Tag: Islam4UK

Muslim Extremists March For Sharia Zones – 2011

Muslim Extremists March For Sharia Zones: Today Anjem Choudary is due to be sentenced after having been found guilty of directing and encouraging support for the terrorist organisation al-Muhajiroun banned in the UK in 2005. Choudary whose home is in Ilford could face a life sentence.

Muslim Extremists March For Sharia Zones

The prosecution came about after a joint investigation by MI5, Scotland Yard, the New York Police Department, and Canadian police collecting evidence. His home had been bugged and online events were monitored. Police had been conducting separate investigations into his activities in the UK, US and Canada and came together leading to his trial at Woolwich Crown Court where he and a follower were found guilty last week.

Muslim Extremists March For Sharia Zones

Choudary had been a student of Omar Bakri Muhammad and had helped form the Islamist al-Muhajiroun organisation in Britain in 1996. This was proscribed in the UK in 2005 following the London Bombings, but Choudary carried on his activities under groups with various other names, including Al Ghurabaa, proscribed in 2006, and Islam4UK, banned in 2010.

Muslim Extremists March For Sharia Zones

These groups carried out a number of controversial protests to gain wide media coverage, and the East London protest by Muslims Against Crusades on Saturday 30th July 2011 by around 70 men was outnumbered by the press covering it – including me.

Muslim Extremists March For Sharia Zones

This was one of quite a few events where I photographed Choudary, and it appeared to many of us that Choudary, if not actually encouraged by MI5 was certainly being allowed to continue his activities as a way the authorities could keep tag on Islamist activities in the UK.

I heard Choudary speaking in public and was sceptical about the claims he made about ‘Muslim Armies’ but a couple of years later ISIS made them reality. And in June 2014 or shortly after, “Choudary pledged allegiance to the Islamic State’s “caliphate,” and its “caliph” (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi) “‘via Skype, text and phone’ during dinner at a restaurant in London.”

This was a step too far for the British state and in August 2015 he was charged under section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000 for inviting support of a proscribed organisation and finally convicted in July 2016. He was sentenced to 5 years six months in prison.

He left prison in October 2018, but there were many conditions attached to his release and it was only in October 2021 that he was fully able to resume his campaigning online. The current conviction relates to his actions since then.

My London Diary has a long account of the march march from Leyton to Walthamstow calling for Sharia Zones by ‘Muslims Against Crusades’, calling for the setting up of Sharia Controlled Zones in the UK which ‘Islamic rules’ would be enforced by Muslims, along with many photographs.

Although the organisers had told the press there would be a thousand marchers, there were well under a hundred. And although the leaflet handed out by the marchers claimed support from a wide range of organisation, as I explained it was in fact “only supported by a very small circle of him and his fellow extremists.” Very few of the Muslims on the streets it went through showed support and rather more made clear that they were opposed.

My report also has some coverage of several small counter-demonstrations by the English Nationalist Alliance and other right-wing groups, some of which were stopped by police. As the march arrived for the final rally there were some offensive shouts by some ENA supporters but their protest was otherwise peaceful.

During the final rally there were some minor scuffles in a large crowd of Muslim youths as some objected to the speeches by Muslims Against Crusades, but police moved in quickly. Some photographers close to the scene had their cameras grabbed or were pushed as they tried to photograph what was happening, but I was some distance away.

Of course there were no Sharia Controlled Zones in London, just a few notices like these put up by this small group which had no effect. But my picture was widely pirated on at least 86 web sites around the world, used by right-wing extremists to spread the myth that such things existed. DCMA requests got some of them taken down, but they just appeared elsewhere.

Much more about the march at Muslim Extremists March For Sharia Zones.

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31st October 2009

“My Son (Paul Calvert) went to prison to lose his liberty not his life!”

In 2009 the 31st October was also a Saturday, and a busy day for me in London, though today I’ll be staying home and only going to the UFFC annual memorial on-line event which starts at 1pm. In 2009, the UFFC had also decided not to march, but groups from some of the families of those killed by police had come with their banners to protest opposite Downing St.

Earlier I’d photographed a mass protest ride by motorcyclists, angry at Westminster Council’s imposition just over a year earlier of parking charges for motorbikes as an ‘experimental measure’ which has become permanent as a good money-earner for the council. It did seem ridiculous that bikers were being charged more for an annual permit than owners of small cars when 8 motorbikes can be parked in one car space. Although still contributing to pollution in the city, motorbikes take up considerably less road space too, their use reducting congestion which is a major factor in producing the lethal levels of air pollution that result in almost 10,000 premature deaths in London as a whole.

 I’d gone on the photograph two groups protesting against the planned ‘March for Sharia’ by Anjem Choudary’s Islam4UK (a 2009 rebrand and relaunch of the radical Islamic group Al Muhajiroun, disbanded in 2004 to avoid proscription). Choudary, widely believed to have been cultivated by the UK security forces, probably never actually intended the group to march but announced as a provocation, always intended as a ‘no show’. He issued a statement around the time it was due to begin that the organisers had cancelled the march because of security concerns.

The two groups had gathered around the statue of Eros at Piccadilly Circus, although the information I’d heard from Islam4UK was that they would march from Parliament Square to Trafalgar Square via Downing St, around 600 yards away from the counter-protesters. There was certainly a lot of misinformation around before the event, and both Muslims4UK and The Islamic Society of Britain had called off plans for a counter-demo, possibly anticipating there was not to be a march. The larger group of protesters were supporters of British Muslims for Secular Democracy.

Also present were a number supporters of extreme right anti-Islamic groups including the English Democrats, March For England and a few from the EDL. Later I found that more of the EDL were wandering around the Parliament Square area where the March4Shariah had been planned to start.

As I walked down from Piccadilly Circus towards Downing St and went through Trafalgar Square I met several angels, and accepted the offer of a hug, something we are currently rather short of, from one of the Angels of Love, Compassion, Wisdom, Patience, Courage, Happines or Harmony who gave me a picture of an angel on the reverse of which was written “I purify my mind by affirming my worth and honouring my choices for love.” I thanked her but refused the offer of a rose as I needed my hands for my cameras.

After talking with the ‘United Friends and Families‘ of those who have died in suspicious circumstances in police custody, prison and ‘secure’ mental health facilities who were protesting at Downing St, I continued down to Parliament Square, where I met with other photographers and journalists who had been waiting for the March4Shariah to begin. None of those from Islam4UK had turned up and I went home.

United Families and Friends
Be With an Angel
Moderates gainst March4Sharia
Right Wing against March4Sharia
Protest Ride at Bike Parking Charge

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