A picture of our criminal naivety
by Douglas Murray, Mailonline:
Ten years ago, DOUGLAS MURRAY was publicly confronted by Anjem Choudary. Standing adoringly next to the hate cleric was an accomplice of the London Bridge murderer. Why ARE we so lax about terror in our midst?
With a notorious reputation for whipping up anti-British Islamist hate, you could be forgiven for thinking that Anjem Choudary is like every other frothing-at-the-mouth Jihadi extremist.
But he’s not, as I learnt in 2009 when an invitation to debate him turned into a tense stand-off on a central London street in broad daylight.
As you’ll see in the photo on this page, Choudary didn’t scream at me. He didn’t get up close into my face. In fact, he hardly raised his voice.
Instead, mimicking the manner of a highly learned imam — which he is not — he tried to give out the impression of being a perfectly reasonable fellow. He knew that the thugs around him were doing the intimidating for him.
But as the twinkle in his eye that day revealed, he knew — and I knew — that he was playing a deadly but careful game.
A game intended to keep him just on the right side of the law and stay out of prison.
What both of us knew was that in private it was another matter.
Because behind closed doors he was already proving to be one of the most adept terrorist recruiters in this country.
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