How he remained untouched for so long
The Guardian explains more about Choudary’s activities.
Anjem Choudary and his extremist groups are believed to have inspired at least 100 people from Britain into terrorism, including organisations committed to campaigns of murder against the west, the Guardian has learned.
…
Documents from intelligence sources say his groups were at the heart of the Islamist movement in Britain, which has been left facing a “severe” threat of jihadi attack.
The defense of free speech depends to some extent on an absence of people like Choudary. If you have people who really are “inspiring” others to commit mass murders, then it becomes a lot more difficult to say those people have an absolute right to free speech. It’s no longer enough to say you can’t tell the mob to kill the corn factor when the mob is already outside the corn factor’s house. You have to say you can’t tell the mob to kill the corn factor at some unspecified time in the future, when you know the mob is actually going to do it.
The conviction represents only a fraction of the jihadi mayhem to which the lawyer is linked.
People connected to Choudary and his groups who turned to terrorism include Michael Adebolajo, one of the men who murdered the soldier Lee Rigby on a London street in 2013.
See that’s a problem. Free speech is a good…but not inspiring people to commit murder is also a good.
Choudary was a key figure for a succession of extremist Islamist groups. He was dismissed as a clown by some, while helping inspire youngsters to turn to terrorism in Britain and Europe, and enjoyed frequent media appearances.
That dismissal as a clown turns out to have been a big mistake.
It’s much the same with Trump. He’s a clown all right, but that doesn’t mean he can’t do immense harm.
A conservative estimate is that no less than 100 people from Britain linked to Choudary or his groups have fought or supported violent jihad, according to counter-terrorism sources. The figures were supported by a leftwing anti-extremism group that has studied the influence of al-Muhajiroun and its successor groups.
That number increases on taking into account those in Europe who joined organisations such as Isis after being involved with extremist groups Choudary helped establish or inspire, such as in Belgium and the Netherlands.
Choudary’s influence in Europe was such that the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD assessed him to be a key influence in the spread of the jihadi movement in the Netherlands. A spokesperson for AIVD said it stood by its assessment of Choudary’s central role in the UK first, and then Europe, set out in a 2014 document: “Since the 1980s the UK has harboured an active Islamist movement propagating an anti-democratic, intolerant and sometimes explicitly violent ideology.
“At its heart is the now banned group Islam4UK, previously known as al-Muhajiroun, al-Ghurabaa and Muslims Against Crusades. Its most familiar faces are Omar Bakri (currently resident in Lebanon) and Anjem Choudary, who acts as its spokesman. Modelling itself closely on this British movement, Sharia4Belgium was active in Belgium for several years …”
Belgium? What could possibly go wrong?
According to the European law enforcement agency Europol, Sharia4Belgium “engaged in organised indoctrination and recruitment of young people to participate in the armed conflict in Syria”. Choudary praised its leader after more than 40 of its members were convicted of terrorism.
The groups Choudary led were “the single biggest gateway to terrorism in recent British history”, says one study on his activities, details of which are published here for the first time, from the leftwing group Hope Not Hate. It said: “Over the last 15 years he has influenced and inspired over 100 Britons who have carried out or attempted to carry out terrorist attacks at home and abroad.”
Not such a joke after all, is he.
According to research from Hope Not Hate, supported by a counter-radicalisation expert who has worked with al-Muhajiroun members, Choudary helped Isis gain British recruits.
Hope Not Hate said: “In the six months following the creation of the Islamic State, Choudary was its biggest cheerleader in the English-speaking world and the network he helped create became the largest recruiter for IS in Europe.”
Choudary’s ability to operate in plain sight, seemingly without legal sanction, raises many questions. Sources in Britain’s Muslim community say Choudary was reported to the police, with some in the UK’s Islamic communities left baffled about how he remained untouched for so long.
Everybody thought he was a clown? Everybody thought it was free speech?
Not very reassuring, is it.
