A petition has been launched to stop a Palestinian preacher who allegedly described the number of Jewish dead in the Holocaust as a “fairytale” from entering Britain.

The campaign group Christians United for Israel called for a ban on Sheikh Ekrima Said Sabri, imam of the Al Aqsa Mosque and the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Territories..

According to CUFI, he is coming in a delegation to the UK the week after next, which is being hosted by a group called EuroPal and due to meet MPs in Parliament.

Sheikh Sabri was reported by the Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri) to have told the Italian newspaper La Republica in 2000:  "’Six million Jews dead? No way, they were much fewer. Let’s stop with this fairytale exploited by Israel to capture international solidarity.”

The previous year in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in the New York Times he was quotied as saying: “The Haram al-Sharif [the Temple Mount] belongs to the Muslim. But we know the Jew is planning on destroying the Haram.

"The Jew will get the Christian to do his work for him. This is the way of the Jews. This is the way Satan manifests himself. The majority of the Jews want to destroy the mosque.”

CUFI said it had seen an email from EuroPal to MPs naming Sheikh Sabri as part of a delegation intended “to raise concerns over the recent escalation in Jerusalem and its impact on the livelihood of the Palestinians in the city today”.

Sheikh Sabri was banned from France in 2012, according to Reuters.

EuroPal has been contacted for comment.