Islamism

Why Hasn’t Anjum Choudhry Been Arrested?

The Evening Standard reports:

JUST days after Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced tough new measures to name and shame foreign-based extremists and prevent them coming from abroad to stir up hatred in the UK, firebrand preacher Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad cocked a snook at her new initiative, the Evening Standard can reveal.

More than 200 Muslims at a packed public meeting in Tower Hamlets were told by organiser Anjem Choudary: “We have a special surprise, a special treat for you. Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad will be joining us on a live feed from Lebanon.” He added: “As Muslims, we will not submit to any man-made law, any government, or any prime minister – Bush or Brown – or [to] Jacqui Smith. We submit to Allah.”

Choudary, who with Bakri led the fanatical Al-Muhajiroun organisation – notorious for its glorification of terrorism and the 9/11 attacks before its banning and dissolution in 2004 -warmed up the crowd, two Sundays ago, with his own inflammatory rhetoric.

“It is our religious obligation to prepare ourselves both physically and mentally and rise up against Muslim oppression and take what is rightfully ours,” he said. “Jihad is a duty and a struggle and an obligation that lies upon the shoulders of us all. We will not rest until the flag of Allah and the flag of Islam is raised above 10 Downing Street.”

To loud cheers of “Allah Akbar” [God is great], he railed: “There are three types of Muslims, those in prison, those of us that are on our way [to prison] and non-practising Muslims. Brothers and sisters, if you do not fear your home being raided by the Kufar [non-believer] police, you are not enforcing the Sharia.”

The meeting took place in a room rented to Al Muhajiroun – using the website “Islam for the UK” – by Tower Hamlets council. Yet, amazingly, nobody appears to know what to do about this:

The four-hour meeting, organised by Choudary using a website called Islam For The UK, took place right under the noses of Tower Hamlets council in a community arts centre the council rents out at £78 an hour. But neither the council nor the police nor the Home Office appeared to realise that Bakri had broadcast live into the heart of London.

Were the organisers – and perhaps Tower Hamlets council – in breach of the law for allowing Bakri to speak?

Nobody seemed to know. A Home Office spokeswoman said: “This appears to be something that the new measures, which only prevent individuals from coming here and spreading their hate in person, do not cover.”

Later, in a prepared statement, the Home Office said: “The UK is determined to stop those who spread extremism through preaching violent messages in our communities, but it is for the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to investigate any breach of the law.”

When told of this, a Metropolitan Police spokesman was nonplussed. “It’s the Home Office that makes the laws,” he said. “If it doesn’t know whether something is against the law, then who does?”

This should not be rocket science. In 2006, the Government banned Al-Ghurabaa and The Saved Sect, which is what Al Muhajiroun at that time called itself. They’re on the list of proscribed terrorist organisations. There is no difference between the personnel, the organisation, or the message of those groups, and “Islam4UK”.  Indeed, the site gives Choudary and Omar Bakri Mohammed’s phone numbers as contacts.

There’s only one person who we can trust to get the Government to act: the local MP, George Galloway.

Galloway has a mission to clean away the East End’s filth. Here he is on the subject of “pole dancing”:

George is challenging the apparently enabling attitude the council’s planning department has to strip, lap and pole dancing clubs which are currently operating in Tower Hamlets without appropriate planning permission. The council’s attitude, which seems to be that there is nothing they can do even when planning permission has clearly been flouted, is in contrast to that of Greenwich council which recently stopped a lap dancing club opening an hour before it was officially due to do so because it lacked appropriate planning permission. George is enthusiastically pursuing a campaign to rid Tower Hamlets of these dens of iniquity especially in residential areas and areas close to places of worship.

In fact, George Galloway has been threatened with a lynching by an Islamist group that he is not in coalition with:

“I was meeting people who live in the flats. Hizb-ut-Tahrir suddenly filled the room and blocked the door. I tried speaking calmly. They then said I was parading as a false prophet and served a sentence of death on me. They were claiming I was representing myself as a false deity and for this apostasy I would be sentenced to the gallows,” he said.

Oh, hang on a second. It wasn’t Hizb ut Tahrir – it was Al Muhajiroun! Easy mistake to make – they were the same organisation until 1996.

Well I was in a small tenants hall under a tower block with seven or eight local residents, when between 30 and 50 – I thought nearer 50, the police think 30 – Islamic extremists from a group called Al Muhajiroun came into the room, they locked the door and proceeded to put me on trial for apostasy

In any case, I can think of no reason why George Galloway would have any difficulty at all in calling, loudly and clearly, for the Government to enforce the law that it passed specifically for the purpose of punishing Al Muhajiroun, and indeed all those who glorify terrorism.

If you are his constituent, why not give him a call?