Yvonne Berg, National Post A donation container, Tamil Tiger flags and photos of Vellupillai Prabhakaran, who commands the Sri Lankan guerrilla group, are displayed outside the Ganesh Hindu temple in Richmond Hill, Ont., last week.

RICHMOND HILL, Ont. - Buses and cars are lined up along the shoulder of the highway outside the Ganesh Hindu temple as worshippers wearing a mix of South Asian and Western clothes arrive by the thousands to celebrate the completion of renovations at their house of prayer.

As they enter the temple grounds, however, they are greeted not by a priest, but by eager youths selling red flags bearing the militaristic emblem of the Tamil Tigers, a guerrilla group in Sri Lanka, where many of the temple-goers originate.

Laid out for sale on tables are framed photos of Vellupillai Prabhakaran, the assassin who commands the Tamil Tigers -- an organization the Canadian government accuses of terrorism, murder, torture, forcible conscription of child soldiers and ethnic cleansing.

Nearby, men wave collection jars, soliciting donations for a Tamil relief organization that Canada's intelligence service suspects is secretly funding the Tigers' war against the Sri Lankan government. "Money for the refugees?" they plead.

For many new Canadians, going to church is becoming a politically charged affair. It means having to endure the pressure tactics, fundraising campaigns and shrill propaganda of militants soliciting support for far-off wars that worshippers thought they had left behind.

In the 1980s and '90s, some temples in British Columbia served as support bases for extremists involved in the fight for Sikh independence from India. Montreal police claimed in 1999 Algerian terrorists were soliciting money at mosques. Now the Tamil Tigers are making a move on some Hindu temples in Ontario.

"It's a natural target," said John Thompson, executive director of the MacKenzie Institute, a think-tank on security issues. "Insurgent Practice 101 is to make sure you have control of all institutions, all forms of authority and all cultural outlets."

Symbols of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are visible at the Ayappan temple in Scarborough. The Tiger logo is affixed to the door of a hut on the temple grounds, painted in the red and gold LTTE colours. Inside, a poster of Mr. Prabhakaran is draped over a desk.

At a festival last week at the Richmond Hill temple, north of Toronto, police watched as youths stood behind tables selling Tamil Tigers paraphernalia: photos showing Mr. Prabhakaran posing heroically in his trademark tiger-striped camouflage, CDs of his speeches and videotapes depicting battle scenes of the insurgency that has cost Sri Lanka 62,000 lives.

"This is our national leader," says a youth selling the photos. He points to one of the dozens of desktop Tiger flags on sale for $5 each. They depict a roaring tiger's head and two crossed rifles surrounded by a ring of bullets.

"This is our national flag," he says.

Morty Moorthy, president of the Richmond Hill temple, said he was unaware Tiger guerrilla material was being sold at the event, which attracted some 20,000 people a day over three days.

"We don't officially support any of this. We're a non-political, charitable organization. Our purpose is religion."

He said he would raise the matter at the next temple board meeting.

Mr. Moorthy denied the temple was under any pressure from the Tigers and their supporters. "No, it has never come to the board. In fact, the board will be as shocked and surprised as I am."

But Adiyar Vipulananda, a Hindu spiritual leader in Scarborough, is angered by what he says are the aggressive tactics Tamil Tiger supporters are employing on temples. He wants the divisive politics of Sri Lanka -- and particularly the Tigers -- to stay out of the temples.

But he has paid a price for his stance.

Mr. Vipulananda was serving on the board of directors of a new Scarborough temple last September when he received a telephone call one evening. The caller, who said he was representing a Tamil Tigers support organization, told him to resign at once.

"They said, 'We will kill you.' "

Several other board members who had refused to let the Tigers into the temple said they received similar telephone calls. One had his shop window smashed. "The other four guys also got phone calls and they called their wives," Mr. Vipulananda said.

"The women, they were afraid, they said, 'Resign, resign, we don't need the temple.' And they resigned. They said, 'Don't go to the police. If you go to the police, they will send the gangs and they will harm us.' The government, they do not take proper action against this.' "

After leaving, Mr. Vipulananda began creating a new temple, the Siva Vishnu Temple, and complained to Toronto police about the threats. The cellphone that placed the call was disconnected within hours after he received the threat, he said.

"That is a criminal offence. This is very bad. This is a challenge to the government."