“It’s no longer enough to say you can’t tell the mob to kill the corn factor when the mob is already outside the corn factor’s house.”
I wonder if this is an over-literal interpretation of Mill’s allegory of the corn dealer. I think that the Choudary case can be understood as analogous to the corn dealer allegory, in that there is a situation in which there are dangerous social conditions that can be ignited through speech. I don’t think it matters if the people are physically dispersed or that consequences are not instant.
Choudary is a solicitor and generally knew how to stay on the right side of the law. In fact, when I heard of his conviction, my first reaction was surprise that he’d got caught doing something illegal.
Unlike Abu Hamza, who was like a pantomine villain, Choudary is mild-mannered and softly spoken. If he appears on TV, he is perfectly pleasant and often evades questions about his views. I think a lot of people failed to grasp that he had followers who really do believe that a brutal theocratic state is a good idea and that many of those young men are perfectly willing to perform violent acts while Choudary distances himself.
What a grotesque situation, Choudary has declared war on the West and governments have treated his activities as a free speech issue. In earlier, less enlightened times, he would have been regarded as a hostile foreign agent and jailed, or hanged.
Of course even though billions have been spent on the campaign against IS, either directly or by proxy, we’re apparently, not at war.
Everyone thought he was a clown? Surely not; he obviously was deadly serious and dangerous. If MI5 thought he was a clown then they are the real clowns – but that’s a little hard to believe. I don’t think this is the whole story. Interesting that he’d been living for many years on government handouts of 25,000pounds/year.
So was Gacy.
RJW, we don’t seek to return to “less enlightened” times (unlike Anjem Choudhary, who does). His activities always were a free speech issue since he didn’t go and commit violent acts himself. It was always about speech and other forms of expression. One aspect of free speech is the freedom to express unpleasant views.
As for everyone thinking he was a clown, that is not true. One of his groups caused outrage burning the poppies that we wear to remember soldiers killed in action. The people who dismissed him are those on the left who will not hear any criticism of Islam in the belief that it is “Islamophobic” to do so. The right-wing press have always hated his guts.
No, not everyone. That was my rhetorical overkill near the end of the post. Some did. Many did. Enough people told me that that I concluded it was clueless outsider Americanism to take him seriously.
And the way I remember it, it wasn’t people who rebuke any criticism of any Islamists who said it to me, but rather people who do criticize Islamists but considered Choudary specifically a clown as opposed to a serious Islamist.
Well, it’s a start.
I knew that he was dangerous from documentaries such as “My brother the Islamist”, where you get to see what his followers are like (the brother in question is now a guest of Her Majesty). However, he seemed unthreatening when he appeared on programmes like The Big Questions, even when the presenter wouldn’t let him gloss over his views. This is because his danger lies in the power he exerts over people who believe what he believes. When you’re an unbeliever, it’s easy to say “What a load of rubbish” and forget that many people think otherwise.
Myrhinne,@6
“His activities always were a free speech issue since he didn’t go and commit violent acts himself.”
No, that’s missing the point. The test is not whether Choudary committed violent acts himself but whether or not he aided the enemy. The question is, are we, the West, legally at war with IS?
During WW2 fascist supporters were rounded up and imprisoned because of the danger that they would give aid and comfort to the enemy. So how do we treat Islamo-fascists who are convinced that they are soldiers in a 1400 year war with the Kuffars?
Well I don’t think “aiding The Enemy” is the issue either, or not the main issue. The issue is whether he’s inspiring or inciting people to do violent harm to others – murder but also rape, enslavement, torture, capture – all sorts of bad shit. IS is terrible not (solely) because it’s the enemy but because it’s the enemy of all human beings. It’s like the Nazis that way. Germany was The Enemy in WW2 but Nazis were the enemy of all human beings.
I had thought that the UK had laws concerning incitement and hate speech. Was I wrong or do they only apply selectively? Or is this just more of the british police bending into pretzels to avoid projecting islamophobia?