Anjem Choudary’s Sentencing During Riots is a Timely Reminder of the Media’s Role in Promoting Hatred

As Britain burned and Muslims and mosques were attacked by far-right rioters fuelled by disinformation, Islamophobia and anti-immigrant sentiments, Britain’s most infamous extremist’s reign came to a quiet end at Woolwich Crown Court.

On July 30, as the riots ignited in Southport before spreading across the country in a wave of mayhem that all but monopolised the media, Anjem Choudary was jailed for life for directing the banned terror organisation, Al-Muhajiroun.

For well over a decade, the 58-year-old dubbed a “hate cleric” by the press, was a bogeyman whose notoriety and influence the media helped manufacture.

At the height of his infamy, Choudary’s brand of bravado-Islamism replete with anti-Western ranting and quotes from the Qur’an was devoured by British newspapers and broadcasters.

Between 2016 and 2020, when Choudary was arguably less of a news story than he had been up until his conviction for inviting support for a proscribed terror organisation – the Islamic State – he still featured over 1,500 times on the online pages of British news outlets.

A year later, in July 2021, Metro ran an article which cited Choudary as “The man who became the face of Islamism in Britain”. The article is one of many examples of how the media helped not only make but cement, Choudhury’s reputation.

Six years earlier, in January 2015, Choudary’s views appeared in the same newspaper following the attacks against Charlie Hebdo staff, following the publication of Islamophobic cartoons. Billed, then, as a lawyer, Choudary had been allowed to write an ‘opposing view’ piece for USA TODAY, something many readers branded “shameful”.

Metro‘s coverage of that piece, carried Choudary’s suggestion that – “Muslims don’t believe in freedom of speech”.  To the annoyance of most British Muslims, Choudary was once more the go-to voice following a major tragedy and his views were gaining global traction.

The former Assistant Secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, Miqdaad Versi, summed it up best in an opinion piece for the Guardian in August 2016, stating that Choudary’s “pulpit was not to be found in mosques but on the television screen and in national newspapers”.

Still, even featuring in a US newspaper, was a fall from years past when Choudary frequented the studios of such major nightly news shows as BBC Newsnight and jostled with Jeremy Paxman, among others, about such topics as the “campaign to move Britain over to Shariah Law”.

Choudary was not a Muslim cleric as the media loved to present him, but the media’s cleric, a rent-a-gob, drinker and playboy turned cosplay Mullah. 

Oli Rahman a London-based reporter who worked for one of the UK’s largest news agencies has argued that it was the media who helped legitimise Choudary’s views.

In an article for Huck in August 2016, Rahman wrote that he had a “strange sense of discomfort at the thought that I was one of the people who, as a young reporter, inadvertently gave Anjem the chance to air his views”.

Many Muslims were forced into devoting much of their time and energy to denying Choudary’s claims and were left wondering why journalists could not see his opportunist streak.

Taj Ali, co-editor of the Tribune magazine, points out his experience of having to constantly correct the narrative that Luton, a town said to be divided and where extremists linked with Choudary have clashed with counterparts from the now defunct English Defence League (EDL), co-founded by another media-made hate preacher, Tommy Robinson. “I’m constantly correcting journalists when I tell them I’m from Luton and they repeat what they have seen over the years of a place riddled with extremism and communities living parallel lives.” 

In musing on his time as a reporter when he would be instructed to give “our friend Anjem a call,” Rahman wrote: “It was the media who wanted his hatred, other Muslims were left to pick up the pieces, condemn him, deflect the blame.”

Picking up the pieces is exactly what Muslims are doing following the wave of violence launched against them across Britain, which shuddered to a halt on August 5 as police swiftly put rioters before the courts and communities fought back.

Although racist thugs have been incited into action through social media, the role of the mainstream media in proliferating anti-Muslim hate can’t be ignored.

Parallels to Choudary can also be drawn to Robinson – real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – who some would argue has also been elevated by mainstream media to an undeserving extent to his position as far-right puppet master.  

