Muhammad Al Arifi and Salman Al Odah
Stockholm: The Danish Immigration Service on Tuesday banned six preachers and clerics from entering its territory for two years, including two very prominent preachers from Saudi Arabia, Muhammad Al Arifi and Salman Al Odah.
Muhammad Al Arifi has around 17.3 million followers on twitter. He launched a TV channel named Al Arifi last week and is a teacher in King Saud University.
Salman Al Odah has 12.2 million followers and is very popular in Saudi Arabia and in the Arab region.
Denmark’s banned list includes five Muslim preachers and an American Evangelical pastor Terry Jones, who burned copies of the Quran in 2011.
One of the men, Bilal Philips, a Muslim cleric holding a Canadian passport, was in Denmark in 2011. It is unclear whether the others have been in the Scandinavian country.
The others on the list are American citizen Kamal El-Mekki, and Mohammad Rateb Abdalah Al-Nabulsi, a Syrian living in Jordan.
Integration Minister Inger Stoejberg says the government "won't accept that hate preachers ... preach hatred against Danish society."
"I am also very pleased that it is now clear to everyone that these people are not welcome in Denmark," Stoejberg said in a statement.
Last year, Denmark's Parliament backed compiling such a list. Some other European countries have similar legislation. Britain, for instance, can deny entry to people with criminal convictions or those whose presence is considered not "conducive to the public good."
The Danish law about "the public national list" was passed on December 27, 2016 by the right-leaning government and the opposition Social Democrats, among others. Technically, the ban would be implemented by the Danish Immigration Service which would deny them entry to Denmark.
