The Director of Faith Matters, Fiyaz Mughal, writes about the intimidation and inflammatory nature of the actions of Anjem Choudhary and his young coterie of followers, in targeting elected councillors.

Anjem Choudhary has finally been brought to justice. One of the most infamous Islamist faces on TV screens across the globe, this Pied Piper of hatred was found to be instrumental in garnering support for Daesh or Islamic State and in pledging allegiance to it in 2014.

Yet, Anjem was a regular at major Islamic events and in places like Newham, Tower Hamlets and Haringey to name a few London boroughs. He was not allowed into venues and stood outside surrounded by young boys and men who clearly looked up to him and his tactic was to berate and blame and his targets were not only the US, or UK foreign policy, on many occasions they were Muslim elected councillors.

Choudhary knew that by confronting elected members who happened to be Muslim, he could grandstand in front of his young supporters and question the democratic structures of our country.

I was one of the elected members in 2009 who whilst doing my Sunday shopping, ended up with about 20 young people around me hurling obscenities and terms such as ‘kafir’ at me for representing local residents in the Noel Park ward in the London Borough of Haringey. It seems that the exercising of my democratic right meant that Choudhary and his supporters thought that I had ‘sold out’ and that I was no longer a Muslim. Such was the toxic mix of poison he pumped into the minds of young men.

Over the years, Choudhary had made it a point to visit the London Borough of Haringey and would stand outside local stores in the middle of the High Street. He would make inflammatory comments and speeches and would the justify why democracy, the rule of law and human rights were of no value and meaning to him. All the while as he did this, he would urge his young coterie of followers to ensure that Muslims did not vote since it was not allowed in Islam.

Choudhary would rail against these very concepts that make up our society and he would say that only God’s law mattered to him, thereby rendering any legitimate debate invalid and useless with someone who was simply an agitator. Yet, in 2009, as I came out with my shopping, Choudhary made a beeline for me accusing me of apostasy by ‘joining the British system.’ What he meant was that I had exercised my right to play a part in British political life, even though by 2009, I had already served for over 5 years as a councillor in Oxford and the London Borough of Haringey.

What followed was abuse, aggressive threats against me and about 20 young Asian Muslim males suggesting that the fire of hell was somewhere where Muslim councillors belonged within. It seemed that Choudhary knew who I was and being a Liberal Democrat Councillor at the time, he quoted some of the positions that I had held within the national party structure.

Watching this from a side line were a handful of police officers who thought that the whole scenario would just wash over. Little did they realise that Choudhary was going to go on to become one of the most charismatic of radicalisers that this country had seen, yet that was the problem. In 2009, he was seen by many, as simply a joke and a clown and not a threat.

The Beating Up of a Shia Man in the Heart of the West End – Sectarianism at the Heart of Choudhary

My next encounter with Choudhary came in July 2013 as I sat in Edgware Road in the West End one afternoon. Choudhary, it seems, had visited the Egyptian Embassy and had demonstrated outside it and decided to visit Edgware Road simply to agitate on the back of the Sunni and Shia splits that were engulfing Syria after the Arab Spring. Choudhary knew that the Syrian civil war posed an opportunity for him to recruit more impressionable young Sunni Muslim males here in the UK.

With loudspeaker in hand, Choudhary shouted anti-Assad and anti-Shia rhetoric as the young men around him became more and more agitated on the middle of Edgware Road. All the while I watched as his followers kept repeating the anti-Shia slogans. Sadly, within a few minutes of having turned my head away, a young man had been brutally assaulted on the basis that Choudhary’s followers thought that he was Shia. It seems that at the heart of Choudhary’s ideology, was a voracious hatred of Shia and other sects within Islam.

In fact, it turned out that there were 2 men who had been assaulted and one was Sunni and the other Shia. They had been walking down Edgware Road and had been identified as Shias by one of Choudhary’s group. The assault on the Shia male led to 10 separate injuries on his head, face and body and when I met up with him a few days later through the intervention of the Al Khoie Centre in Brent, it turned out that the man was married to a Sunni woman. This though, was of no consequence to Choudhary or the young men who followed him and who listened and hung on his every word. For even when the assault was taking place in the heart of the West End, Choudhary was to be found in the melee, having wound up his followers, yet with his hands not directly involved in criminality. This was precisely how he operated.

