Knocking back the drink and smoking a joint, this is the Muslim fanatic who plans to march through Wootton Bassett with empty coffins to symbolise the Muslims ‘mercilessly murdered’ in Iraq and Afghanistan. Photographs of Anjem Choudary as a student at Southampton University were first obtained by the Daily Mail early last year. The pictures reveal a very different side to the firebrand cleric, who wants Britain to adopt strict Sharia law, which severely punishes drinking alcohol and lewd behaviour. As well as downing cider and lager, the cleric is shown playing drinking games with cards, clearly forbidden under his strict Islamic laws, and holding a cannabis joint between his lips before smoking it. And the woman on the cover of the Mayfair pornographic magazine he is looking at is certainly not wearing a burka, which is a requirement of Sharia law. One former friend of the Muslim extremist said: ‘I can’t keep a straight face when I see “fundamentalist Muslim Anjem Choudary” in the papers attacking the British for drinking or having girlfriends. ‘When I knew him, he liked to be called Andy, would often smoke cannabis spliffs all day, and was proud of his ability to down a pint of cider in a couple of seconds. ‘And he was ruthless with girls. When he briefly worked as an English teacher for foreign students in London, he’d pull one of them every few days, sleep with her, then move on to another.’ Choudary, who was born in South-East London to a market stall-holder of Pakistani descent, has become one of the faces of extremist Islam. The 42-year-old cleric is head of the banned extremist group al-Muhajiroun and has hailed the 9/11 terrorists as ‘martyrs’. Choudary provoked outrage at the weekend by announcing that 500 hard-line members of the radical group Islam4UK would parade through the Wiltshire market town of Wootton Bassett.