Ali , whilst understanding the comparison, points out a key difference between the two hate figures. “The media rightly rubbished Choudary’s ideas and supporters as extreme and extremists. They shone the light on him. Yet in the case of Robinson, his ideas have not always been rubbished but amplified as legitimate concerns which need discussing as we’ve seen in the coverage of the riots.” Robinson was accused of stoking the unrest from the safety of a luxury resort where he fled before the riots kicked off.

The platforming of voices previously thought of as fringe and outdated, particularly on right-wing British broadcasting channels by “fruit cakes” and “closet racists” as David Cameron referred to them – has mainstreamed Islamophobia.

The loony-tunes right wing of Britain has succeeded in setting the agenda on immigration and subsequently the place of Muslims in Britain, which a victorious Labour party now seems reluctant to stray too far from.

The Cardiff School of Journalism demonstrated in June how this is not an immediate phenomena. High profile programmes such as BBC Question Time disproportionately platformed right-wing voices with the top five most frequently-used non-political panellists made up of Spectator magazine columnists. My research for the Centre for Media Monitoring, 2018-2020, found how the Spectator demonstrated the most “Antagonistic Bias” towards Muslims of any mainstream publication.

The media’s penance for controversy, soundbites and entertainment arguably comes at the safety of British Muslims. 

Mobashra Tazamal, the Associate Director of The Bridge Initiative, a research project on Islamophobia at Georgetown University, told Bylines Times: “Extreme and hostile voices are often granted wide exposure on media networks (as they garner more views). The media’s platforming of extreme voices has played a role in amplifying Islamophobia.”

Tazamal references Choudary saying, “mainstream media presented him as a representative of British Muslims, despite the very clear fact that the vast majority didn’t agree with his views.

“In opposition to Choudhary, media networks then spotlighted anti-Muslim voices thereby setting it up as a back-and-forth between two hostile entities, creating a dangerous spectacle that sought to inflame tensions. While Choudary was not representative of British Muslims, the anti-Muslim voices found support amongst the mainstream.”

Time constraints and the fast-paced nature of news can mean rent-a-gobs, like Choudary, are often relied on, but this doesn’t mitigate the media’s responsibility.

Choudary was not a conservative in the sense of a pious, God-fearing man, who wanted to live without the vices and trappings of liberalism. He was a utopian, or played the role of one, who gave Western audiences the ranting illiberal and frankly brutal Muslim some so crave. 

Tam Hussein, an award-winning journalist and author who has reported extensively on radical Islamist groups both nationally and internationally, does not believe that the media created Choudary, but suggests news outlets could have been clearer in stating just how obscure of a figure he was among Muslims in Britain. “Before social media, Choudary was recruiting on the streets, so it’s not as if he was a creation of the media”, he told Byline Times. 

Choudary was “adept at working the media and gaining himself and his cause greater exposure”, he explained.

The full extent of Choudary as a radicalising force may never be known, however Hussein says there is no doubt that he had a hand in turning people into monsters. And his influence went across borders with Hussein pointing to his time reporting in Syria during the rise of ISIS where he found recruits from the Maldives who had a connection with Choudary.

“The question has to be asked that when Choudary was this obscure character in the early noughties why did broadcasters give him airtime? Was it justified at that point and is the fact that he made for good TV a sound enough reason for this?” says Hussein.

A Guardian report from August 2016, quoting counter-terrorism sources, suggested, conservatively, that no less than 100 people from Britain linked to Choudary or his groups have fought or supported violent jihad.

Media platforming has become a major talking point in recent months, not just because of the riots. It was a hot topic during the elections, with suggestions Nigel Farage was given celebrity treatment by some media outlets. The usual players were criticised, but so was the BBC.

In another tragic turn, recent months have demonstrated that bogeymen like Choudary are no longer needed to sustain and stir up the anti-Muslim rhetoric. Parliament has taken up the role.

In the wake of Choudary’s sentencing, Cornish journalist Aaron James raised an interesting point on August 2. He wrote on X: “If Anjem Choudary was rightly jailed for radicalising Islamic terrorists, then who should be jailed for radicalising the far-right terrorists causing havoc in Sunderland?”