predecessors." and that "Freedom is a holy right and is one of the principles in Islam ... Freedom is to do and say what a person wishes but in a polite manner and without hurting others." Al-Suwaidan has condemned the 9/11 terrorists saying "these people are very dangerous to themselves, to the Arab world, to the Islamic world itself, and to Islam itself." He said that slavery in Islam was eradicated by liberals only and not by the Islamists, and that "a human being is free in his movements and where he wants to belong, and convictions are what move people, and not force." In 2006 he demanded that the European Union, as well as the rest of the world, enact "a law that forbids the insult to religious figures and religious sacred opinions." Al-Suwaidan is one of the signatories of A Common Word Between Us and You, an open letter by Islamic scholars to Christian leaders, calling for peace and understanding. Al-Suwaidan has also been a harsh critic of the US and the West and at conference of the Islamic Circle of North America in 2000, Al-Suwaidan said: "We must tell the West that we are extending a hand of peace now, but it will not be so for long." "Even if a civilization is ready to crumble – like the West, with all the characteristics of deterioration of past fallen empires – it will not fall until we, the Muslims, strive to give it that last push, the last straw that will break the camel's back. At a meeting of the Islamic Association of Palestine in Chicago in 2000 Al-Suwiadan said "Palestine will not be liberated but through Jihad. Nothing can be achieved without sacrificing blood. The Jews will meet their end at our hands." He was subsequently banned from the US. In May 2007, Al-Suwaidan was listed by U.S. federal prosecutors, along with a group of U.S. Muslim Brotherhood members, as an unindicted co-conspirator in the terrorism financing case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development which was convicted along with its leaders of financing Hamas. A Federal court subsequently ruled that the list of unindicted co-conspirators should not have been released to the public. In an April 2012 interview for Al-Quds, a TV station affiliated with Hamas, he claimed that since politicians were controlled by money and the media which are controlled by the