How rival extremisms are firing up Britain
by Jenny McCartney, UnHerd:
Anjem Choudary, a founder member of the proscribed Islamist group Al Muhijaroun, will very soon be released from jail, if press reports are to be believed. It is fair to say his return to British society will not be greeted with widespread applause.
For many years, he relished his role as Britain’s Islamist troll-in-chief, inflaming the public with statements about how when Sharia law was implemented in the UK it would spell the definitive end of democracy, pubs, bookies and the national lottery, and put the Queen in a niqab.
He praised those who carried out the 9/11 attacks in the US and refused to condemn the 2005 London tube bombings. For the most part Choudary, a former solicitor, was ingenious in treading the fine line between offensive speech and criminal offence. His prison sentence, in 2016 – a five and a half year term, of which he has served half – finally came about because he was found to have voiced explicit support for Islamic State.
Choudary’s role was much more significant, however, than simply that of a self-appointed provocateur: such was his radicalising influence that Choudary has been linked to 15 terrorist plots since 2000. His followers included Khuram Butt, who was part of the attack on London Bridge that killed eight people last year, and Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, the killers of Fusilier Lee Rigby.
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