Obviously I was never going to see eye to eye with the benefitchogging Muslim hate cleric Anjem Choudary, but I didn’t realise how many of his own community think he’s dreadful, too. Few of the cafes on his home turf — London’s East End — will accommodate the bearded 42-year-old firebrand and self-styled “most hated man in Britain”. Indeed, just after he flounces out of our interview in one of the few that will — a halal diner in Whitechapel — a waiter asks me: “Is that the coffin man? I can’t bear him. All he wants is fame, and the easiest way to get that is say that Christian people should be persecuted. I don’t see much difference between him and Nick Griffin.”
Two weeks ago Choudary, a British-born Muslim of Pakistani origin and the leader of the now-outlawed extremist group Islam4UK, caused a storm when he announced a plan to march 500 coffins through Wootton Bassett in Wiltshire, a town that regularly honours the British soldiers killed in Afghanistan and repatriated to nearby RAF Lyneham.
He wanted to “highlight the tens of thousands of Muslim dead in Afghanistan”, he says now, squeezing into a booth. “But as soon as I had the idea — and it was only ever an idea — Gordon Brown said it was disgusting, abhorrent, and that the home secretary, Alan Johnson, would see to any request to ban it.”
As it turned out, Choudary ended up cancelling, but not before Johnson had taken steps to proscribe Islam4UK under anti-terrorism legislation. Still, when we meet on Wednesday afternoon, just eight hours before the ban comes into effect, Choudary remains defiant. “Business as usual,” he barks. “I’ll be going to debates, going into the street, having meetings . . .”
Indeed, he’s got five followers in tow right now, a noisy rabble of bearded young men, who pile into the cafe, ordering lattes, fielding calls, telling me about their conversions to Islam and recent trips to the Middle East, “on holiday”, emphasises one, while the others giggle.
Well, they won’t be giggling for long; they’ll be winding down Islam4UK, shutting the website and ... that’s pretty much all. The group is “more an affiliation of ideas”, says one, so there aren’t any formal tokens of membership such as cards or fees. Amid concerns that the group will simply change its name and continue, Choudary, who says he learnt about the ban from “the News of the World on Sunday”, insists he has “no option” but to do just that.
“Look, Audrey” — he calls me Audrey throughout the interview, although he has demanded to see my press card — “I have no choice but to propagate Islam and invite people. Certain things are obviously illegal so the government will be monitoring . . .”
Like what? According to the 2006 act under which Choudary’s group has been proscribed, it is illegal to promote terrorism or to glorify terrorist acts. One Whitehall insider indicated last Sunday that members of the group had been making posts on the web in contravention of the act; in the past, Choudary himself has been accused of posting incitements on the internet under a false name. The Home Office has not given any precise indication of Islam4UK’s crime. “They haven’t contacted me,” Choudary says. So what does he think are the reasons for the ban?
“Well, no reasons really,” he pffs, “but both you and I know, Audrey, they banned us because they were embarrassed because of Wootton Bassett. But also because of our continuous exposing of the British government, our call for imposing the sharia, the fact that we advocate not co-operating with the police in their fight against terrorism.”
Choudary has been shut down before: a previous group he belonged to, Al-Muhajiroun, was banned in 2004. Jointly led by Choudary and Omar Bakri Mohammed, a fundamentalist cleric from Syria known as the Tottenham Ayatollah until he was excluded from Britain by Charles Clarke in 2005, Al-Muhajiroun had referred to the 9/11 bombers as “the magnificent 19".
The group has been linked to several terrorists, including Asif Hanif, the British suicide bomber who blew himself up outside a supermarket in Tel Aviv in 2003, and members of the “fertiliser bomb plot” who had aimed to target the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent, the Ministry of Sound nightclub and the UK’s gas network before they were rumbled by MI5.
