‘About time too!’ Those were the words of a local Muslim woman I spoke to after hearing that Anjem Choudary was finally found guilty of inviting support for Islamic State.
What has taken most people by surprise is the fact it took 20 years for this man to be convicted. To offer support and allegiance to a terrorist organisation like IS and to continue inciting division and hatred, as well as to have supporters like Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale the murderers of soldier Lee Rigby, whose life was so brutally taken away, was beyond the vast majority of law-abiding Muslims’ imagination.
I have never met Choudary, but he is clearly a deeply arrogant and manipulative man, someone who enjoyed every bit of media attention he could get and with very few principles.
This is a dangerous combination and Choudary is obviously dangerous. Not only because of his willingness to use religion in order to divide communities but also through his promotion of a negative and twisted misrepresentation of Islam.
I was born in the United Kingdom in the 1970s, and as a practising Muslim I was taught to read the Qur’an at an early age. I went to a Church of England School during the day and in the evenings I learnt to read the Qur’an at the local mosque.
I was lucky enough to have parents who I was able to have an open dialogue with about what was written in the Holy Scripture. I guess that was the time I was developing my critical thinking. I was certainly an inquisitive child; I loved reading sections from the Qur’an and talking through it with my parents. This gave me a better understanding of Islam. The Islam I know and have been taught promotes peace, respect, love and tolerance.
I recall some of our Muslim Bengali neighbours would say to my parents that by sending me and my brother to a Church of England school we would convert to Christianity. My parents would just simply smile back at them. It is that kind of blinkered thinking which people like Choudary encourages and preys on, but that kind of attitude is increasingly rare these days.
My upbringing has made me a better human being. I am a practising Muslim who has read the Bible and the Qur’an at the same time and realised there are many similarities between the two religions.
When someone like Choudary abuses my beloved religion and distorts it to promote violence and hate, it appalls me. He is a relic of another age. His hate-preaching has no place in our country and is widely admonished by Christian and Muslim alike.
The reaction of the woman I mentioned at the start has been widely echoed. Through the Shanaz Network, which I am part of (a network of women with an expertise on countering radicalisation/extremism), I found to be broadly the same talking to Muslim women across the country.
This conviction is something to be welcomed but it is just as important that we remember how unrepresentative his views are. Those who falsely incite division by pretending Choudhary represents the views of ordinary Muslims should be considered as abhorrent as Choudhary himself.
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Shiria Khatun is deputy mayor for community safety, London borough of Tower Hamlets. She tweets @ShiriaKhatun