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July 31, 2024 - 3:00pm
Yesterday, without ever having directed or plotted — much less committed — an act of violence, Anjem Choudary was jailed for a minimum of 28 years for terrorism offences. He was found guilty of continuing to direct the proscribed organisation, al-Muhajiroun (ALM).
Pointing out that Choudary himself has never been involved in anything resembling actual terrorism is not to downplay or deny the fact that in Britain, perhaps no single figure has done as much to spread the ideology of Salafi jihadism. It is this doctrine to which very real terror groups such as al-Qaeda, Islamic State and al-Shabaab belong. And all of these groups have recruited British extremists, many of whom would have once been in Choudary’s orbit.
In fact, hundreds — if not thousands — of those who travelled to Syria to join jihadist groups came through ALM or one of the various “Sharia4” copycat organisations in Europe: such as “Sharia4Belgium”, “Sharia4Holland” or Danish group “Call to Islam”.
These branches very much worked from the Choudary playbook: a demanding existence trying to follow sharia away from the cameras, and incendiary provocation in front of them. ALM, for example, burned poppies, while Forsane Alizza (Knights of Pride) threw stones at McDonalds in France to protest against Jewish influence and “Satanic” laïcité. Similarly, Sharia4Belgium warned that when the country becomes an Islamic state, landmarks such as the Atomium would be destroyed — just as the Taliban had blown up the Bamiyan Buddhas. As one member put it, they wanted to “make unbelievers a bit angry”.
The provocation strategy turned off the majority but it also artificially inflated the influence of what were in reality small cadres of activists, and put the ideology of Salafi jihadism in front of more eyeballs than would have ever been possible through proselytism alone. All along, Choudary was more than happy to play up to his cartoon villain persona, appearing on mainstream news channels with a cheeky grin while cracking jokes about 9/11.
The view of Choudary as something of a novelty truly crumbled in 2013, after soldier Lee Rigby was murdered in plain sight in London by two former ALM followers. The following year, Islamic State declared itself a “Caliphate” and it became abundantly clear in the West that carving out territory to rule according to 7th century sensibilities was not, in fact, so much of a joke.
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SubscribeThe very obvious fact that Choudary has only just been sentenced, decades into his very open activism, tells the story of how “civil society” has utterly neglected to maintain the essential ability to defend itself. I think we know which sections of the political class, legal and media establishments the author refers to when using that term.
Meanwhile, rioting springs up in Southport, of all places, in response to an unchallenged narrative regarding the motivations of an attack on innocents. “Civil society” is culpable for these events.
The only people culpable for the lawlessness in Southport are the braindead far right morons who chose to attack a mosque.
Why am I not surprised that our kid would stick up for them?
the braindead far right morons who chose to attack a mosque
Yes. Why a mosque? Surely the Norwegian embassy would be a more relevant target?
Equally relevant.
Unless you are an irredeemable bigot of course.
Yeah Norwegians… who needs them! With their love of fishing and patterned sweaters….
Yeah, that Anders Brevik was a real peacenik….
Oh wait, he was one of your guys and he loved murdering children! Weird how you forgot about him!!!
he loved murdering children
No, that’s your chums. Brevik loved murdering socialists.
And that makes it all OK for you, doesn’t it Hugh? Even though most of those “socialists” were children.
Even when I don’t think you scum can get any lower you manage to surprise me…
Did you actually read what i’d written? And/or comprehend it?
I seriously think your issue is an inability to process complex ideas. I kid you not.
His issue is that he is a troll. One must never feed trolls; in other words, don’t engage and ignore.
Braindead? Well if that ain’t the kettle…
The very obvious fact that Choudary has only just been sentenced, decades into his very open activism,
Not sure, but wasn’t he also jailed between 2016 and 2018?
No it is not our ‘civil society’ that is to blame here – our ‘civil society’ would have seen Blair, Bush and Cameron rightly prosecuted for destroying the secular states where these jihadis went, fought and returned with their blowback. Our ‘civil society ‘would have cut the legs from the arguments of Choudary and his like, by not acting with such egregious, cynical, murderous hypocrisy when it came to anything we did in the Middle East.
It’s our Establishment who are responsible for this, not us.
Choudary is the tip of an iceberg; UK is the Titanic.
…is only the tip of Europes Islamification problem.
Europe’s Islamification problem, at least at this point, actually a leftist problem.