Both of these incidents showed me one thing. That Choudhary was the puppeteer and the man who wound up impressionable young men and then released them onto an unsuspecting public in the UK and the Middle East. This went on for many years and with impunity as police forces admitted that he had broken no laws. Sadly, though, this conviction came too late for many young men who were brainwashed by Choudhary. Many lie in unmarked graves in the Middle East, whilst others languish in our jails. However, the real losers in all of these, have been the families of those who were murdered by the young men that the Pied Piper of Hate had groomed and released like javelins onto the world. That is the true legacy of Anjem Choudhary.

To his detractors, including the British government, Salman Butt is an extremist whose views on Islam fly in the face of Britain’s values and help foster an atmosphere where young Muslims can be radicalised by militants.

Even though he is not accused of supporting militant groups or violence, the British authorities believe it is only by cracking down on activists like Butt and denying a forum for their ideas to be widely heard that the threat posed by jihadis and groups such as Islamic State can be countered.

But critics, ranging from civil rights groups to leading academics and lawmakers, say what the government is trying to do amounts to a curb on free speech which could drive a wedge between the authorities and Britain’s 2.8 million Muslims

They argue if anything such plans will only make the problem worse and amount to an attack on the fundamental liberties the government wants to protect.

“Over the last few years the circle of who and what is considered extreme has been expanding slowly,” said Butt, 30, who is taking the British government to court over its counter-extremism strategy.

“Before it was just somebody committing crimes or calling for violence and then they expanded more and more to everyday people who happen to maybe criticise certain aspects of the government policy or hold certain conservative Islamic views,” he told Reuters.

The problem facing Britain and other Western governments is the same one with which they have wrestled since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States: how to stop their young citizens being radicalised without been seen to censor critics.

Thousands of Muslims, including more than 800 Britons, have left Europe for Iraq and Syria, many to join Islamic State (IS), while the recent deadly attacks seen in Paris, Brussels and Nice are a graphic illustration of the risk posed by some lured to a violent Islamist cause at home.

The revelation on Tuesday that Anjem Choudary, Britain’s most high-profile Islamist preacher, has been convicted for inviting his followers to support Islamic State has again brought the issue to the fore.

Choudary was convicted last month although this could not be reported until Tuesday to avoid prejudicing the jury in a separate case. It ended a streak of many years during which he served as the leader of banned organisations but dodged prosecution by carefully managing his public remarks.

Critics questioned why it had taken so long to act against someone who had been a leading radical Islamist figure for two decades and whose followers had been involved in militant plots and acts of violence across the world.

“There should be zero tolerance towards any cleric – Muslim or otherwise – who advocates extremist views and rejects British values,” Britain’s top-selling Sun newspaper said. “Britain has been tolerant of men like Choudary for too long.”

WHO IS AN EXTREMIST?

For those such as new British Prime Minister Theresa May, tackling extremism means no longer tolerating those who reject the country’s values: democracy, free speech, equality and the rule of law.

“Where non-violent extremism goes unchallenged, the values that bind our society together fragment,” May, who had been interior minister for six years before taking over the Downing Street reins, said in a speech in February.

“So while by no means all extremism leads to violence, it creates an environment in which those who seek to divide us can flourish.”

May, in her former guise as interior minister, was responsible for drawing up a proposed Counter-Extremism bill with bans for individuals or groups deemed extremist and closures of places where radicals thrive, including mosques.

However, there is still no sign of the legislation, with the Home Office (interior ministry) saying it would come in “due course”. One main obstacle is who decides who or what is extremist.

“Providing a clear definition of extremism is a difficult task and the government has yet to succeed in doing it,” said senior opposition Labour lawmaker Harriet Harman, head of the UK parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights which produced a critical report on the government plans in July.

Even Finance Minister Philip Hammond admitted in May the issue was “a minefield”: “The line between acceptable and non-acceptable behaviour is fine and fraught with dangers,” he said.

“HATE SPEAKER”

Last September, Butt, 30, who runs a discussion website Islam21c, was one of the first to fall foul of the moves to clampdown on non-violent extremists after being identified by a secretive cross-government Extremism Analysis Unit, established to pick out groups or individuals of concern.

The activist, who has a biochemistry doctorate, was named in a Downing Street press release on “hate speakers” as one of six figures who gave talks at university campuses and were “on record as expressing views contrary to British values”.

A later explanation given by the government to parliament said he had appeared to compare homosexuality to paedophilia and had spoken alongside figures from CAGE, a campaign group that gained attention for contacts with Mohammed Emwazi, the now-dead British militant known as “Jihadi John” who appeared in Islamic State videos beheading foreign captives.

