I find myself defending the vile Anjem Choudary.
The radical cleric Anjem Choudary has been charged with inviting support for the terrorist group Isis.
Choudary, 48, of, Ilford, east London, has been charged with committing the alleged offence between 29 June last year and 6 March.
Mohammed Rahman, 32, of Whitechapel, east London, has been charged with committing the same alleged offence in the same time frame.
They are accused with inviting support for the banned terrorist organisation through lectures which were published online.
He really is a nasty piece of work. But here’s the thing… Any society that bans free speech deserves to wither and die. Liberty, if it is to mean anything, means allowing people you despise to speak their bile freely. Then we can challenge, laugh and ridicule them. For that is how you deal with the Choudarys of this world. You do not give their ideas credence – and banning them does just that. What needs a jolly good whack with the ban stick are the stupid hate speech laws that stop us ridiculing Choudary and his absurd beliefs.
So well done, HMG, you have done the Islamist’s job for them. You have given them a validity they do not deserve and you have given them a martyr. You fucking idiots.
Idiocy appears to be a prerequisite for public office these days: one day, it will all end in tears.
I tend to be in agreement with you on this, however shouting the fuckwit down is you know bordering on not just racism, but about a goosestep away from Jew gassing. That said, I’m of the opinion that Choudary is an “Asset”, and the only way this cunt has been left alone to spout his shit is he’s in the pay of the intelligence services. He’s either compromised or out lived his usefulness. Either way it doesn’t bode well for him.
“… however shouting the fuckwit down is you know bordering on not just racism, but about a goosestep away from Jew gassing.”
No, no it isn’t. We allow him to have his say and we have our say in response. Since we have sanity on our side he comes off looking like an idiot, or a violent psychopath or both. Conflating the criticism of bad ideas with racism is also stupid by the way.
I hope he was highly successful, the more nutters who join IS and qualify for their celestial virgins the better as far as I’m concerned.
There is a difference, morally and legally, between free speech and incitement, which is what Choudhary has been charged with. As a qualified lawyer he has been very careful in what he has said, but in inciting his followers to support a banned, terrorist, organisation, he appears to have overstepped the mark. It remains to be seen whether the CPS legal team is as clever as his.
I still don’t have a problem with it. Let him and his followers bugger off out there. Then cancel all their passports.