt like I was being indoctrinated. I was just told what the single correct belief was while any other beliefs were misrepresented and made into straw men. I can’t recommend it as a serious course of study.’

Hundreds of other UK institutions are listed by the IOU as approved exam centres, including Leeds Grand Mosque and others in Aberdeen, Edinburgh and London. Several schools are also mentioned, including a secondary school in Cardiff and two primary schools in Derby and London.  

Bilal Philips has regularly appeared on Peace TV, a Dubai-based 24-hour satellite channel which along with its Urdu sister station was handed a £300,000 Ofcom fine earlier this year for broadcasting hate speech. In notorious comments made in an online lecture, he suggested suicide bombing could be justified under Islamic law, unlike regular suicide, which is considered to be against it.

Philips suggested a suicide bomber was making a military decision. . . “This is a military action and human lives are sacrificed in that military action.”