Choudary, who has no formal Islamic qualifications or right to call himself a “sharia judge” as he does, first came to public attention 10 years ago when he was linked to the recruitment of Muslim trainees leaving Britain to fight abroad, training that involved “guns and live ammunition”, he said at the time. He has since organised more camps, protests and marches, shared platforms with terrorist fundraisers and said Lord Mandelson would be stoned to death for being gay.
So far, so Spooks. But the funniest thing is that he wasn’t always like this. Former friends recall how, as a student at Southampton University, Andy — as he was then known — led a typical undergraduate life, downing pints, smoking dope, ogling porn and sleeping with Christian girls: grave crimes under sharia. Photographs show him swigging booze and reading Mayfair. What made him see the light? Oddly, Choudary, a qualified solicitor, isn’t keen to say.
It turns out he’s not up for discussing his benefits, either. Last week it was revealed that the jobless Ilford-based father of four, who is allegedly separated from his wife, claims £25,740 annually from the state, a detail that rather undermines his line about the awfulness of Britain, a place he describes as a “dictatorship in which the majority are dictating on the minority”. He is no fan of democracy but feels the ban is an infringement of free speech, that Britain is a place of “alcohol, free mixing, the man and the woman are not covering properly in the public arena, exploitation of the gender through promiscuity, homosexuality and fornication, gambling, usury . . .”
Wouldn’t he be happier elsewhere? “I was born here,” he protests. “Why can’t I be here?” That’s not the issue. The issue is where best to spread the word. Because, honestly, the UK is a tough pitch. “Maybe I’ll go to Wootton Bassett,” he says, looking around the table for a laugh.
I ask him to be serious. “Seriously ... I don’t think I need to leave Britain; I think that we can live here and propagate Islam and one day we will implement the sharia here.” He is vague about the timeframe but more specific about the method. “Public awareness and possibly a military coup,” he says. Since I don’t like coups, I ask how he would convince me. He looks confused, partly because he is trying hard not to bump knees with me under the table — as a strict Muslim he is not allowed to touch women in public — so I clarify: would he make me wear the hijab?
“Look, Audrey, look ... I believe in a system where a woman is not exploited because of her gender. Where she is treated like a mother, a daughter, as a sister, as a wife, as opposed to a sex object.”
Right, but what if I don’t want to wear it? He sighs: “You only feel that because of your previous thinking. The head covering is not a pressure on women. She will wear that in obedience to her Lord, not because her man tells her to. The woman in the West is dictated to by the fashion and cosmetics industry and the people in charge of these industries are men. What you see outside — I can go down Whitechapel High Street with you — billboards, both the man and the woman are scantily clad and they are just selling tomatoes or a car. This is exploitation of the man and the woman for monetary gain. That would never happen under Islam.”
How far would he go to implement sharia? “How far? From Land’s End to John o’ Groats,” he quips. Would he advocate jihad? “That’s not really relevant, is it?”
You might help your cause if you encouraged people to protest peacefully and renounced any links to Al-Qaeda. “Well, yeah, I mean if you think I’m the official spokesman, then so be it,” he says, waving his hand in irritation. “Al-Qaeda today is a phenomenon. A phenomenon of working to establish the sharia. A phenomenon of resistance of occupation in Muslim lands. A phenomenon of resisting oppression and tyranny of the hegemony of western religions in our countries. But if you’re talking about administrative links, that Osama Bin Laden is on my mobile phone, then I’m afraid that’s not the case.”
So he would support terrorism? “If terrorism is people who want to establish the sharia, then I’m the biggest terrorist around. But I’ve got to go.” He gets up and starts walking out. “No, I’m not coming back — I can see the direction your questions are going, Audrey.”
I’m not Audrey. I’m Camilla. “Camilla?” He looks puzzled. “What does that mean?” It’s Latin for servant girl, I answer.
“I’d say that’s quite appropriate actually,” he says, and sweeps out with his five boys, leaving me to pay. Which is funny, because I bet under sharia the man should pick up the bill.