Butt said the accusations against him were “complete rubbish”, and is now taking legal action to challenge the government’s way of identifying extremists and its “Prevent” strategy, its much-criticised policy to stop radicalisation.

“What has happened over the last 10 years of counter-terrorism policy is it’s completely going about it in a very destructive way,” he said.

“The government need to do a job to keep people safe but the way it’s being done, especially recently, not only are they looking in the wrong place … but they are completely ignoring the negative effects it’s having on community relations.”

It is not just those like Butt who are targeted that are concerned. In January, Professor Louise Richardson, the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, said it was better to let extremists speak on campuses and challenge their views than to simply ban them.

David Anderson, Britain’s terrorism law watchdog, has warned that plans to clamp down on individuals and organisations accused of extremism could backfire by playing into the hands of militant recruiters.

“FREE PASS”

But those who back the government’s intent say allowing extremists free rein in public forums or at universities exposes vulnerable people to their messages. They point out that graduates or students at British universities have been involved in numerous militant plots including Emwazi and Nigerian “underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

Rupert Sutton, director of Student Rights, an organisation that campaigns against extremism on university campuses, said people with controversial views were often given a platform where their opinions were not questioned.

“They’re too often given a free pass,” he told Reuters. “If you put it as a dichotomy between either freedom of expression or ban them from speaking that is too binary. What we need to think about is how we are going to make it so that when they do come to speak they face challenge rather than being banned.”

He said the focus should be on using existing legislation to tackle people like Choudary, even if he had long proved adept at ensuring he did not break the law.

“When someone is as effective at it as Choudary is, you are going to get people saying: ‘How is he allowed to go around on the street doing this?'” he said.

Anjem Choudary, Britain’s most high-profile Islamist preacher whose followers have been linked to numerous militant plots across the world, has been found guilty of inviting support for Islamic State.

Choudary, 49, was convicted at London’s Old Bailey court of using online lectures and messages to encourage support for the banned group which controls large parts of Syria and Iraq.

Notorious in Britain where the tabloids denounce him as a hate preacher, he is also well-known abroad, making regular TV appearances in the wake of attacks by Islamist militants to blame Western foreign policy for targeting Muslims.

Prosecutors said that in postings on social media, Choudary and his close associate Mizanur Rahman, 33, had sought to validate the “caliphate” declared by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and said Muslims had a duty to obey or provide support to him.

In one hour-long speech, Choudary set out the requirements for a legitimate caliphate under Islam and why he believed the Islamic State met those criteria.

Both men, who had denied the terrorism charges and claimed the case was politically motivated, were found guilty last month but their convictions could not be reported until Tuesday for legal reasons. They are due to be sentenced in September and could face a jail sentence of up to 10 years each.

Choudary, the former head of the now banned organisation al-Muhajiroun, became infamous for praising the men responsible for the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

Despite his often controversial comments and refusal to condemn attacks by Islamists such as the London 2005 bombings, Choudary has always denied any involvement in militant activity and had never been previously charged with any terrorism offence.

Rahman served two years in jail for encouraging followers to kill British and American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq during a protest in 2006.

BREEDING GROUND FOR MILITANTS

Al-Muhajiroun has been regarded as a breeding ground for militants since it was founded in the late 1990s by Syrian-born Islamist cleric Omar Bakri, who was banished from Britain in 2005, and was banned under anti-terrorist laws in 2010.

Michael Adebolajo, one of the men who hacked to death British soldier Lee Rigby on a London street in 2013, had attended protests Choudary had organised.

Last year, the trial of a teenage Muslim convert found guilty of plotting to behead a soldier in London was told he had fallen in with al-Muhajiroun.

The group’s influence is said to extend far beyond Britain. Those connected to it include Abu Hamza al-Masri, jailed for life in the United States last year for terrorism-related offences.

Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, the gunman who shot and killed a soldier in Canada’s capital and then stormed parliament in 2014, followed Choudary on Twitter, although the preacher told Reuters at the time he had no links to him.

Both Choudary and Rahman say they abide by a “covenant of security” which forbids Muslims from carrying out attacks in non-Muslim lands where their lives and wellbeing are protected.

“We’re living in a global community and no doubt Muslims around the world who have their eye on what’s happening in Syria and Iraq or want to know about the sharia (law) will come across us at one point or another,” Choudary told Reuters in 2014.

“That does not mean that we’re encouraging people to carry out any acts of terrorism.”