Rev. Yang Tuck Yoong

A church leader in Singapore has apologised after reports surfaced that incendiary comments had been made against Muslims during a Christian conference that was organised by his church in March this year.

On Thursday, during the Kingdom Invasion conference, U.S. evangelical preacher Lou Engle had made a statement about “holding back the push of the new modern Muslim movement in the south of Spain.”

Engle was one of the foreign speakers invited to the conference by Cornerstone Community Church.

“We deeply regret that his statement has been the cause of considerable distress and misunderstanding, particularly among the Muslim community,’’ senior pastor Rev. Yang Tuck Yoong said at a meeting with Muslim community leaders.

The pastor pledged that the church would not invite Engle back to Singapore again and would do everything it could to ensure that a similar incident would not occur.

Engle is the co-founder of TheCall, a programme famous for hosting 12-hour long religious rallies that have attracted thousands of followers.

According to the report, in 2011, Engle, who had once accused Muslims of “fuelling the demonic realm” – organised a 24-hour long event in Detroit, where over 20,000 attendees prayed for Muslims to convert to Christianity.

The latest incident came after Singapore’s government issued a string of bans on foreign preachers for their inflammatory rhetoric, citing the need to preserve a multi-religious, multi-racial society.

A total of five foreign preachers, two Christian and three Muslim, were barred in September and October 2017 from entering the country after they were found to have made derogatory comments against other faiths.