Few would shed tears if Britain barred Anjem Choudary from returning

Britain’s best known Islamist, Anjem Choudary, is planning to hold a conference in Pakistan on Friday where, among other things, he will issue a fatwa on Malala Yousafzai. She is the schoolgirl from Pakistan’s Taliban-controlled tribal areas who was shot in the head for defying the terrorist group by demanding an education. Yousafzai survived the attempted assassination and was later flow to Birmingham for specialist medical treatment (the bill is being picked up by the Pakistani government).

Choudary plans to hold his conference – ‘Shariah for Pakistan’ – at the Red Mosque in Islamabad which was the scene of a notorious standoff in 2007. Radical students of the mosque had begun imposing vigilante justice in surrounding neighbourhoods: harassing women, kidnapping foreigners, and burning down music stores. The government was forced to confront it in a standoff that became a Pakistani version of the Waco siege.