Tim Newark
every human rights loophole he can, including demanding to stay in a half-way house near his old Islamist hot-bed of north London to be nearer his children.
Moderate Muslims must be aghast at our lenient attitude to Choudary. Especially as 34 innocent men, women and children were slaughtered last year on our streets in terrorist attacks inspired in part by his and similar teachings.
There are direct links between him and the two Muslims who stabbed to death and attempted to behead the unarmed, off-duty Fusilier Lee Rigby in 2013. Choudary cofounded Al-Muhajiroun, an extreme Islamist group that praised the mass slaughter of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and wants the West to be consumed in an Islamic caliphate from Russia to America. Banned in 2006 it re-emerged in 2009 as Islam4UK, leading demonstrations in Luton jeering at British soldiers returning from the Middle East.
The following year Choudary wanted to conduct a protest march in Wootton Bassett as coffins of British soldiers came back from Afghanistan. That was cancelled.
Predicting that Muslims will make up a majority of the population by the middle of the century, Choudary is clear
MANY moderate Muslims are afraid to speak out against the radicalism taking a grip on their neighbourhoods. Some are intimidated by threatening figures who seek to dominate their communities.
Others are genuinely alienated by some of the immodest bad behaviour they see around them. But to be honest, the answer to that latter concern is that if you are so ill at ease in our country, take yourself somewhere else. Don’t try to change ours.
It is up to the Government to take a lead in reinforcing Western values in towns and cities which seem to be pulling away from them. Islamic schools and mosques cannot carry on preaching cultural separatism. As for those extremists, such as Choudary, who consistently encourage and promote violent, treacherous acts against our nation, why not strip them of citizenship?
We have done it to Britons who went to fight in Syria for Islamic State. Why not for those who stay at home but support equally barbaric acts?
The symbolism would go down well with moderate Muslims who look to us for strong leadership in these anxious times. We cannot carry on being a safe harbour for those who want to see our values trampled and spattered in our blood.
How can we be tolerant to those who are intolerant of us?
‘For too long he was treated as a joke’