The Centre For Social Cohesion

The first joke was made by New York Jewish comedian Jackie Mason in connection with the what he claimed were the different preferences of different ethnic groups for different forms of work, including for different varieties of criminal activity.

‘Of course, my own group has plenty of muggers’, observed Mason. ‘We call them lawyers.’

The second joke of which yesterday’s demonstration put me in mind is the definition of a “philosopher” as ‘a lawyer without any clients’.

I was reminded of that definition, as well as of Jackie Mason's joke about lawyers, by having read that one of the demonstrators protesting outside the Old Bailey yesterday was Anjem Choudary, someone whom the media invariably describes as a ‘lawyer’.

Choudary, however, seemingly spends far more time these days outside courts and police stations in protest at what he alleges are the miscarriages of justice being done inside them against fellow Muslims than he does inside these buildings representing clients.

Indeed, he appears no longer to practice law at all these days. Instead, he reportedly prefers to draw income support to the tune of £202 per week, and to allow his wife whom he has left, and the mother of his two young children, to draw £1700 per month in housing benefit and income support.

It was Mr Choudary who organised the demonstration at which the four men sentenced yesterday at the Old Bailey committed the offences for which they received those sentences.

Moreover, notwithstanding his law qualification, Mr Choudary was himself convicted and fined £500 earlier this year for organising this demonstration without having given the police adequate prior written notice of it as he was legally required to do.

Mr Choudary also reportedly organised a demonstration last June outside Forest Gate police station in east London in protest at the arrest and detention there of two brothers held on suspicion of involvement in a dirty bomb plot, a suspicion that subsequently proved unfounded.

Mr Choudary also attended the demonstration outside Westminster Cathedral early last September in protest at Pope Benedict’s Regensburg lecture. At this demonstration, Choudary reportedly said: ‘Whoever insults the message of Mohammed is going to be subject to capital punishment.’

Mr Choudary also attended, along with Abu Izzadeen, a demonstration outside the Old Bailey last November at the trial of one of the four men sentenced yesterday. At the end of this particular demonstration, Mr Choudary reportedly said:

‘We should not be surprised at people doing something like 7/7. How else do you expect to express themselves? … We are a community under siege. It’s going to blow up one day in everyone’s faces.’

At yesterday’s demonstration outside the Old Bailey, Mr Choudary reportedly said:

‘This is not a peaceful country. Look at the words of Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer who took military action against the UK. The more you put Muslims under pressure, the more problems there will be.’

It is also reported in today's press that Labour MP Andrew Dismore has called for Choudary to be prosecuted for inciting hatred.

“This man has been inciting violence for a long time. He is a malign influence and action should be taken’, Mr Dismore is quoted as saying.

Whilst not exactly mugging, the crime with which Mr Dismore charges Anjem Choudary is no less serious. However unwarranted it might prove if tested in court, given how much time Choudary devotes to protesting at what he claims to be injustices committed against fellow Muslims, it might serve the interests of accuracy best were in future the media to describe this particular joker as being a philosopher rather than a lawyer.