Policing the line between expression and violence

LONDON — When do peaceful — if extremist — opinions become an incitement to violence? That’s the question British security services are struggling with after a spate of deadly attacks, in which previously nonviolent groups inspired radicalized youth to commit acts of terror.

At the center of the debate is al-Muhajiroun, a fundamentalist Islamist network that was formally shut down by the government in 2004 but has continued to live in a series of successor organizations.

The perpetrators of at least half of all domestic terrorist attacks in recent years — including the 2005 London tube bombings and the murder of soldier Lee Rigby in 2012 — had links to the al-Muhajiroun network, according to a study by Raffaello Pantucci, director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute. And around a third of all European Muslims who went to Syria to fight on behalf of the Islamic State had ties to the group.

“This is an organization that has been sending people abroad to fight for decades, whether it’s going to Chechnya, Syria, Iraq, even Africa,” said Joe Mulhall, senior researcher at the anti-extremism watchdog Hope Not Hate and author of a major report on al-Muhajiroun. “Whenever there’s a terror attack in the U.K., one of the first things we do is see if there’s links to al-Muhajiroun because it’s become so regular.”

Anjem Choudary, one of al-Muhajiroun’s founders | Leon Neal/AFP via Getty Images

And yet, for the most part, the organization has been allowed to operate in plain sight. Its activities have been so public that a January 2016 Channel 4 documentary showed members of the group unfolding a black Islamic State flag in London’s Regent’s Park.

A few weeks before the show aired, one of its main characters, Abu Ramaysah, appeared in a video of a beheading carried out by the Islamic State in Syria. Over a year later, another man who appeared in the documentary, Khuram Butt, went on a murderous rampage on London Bridge, killing seven people.

The group has made a point of calling attention to itself, with extremist publicity stunts, such as a “march against alcohol” in London’s East End, and demonstrations protesting the repatriation of soldiers killed overseas. In 2010, Islamists affiliated with the group set fire to poppies outside London’s Royal Albert Hall and chanted “British soldiers burn in hell.”

Al-Muhajiroun “preaches a very aggressive exclusionist rhetoric,” said Pantucci, who is also the author of “We Love Death As You Love Life: Britain’s Suburban Terrorists.”

“They’re nonviolent in what they say but the reality is they are very much pushing and agitating a violent direction.”

Soldier Lee Rigby was murdered in a domestic terror attack in 2012 | Oli Scarff/Getty Images

For years, one of al-Muhajiroun’s founders, Anjem Choudary, was a regular fixture on British news shows, as an extremist rent-a-quote who could always be relied on to say something incendiary. “For a long time, they were laughable,” said Mulhall. “They did these outrageous stunts that were so extreme they were almost funny. The press found them amusing but didn’t take them seriously.”

The stunts — and the heavy press coverage — helped the network appeal to new young recruits.

“I saw Choudary on TV talking about how Muslims are mistreated and … it appealed to me at the time,” said Hasan (not his real name), a London-based youth worker who was briefly drawn to the group in 2008. “I was angry, I was lost, I was seeing atrocities overseas, I didn’t have anywhere to put that anger.”

“There was a sense of community that I didn’t feel I had before because I was lonely and doing badly at my studies,” he added. Hasan did not stay long in the group, as he began feeling alienated by some of its darker rhetoric.

“Publicly, it was all anti-violence, but as I spent more time [with the group], I just had this feeling that something isn’t right. I’m glad I got out when I did or I dread to think where I could be now.”

The group’s vocal appearances in the media have been a source of deep frustration for British Muslims, who have long feared that the small extremist network is conveying a false narrative of the community as a whole.

“Our sensationalist and irresponsible media has, in fact, been deeply complicit in the rise of this fanatic [Choudary], devoting quite disproportionate and counterproductive coverage to his various rantings,” wrote prominent Muslim journalist Mehdi Hasan in 2010. A Facebook group named “Muslims Against Anjem Choudary” has nearly 4,000 members.

The perpetrators of the 2005 London tube bombings had links to al-Muhajiroun | Metropolitan Police via Getty Images

For much of the past decade, al-Muhajiroun has managed to remain just on the right side of various laws prohibiting incitement to violence. And when the authorities would shut down one organization, its members would simply found another, nearly identical group.

For example, Islam4UK — a major recruitment network for the Islamic State — was banned in 2010, but was replaced the following year by Muslims Against Crusades, which in turn was also banned. Muslims Against Crusades is “simply another name for an organization already proscribed under a number of names,” said then Home Secretary Theresa May, who made the decision to impose the ban in November 2011.

More recently, however, as the group’s ties to foreign fighters have become impossible to ignore, the government has started to crack down. In September 2016, Choudary and a co-defendant, Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, were found guilty of providing support to a terrorist organization, the Islamic State. Both men were sentenced to five years and six months in prison.

Hundreds of the groups’s followers have left Britain to fight for ISIS in Syria | Delol Souleimann/AFP via Getty Images

The convictions have left the group weakened, but still potentially dangerous.

“There’s no doubt that people that are left are still organizing but they don’t seem to have the structures they once did,” said Mulhall.

The government crackdown has taken its toll, as has the fact that hundreds of its followers have left for Syria. “But the legacy of that group still exists, the way they radicalized and indoctrinated people,” he said. “As we saw [with the attack on London Bridge], it’s a continuing threat.”

Samira Shackle is a freelance journalist based in London.