Nov 2013 - my london diary

	Islamists Protest Angolas Ban on Muslims Angolan Embassy, Dorset St, London. Fri 29 Nov 2013
	I came to the protest thinking for once that Amjem Choudary and his supporters had a just cause - Angola is clamping down on non-Christian religions including Islam. But it isn't a 'crusade' but something that most Christians around the world and secularists would firmly oppose. But they would oppose it in the name of freedom. This was something rather different.
	After around 45 minutes, Anjem Choudary himself arrived and spoke I found myself in agreement with perhaps half of what he said and wondering from the other half if their is any substance in the view published in The Spectator in May: " Ever since 9/11 the police and Security Service have pursued a disastrous policy of cultivating ‘clerical honeypots’. The thinking behind it seems reasonable enough at first glance: leave extremist clerics to preach in the open and then you can easily identify the network around them, and the various actors within it" The piece went on to say: "Almost all decent people in this country are bemused at how Choudary has managed to avoid arrest for this long.... He has benefited from the ‘clerical honeypot’ strategy more than anyone else." and went on to suggest that the policy was now counter-productive and it was time to arrest him. Others have gone further and alleged that Choudary is actually an MI5 agent. It's perhaps hard to believe. But he is definitely an intelligent and capable man and I also find it hard to believe that he really holds some of the views that he expressed in his speech. There was however nothing in what he said that would make him liable for arrest, and I believe in freedom of speech with the limits of our laws. If the Spectator is correct about MI5's policy, it appears to have been very succesful in providing a hive but a near complete failure in controlling the bees when they leave home .
			November main page