Exactly. It’s the Champagne Socialists who cry ‘far right’ and ‘bigot’ about anyone trying to resist Britain being the ‘house of war’. They are all accessories to each new bloodbath
too little too late, this man has been spewing bile from his HQ in Ilford at his little clubs and mosques for decades with impunity. Seems only with the tacit support of US security forces that the UK finally has the courage to charge him. Same story with the 7/7 attack, he was linked to this too and, despite tracking the terrorists responsible (buying industrial quantities of hydrogen peroxide without question) MI5 still didn’t have sufficient evidence to call a halt to their plans. Same with Abu Hamza, UK didn’t have the stomach to prosecute him either without US support. So, yes, this man is history, it’s his legacy of evil that needs confronting.
There are Imam’s up and down the country preaching hate and jihad every day who are allowed to go unchallenged. One must ask the questions, why does the state not act and why, given that we are told the majority of Muslims are moderate in their view, do the latter not denounce them and show that they really are moderate which would do much to counter the “Islamophobia” they claim to suffer.
Sam, Absolutely. I can’t understand why Britain and the West won’t respond. Tommy Robinson is not the bogyman the state should be chasing. Have I missed something? Have we all missed something? And now we have a Labour government which is going to crack down on….The Far Right thought to be EDL who cause less trouble than EDF! What is this guilt trip the Left seem to embrace? It looks very much like the Far White are going to be silenced and for why? I’m baffled.
Why doesn’t Britain just refuse to allow immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa? Muslims in America have assimilated and are proud Americans. The exception is the large population of Somalis in Minnesota and Michigan. They refuse to assimilate. ( Ilhan Omar, the Squad member, is Somali.) Sweden has received thousands of Somalis in the past seven to five years, and they have terrorized the the Swedes. I think Britain and Europe need to slam the door shut and throw out the radical Islamists. I know. Not practical.
“Muslims in America have assimilated and are proud Americans.”
I cannot agree with that statement. The majority of Arabs who immigrated early on (first part of the 20th century) did assimilate, but they were mostly Christians. Have you been to Dearborn, Michigan? That place is a nightmare, and the residents are not Somalis, but Arabs from the Middle East and North Africa. Dearborn is the US Jihad Capital, an unpleasant distinction, where Hamas support is rampant, and people were cheering and dancing in the streets on 7. Many current or one-time Dearborn residents have been convicted of terror-related crimes, and support for terrorism has been a problem for decades. I would not call that assimilation; quite the contrary.
You’re right. I shouldn’t have said the Somalis were in Michigan. Dearborn is represented by Congresswoman Rashid (can’t remember her first name), who is Palestinian. She has told Arabs that they shouldn’t vote in the presidential election unless Biden and Harris say they stand with the Palestinians and quit supporting Israel. That could mean that Harris would lose Michigan.
And meantime some nutter of similar ilk has a training center for would-be jihadis going on in Buckinghamshire and is openly raising millions to buy an island to found what would presumably be another boot camp.
Nothing to see here, move on, move on.
Those Jihadi groups in Syria were the ones that the odious Hilary Benn wanted the RAF to ‘do our bit’ for in 2013. They were why David Cameron was unable during that debate to identify who the ‘moderate rebels’ were in the Syrian Civil War having just destroyed the Libyan state. Those Jihadi groups were the ones that Obama & Clinton’s CIA funneled billions of dollars to with their Operation Timber Sycamore. They are the jihadi groups who provided the evidence for the alleged Assad chemical weapons attacks that our entire media class declared so convincing that we absolutely had to intervene (they have now been comprehensively debunked by the heroic Ian Henderson and Brendan Whelan – the OPCW whistleblowers).
If our Establishment was in any way consistent in it’s punishment for supporting violent jihadi extremists the world over, Choudary would have been elevated to the House of Lords and spent the last couple of years as our Foreign Secretary.
“…even going back to the arrival of Islamist exiles in the Britain and the West during the middle of last century.”
It was important to note this fact. I wonder how many people remember or realize that Ayatollah Khomeini was living in exile (whatever that means) in France in 1979 before heading back to Iran to oversee the installation of the current islamic order we see there today.
Following the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, and the thousands of Muslims on the streets calling for murder, the reality of Islam was graphically exposed. The UK should immediately have launched a full open and public inquiry into the principles, preaching, practices, personalities, funding etc behind it. Instead we have the utterly ridiculous situation where ‘cherished religious beliefs’ are protected.
Had such an inquiry taken place it would have found that Islam’s foundational texts all agree that a fully Muslim life, whatever that means, can only be lived in a fully Muslim state, i.e., one governed by Sharia. The degree to which Muslims assimilate in a secular society is proportional to the degree to which they are no longer devout Muslims.
Problem is though, was he perceived as a clown by his intended audience? I wouldn’t think so. Hitler behaved like a clown in my opinion and yet he was idolised in the 1930’s Germany. This is a good sentence not only because he deserves it but also for the fact that it gives a warning to the would be soldiers of fortune inspired by the Islamist ideology.