He has enjoyed the benefit of an advanced education, and he could work for a living. But he and his evidently estranged family all receive public assistance while he preaches jihad and shari’a law on the Internet and on the streets of Britain.
This Is London: The unholy past of the Muslim cleric demanding the Pope’s execution
(h/t: coldwarrior)
…This week he stood outside Westminster Cathedral in central London to call for the execution of the Pope as punishment for ‘insulting Islam’. He fulminated against Pope Benedict XVl, adding: “Whoever insults the message of Mohammed is going to be subject to capital punishment.”
It’s a long way from his days as a medical student at Southampton University, where, friends say, he drank, indulged in casual sex, smoked cannabis and even took LSD. He called himself ‘Andy’ and was famed for his ability to drink a pint of cider in a few seconds.
One former acquaintance said: “At parties, like the rest of us, he was rarely without a joint. The morning after one party, I can remember him getting all the roaches (butts) from the spliffs we had smoked the night before out of the ashtrays, cutting them up and making a new one out of the leftovers.
“He would say he was a Muslim and was proud of his Pakistani heritage, but he did-n’t seem to attend any of the mosques in Southampton, and I only knew of him having white girlfriends. He certainly shared a bed with them.”
On one occasion, ‘Andy’ and a friend took LSD together. The friend said: “We took far too much and were hallucinating for 20 hours.”
The only sign of religious fervour came in flashes of anger over Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. A friend from that time said: “You didn’t want to get him started on that. He would go on and on about the fatwa and he supported calls for the book to be banned. But he would have a glass of cider in his hand when he was carrying on about it.”
Choudary failed his first-year exams, switched from medicine to commercial law and did his final year as a law student at Guildford, from 1990 to 1991, before moving to London.
There his legal career stalled briefly and he filled in his time by teaching English as a foreign language in one of the many colleges off Oxford Street.
But eventually, he found a position with a firm of solicitors and began completing his qualifications to become a lawyer. His personal life blossomed too.
In 1996, aged 29, he married Rubana Akhtar and started a family. The couple, who settled in East London, have a daughter aged eight, and sons aged six and one.
Then he met the cleric Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammed at a mosque in Woolwich. Bakri, who is now banned from returning to Britain from Lebanon, had formed Al Muhajiroun, committed to the creation of a worldwide Islamic state, and Choudary quickly became a leading light in the group and its successor organisation, Al Ghurabaa.
He is no longer a practising solicitor and has left his wife and children to concentrate on his extreme brand of Islam. It was Choudary who organised the Danish Embassy protests over the cartoons of the prophet Mohammed earlier this year, at which demonstrators dressed as suicide bombers and banners proclaimed: ‘Behead Those Who Insult Islam’.
He lauded the September 11 hijackers as ‘magnificent martyrs’ and praised Asif Hanif, the British suicide bomber who killed three in Tel Aviv in 2003.
After the July 7 atrocities in London, he vowed he would not tell the police if he knew a terror attack was being planned and urged Muslims to defend themselves against perceived attacks by ‘whatever means they have at their disposal’.
His shocking pronouncements could be dismissed by some as the rantings of a mind clouded by religious fervour but Choudary has an audience and, at a time of increasing disaffection among young British Muslims, his activities are carefully monitored by Special Branch.
A security source said: “He is not seen as premier league because he is so conspicuous. He is seen as an irritant but with a potential to inspire impressionable youngsters to go that one stage further.”
Despite his hatred of all things British – he says: “If British means adopting British values, then I don’t think we can adopt British values. I’m a Muslim living in Britain. I have a British passport, but that’s a travel document to me” – he and his family live on state benefits.
Rubana is said by friends to claim £1,700 a month in housing benefit and income support while Choudary has also claimed £202 a month in income support.
[…]
Read it all.
This is Choudary’s group, “Muslims Against Crusades”, in action:
EDL – MAC burn American flag outside US Embassy at 9/11 Memorial Service (Today 11-09-2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwY-IrG0J2M/Uploaded by melanoma321 on Sep 11, 2011
‘Muslims Against Crusades’ burn the American flag outside the US Embassy today – 9/11/2011
Demotix.com: EDL members stabbed on Edgware Road, London after 9/11 clashes
Video courtesy of ‘presstvlondon’
One of my correspondents asks:
Do you still think it’s about trying to win their hearts and minds?
It’s about remaining alert, prepared, vigilant and stronger than they are because that’s all that’s stopping them from doing us more harm. They hate us for who we are and our freedoms, not for what we do. Let’s don’t be Neville Chamberlain trying to talk Hitler out of his mad attempt to conquer the world.
They burn our flag and threaten us as we solemnly commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Are you convinced yet that Islam considers itself at war with us whether or not we consider ourselves at war with Islam? These are not fringe radicals. They are the future of the USA if we lose heart to resist.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
The living apart bit is probably about increasing the benefits they can claim. This ruse maximizes their income. What is disgraceful is that the British Government doesn’t do something about an able-bodied man living off the hard-pressed taxpayers of the UK. It’s an absolute disgrace.
To our friend Kevin Carroll of the EDL…we know what you’re going through in the fight for freedom. It seems to be the same everywhere Islam raises its ugly head. The collusion of government and police siding with sedition and the likes of Anjem Choudury is treachery on the inside.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the English freedom fighters.
Do you still think it’s about trying to win their hearts and minds?
Sadly, there’s nothing to win. Period.
The only Muslims of use to Western civilization are those like Wafa Sultan who are voluntary apostates and anti-Islamic firebrands that bear all of the concomitant mortal risks of apostasy away from Islam.
Taqiyya irrevocably damns Islam.
Taqiyya makes it so there are no Muslim hearts or minds worth winning. How can you tell? How can you possibly ever know with any degree of surety that, under your tutelage, a Muslim has genuinely converted away from Islam?
If anything, should Islam begin to crumble, there will arise a flood of Muslims who appear to apostatize specifically in order to carry on jihad while marching under the false colors of conversion. There can be no “moderation” or “reformation” of Islam. Any such thing will always carry the risk of insincere or false apostatizing.
This does not even address the possibility of SJS (Sudden Jihad Syndrome) of apostates who suddenly, and unexpectedly or unpredictably, return to Islam with a jihadist fervor that inspires them to commit the greatest atrocity possible within their means.
All of this beggars one simple fact:
There is nothing of worth to salvage from Islam.
Taqiyya alone guarantees that Islam will forever remain infected by jihad, purdah, FGM (Female Genital Mutilation), polygamy, terrorism; along with every last bacilli of counterproductive, criminal and misogynistic behavior.
Name one thing that redeems Islam. Name one thing about it worth salvaging. There is none.
Islam, alone, is to blame for this state of affairs and bears sole responsibility for which it will have to pay with its very existence. There is no other way.