There are many others like him who want the Tigers out of the temples, he said, but they are afraid of retaliation and believe the police cannot protect them. The Tamil Tigers and their supporters "misuse the freedom of Canada," he said. "The people came here to live in peace, but these people, they collect money. The people are giving money, but the people don't know what they do [with it]."

The LTTE is a guerrilla force that formed in the early 1970s to fight for a separate state for Sri Lanka's ethnic Tamil minority. Its extensive use of terrorist bombings, attacks against civilians, ethnic cleansing of Muslims and torture has earned the Tigers international scorn.

Canada accuses the group of assassinating university professors, human rights monitors and other civilians, as well as political leaders, including Rajiv Gandhi, the former Indian prime minister, killed by a LTTE suicide bomber.

"The LTTE raises money through drug trafficking. It also raises money by relying upon the willing or unwilling expatriate communities abroad, such as the large number of Tamil refugees in Canada," government lawyers wrote in a recent deportation case.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service suspects that some of those donations, which it estimates at up to $2-million a year, are coming from organizations that show up at temple events to take donations and sell LTTE goods such as flags. But the groups say while the money they collect goes to areas under rebel control, it is earmarked for humanitarian aid rather than weaponry.

The Sri Lankan civil war is not the only foreign conflict that has spilled into Canadian religious institutions. Talwinder Singh Parmar, a Sikh militant, warned at a Calgary temple in July, 1984, that planes would fall from the sky in retaliation for the Indian government's assault on the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine in Sikhdom. The following year, an Air-India flight out of Vancouver was bombed, killing all 329 aboard.

Intelligence reports concerning Islamic terrorists make occasional mention of mosques. CSIS investigated reports that Sheik Umar Abdel Rahman, spiritual leader of the terrorist group Al Jihad, had visited an Ottawa mosque in October, 1992. He was later convicted for the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing in New York.

In December, 1999, police said a terrorist gang headed by Algerian Karim Said Atmani had been demanding money at Montreal mosques and sending the proceeds abroad to finance the jihad, or Muslim holy war. Mr. Atmani was a friend of Ahmed Ressam, the convicted Algerian terrorist.

As Canada has opened its doors to refugees fleeing modern warfare, it has also let in migrants who, once in Canada, continue to devote themselves passionately to the conflicts gripping their homelands -- and they have found places of worship to be an effective venue for their activities.

Such places are often run by societies that have charitable status and receive government grants. Religious institutions also draw large numbers of people from the same countries of origin who may be sympathetic to the cause being pursued by the guerrilla group.

"It's a concentration of population issue," said Dave Harris, former chief of strategic planning at CSIS. Chur ches afford the "ability to move around and circulate without initial interference from security and intelligence organizations, who traditionally have been very wary about putting a foot into a temple," he said.

The encroachment of foreign-based extremists into churches is "a deadly incursion on to our charter rights of freedom of worship and religion in this country," said Mr. Harris, who now runs the private security consulting firm Insignis. He said he had personally spoken to a Muslim man who was afraid to go to his mosque because it was bringing in extremist spiritual leaders.

"It's outrageous to think that we're even having to discuss this in the year 2001. What has happened to this country, that we are now in a position where decent religious people -- immigrants who have chosen to leave behind resentments -- are intimidated by brethren whose first interest has nothing to do with religion other than to use and manipulate it as a tool of political violence?"

Last Sunday morning, hundreds gathered at a unit in a commercial warehouse in Scarborough for kumba bishekam, the official opening of Mr. Vipulananda's new temple. Musicians sat cross-legged beneath a picture of the goddess Siva, beating drums and blowing into clarinet-like instruments.

Incense smoke drifted through the air as worshippers clasped their palms and raised them over their heads. Mr. Vipulananda stood before the shrine, bare-chested, with a purple and gold sarong wrapped around his waist.

There was no sign of the Tamil Tigers. But they are already making their move. The day before the opening festivities, the Tigers' Canadian support branch phoned wanting to get involved in the event.

"They wanted to come here and set up their tables," Mr. Vipulananda said.

"I told them, no."

Quietly, many worshippers wonder how long he can resist.

"That should not be done in a place of worship," said Sinnathamby Chelliah, president of the International Tamil Cultural Organization. Worshippers visit temples to ease their minds, console themselves and offer prayers in peace, he said.

"All these people who go there do not want disturbance. I support the struggle [the Tamil insurgency], but using temple premises for this, I do not like.

"Religion should be above all this."