Beirut  - Radical Muslim cleric Sheikh Omar Bakri, who has been living in Lebanon since he was exiled from the Britain three years ago, said Monday he had no idea that his daughter was working as a pole dancer in London.

"If this is true, I am deeply shocked," Bakri said in Tripoli northern Lebanon.

"I brought her up properly according to the Muslim faith, but she is free to make her own choices in life. But I am still shocked," Bakri said.

Bakri said he had not spoken to his daughter for a long time, and he thought she was living with her husband in Turkey.

Bakri's daughter who changed her name from Yussra to Yasmine, has has a three-year-old son who was conceived during an arranged marriage to a Turkish man, has admitted that she works as a topless pole dancer in nightclubs.

"May God forgive her is if she is doing this, because only God will forgive her, not me," he said.

She was quoted as telling British newspapers that she does not get along with her father or support his radical views.

Bakri caused a media storm after the London bombings in 2005, declaring that the only people he blamed for the London bombings were the British government and public.

Born in Syria in the late 1950s, he became involved in the Muslim Brotherhood, a revolutionary organization that provided the foundations for Islamist political ideology.

He is the founder of the London branch of Hizb al-Tahrir (the Islamic Liberation Party), and of the organization Jama'at al- Muhajirun or the School of the Emigrants, in reference to those who accompanied the Prophet Muhammad on his flight or hegira from Mecca to Medina. (dpa)