Scrounging hate preacher Anjem Choudary has told fanatics to copy him by going on benefits — urging: “Claim your Jihad Seeker’s Allowance.”
He cruelly ridiculed non-Muslims who held down 9-to-5 jobs all their lives and said sponging off them made plotting holy war easier.
The Sun secretly filmed him over three meetings also saying leaders such as David Cameron and Barack Obama should be killed, grinning as he branded the Queen “ugly” and predicting a “tsunami” of Islamic immigrants would sweep Europe.
Father-of-four Choudary, who has praised terrorist outrages, pockets more than £25,000 a year in benefits — £8,000 more than the take-home pay of some soldiers fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.
He laughed as he told supporters:
“You find people are busy working the whole of their life. They wake up at 7 o’clock. They go to work at 9 o’clock. They work for eight, nine hours a day. They come home at 7 o’clock, watch EastEnders, sleep, and they do that for 40 years of their life. That is called slavery.
“And at the end of their life they realise their pension isn’t going to pay out anything, the mortgage isn’t going to pay out anything.
“Basically they are going to lose everything, commit suicide. What kind of a life is that, honestly. That is the life of kuffar (non-believer).”
Former lawyer Choudary — twice banned from running organisations under the Terrorism Act — said some revered Islamic figures had only ever worked one or two days a year, adding: “The rest of the year they were busy with jihad (holy war) and things like that.”
He went on: “People will say, ‘Ah, but you are not working’.
“But the normal situation is for you to take money from the kuffar.
“So we take Jihad Seeker’s Allowance. You need to get support.”
Figures obtained by The Sun in 2010 showed the extremist cleric received £15,600 a year in housing benefit to keep him in a £320,000 house in Leytonstone, East London.
He also got £1,820 council tax allowance, £5,200 income support and £3,120 child benefits — equivalent to a taxed salary of £32,500.
In another bile-filled rant, the scrounger said Mr Cameron, Mr Obama and the leaders of Pakistan and Egypt were the shaitan (devil).
He added: “What ultimately do we want to happen to them? Maybe I’m the only one who wants the shaitan to be killed. The shaitan should be finished. There should be no shaitan.
“All should be obedience to Allah, or you have no right to call yourself Muslim.” At a three-hour meeting in a community centre in Bethnal Green, East London, he insisted it was wrong to deny any aspect of Islam — including jihad or ultra-strict sharia law.
He told a 30-strong crowd: “We are going to take England — the Muslims are coming.”
He gloated that the 9/11 terror attacks “shook the enemy” and claimed white supremacists wished they had the “fortitude” to fly planes into buildings. He went on to proclaim: “You must hate in your heart — Cameron, Obama, all that they worship.
“Democracy, freedom, secularism, the parliament, all the MPs and the Presidents, all the kuffar’s ideas, everything the people worship, we have to believe that they are bad and we have got to reject them.
“Reject them with our tongue. Reject them with our heart. In our heart have hatred towards them.”
Days later in Slough, Berks, he waved a £10 to 20 invited Muslims and said: “There’s an ugly picture of the Queen on here. It says, ‘I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of £10'.”
He then ran through a bizarre sharia law list of do’s and don’ts. He said: “We do not sleep on our stomach, but on our side. You are not allowed to keep lions or tigers. Snakes or scorpions cannot be kept. Even dogs, except if it is a hunting dog or guard dog, or shepherd dog.
“Did you know you are not allowed to ride a sheep or a cat? You cannot hunt domesticated animals. Fishing — not all maggots are allowed.
“A man cannot be on top of another man. Sometimes you squeeze into a car. Your thigh cannot be on top of another. It is prohibited. Be careful of that. You cannot sleep under the same blanket as another man, this sort of thing. We need to know our relationship with inanimate objects. You cannot cut a tree without going to the hellfire.”
At the third meeting we infiltrated, again in Slough, he insisted Islam was taking over Europe.
He said: “Now we are taking over Birmingham and populating it.
“Brussels is 30 per cent, 40 per cent Muslim and Amsterdam. Bradford is 17 per cent Muslim.
“These people are like a tsunami going across Europe. And over here we’re just relaxing, taking over Bradford brother. The reality is changing.”
Choudary, 45, joined with terrorist cleric Omar Bakri to run the group al-Muhajiroun which held anti-Western demonstrations before it was banned. He is also the former leader of Islam4UK — also outlawed in 2010 under the Terrorism Act. Now he is recruiting young Muslims to a new extremist group.
When confronted by The Sun he said: “Many people in the Muslim community are on Jobseeker’s Allowance and welfare benefits. As a joke I may say something about Jihad Seeker’s Allowance. Clearly it is not a Jihad Seeker’s Allowance.
“The word Jihad means struggle. It does not necessarily mean fighting. I have never said to anyone to kill anyone in this country.
“Cameron is doing satanic actions but I am not asking for anyone to be killed. We want everyone to worship Islam. I invite Cameron and the Queen to worship Islam. That would be an ideal situation.
“We may ridicule the Queen. She is engaged in war, her family are engaged in war in Afghanistan — also the Prime Minister. So they are the subject of being mocked and ridiculed. There is nothing wrong with that.”
Time for threat to be taken seriously
It’s hard to imagine a more direct incitement to terrorism against the British Prime Minister or the American president than the statements by Anjem Choudary.
Preaching to a young and impressionable audience, the pernicious influence of his message should not be dismissed lightly. His followers have previously boasted of fighting jihad abroad while others were convicted of terrorism here.
The Crown Prosecution Service must now take his threats very seriously. It is unthinkable that anything other than his arrest and prosecution should follow.
Leaving Choudary’s sermons to go unpunished demeans our society.
Non-Muslims watch with bewilderment as he mocks British values, while living off the taxes of hard-working families.
British Muslims also feel baffled. Choudary’s followers set up vigilante patrols and threaten anyone who won’t conform.
Community relations suffer and Muslims are viewed with increased suspicion, which only drives us all apart. This is what Choudary and radicals like him want.
This is not what Britain is about. We’ve extended our courtesies to Choudary for long enough. It’s time we put our faith in that great British tradition — the rule of law — and call on police to arrest him.
I’ll be picking up the phone to make a complaint against him today — and so should you.
They bag a fortune
A string of firebrand Muslim clerics have lapped up millions in welfare handouts while living in UK.
Hook-handed Abu Hamza and his family cost the UK taxpayer over £338,000 in benefits.
He also had £680,000 in legal aid for his failed US extradition battle.
The cost of keeping him in prison since 2004 is estimated at £500,000.
Fellow hate cleric Abu Qatada’s brood cost the public purse £500,000.
And he has won £390,000 legal aid to try and dodge deportation to Jordan.
Islamic preacher Omar Bakri bagged £300,000 benefits before being exiled to Lebanon. It was for his six kids including a pole-dancing daughter.