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.

Since then, Choudary’s influence has been asphyxiated by social media bans, bail conditions and the fact that large numbers of his former followers who left for the Levant are now dead or locked up — either in Britain or in the makeshift Kurdish-run prisons of Northern Syria. Despite this latest conviction, to a large extent the damage has already been done: by ALM’s activism in the 2000s and 2010s, but even going back to the arrival of Islamist exiles in the Britain and the West during the middle of last century.

To this end, given his unapologetically incendiary activism, Choudary has been a more comfortable target for the state and commentariat to pursue and condemn than much of the wider Islamist landscape. So provocative were his public statements, even other Islamist groups normally quick to run interference and allege Islamophobia when the state acts against extremists have been keen to keep their distance. While there can be no doubting Choudary’s influence over the years, the challenge posed by both Salafi jihadism and the broader Islamist movement to Britain is, and always has been, much more than just the antics of ALM.

While the state has been pursuing Choudary, Britain’s various other Islamist currents have continued their work more or less unmolested by either authorities or a civil society largely paralysed in the face of this theocratic challenge. ALM and the Salafi jihadist movement may be in a diminished state, depleted by deaths and arrests, but the bigger and more worrying question for British democracy is whether or not this activism has simply been rendered irrelevant by the increasing influence and mainstream appeal of other manifestations of Islamist ideology. If this is indeed the case, tackling Choudary will have been the easy part.


Liam Duffy is a researcher, speaker and trainer in counter-terrorism based in London.

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