The Sunday Telegraph uncovered more than a dozen other instances in Tower Hamlets where both Muslims and non-Muslims have been threatened or beaten for behavior considered to be a breach of fundamentalist "Islamic norms." Victims said that police ignored or downplayed outbreaks of hate crime, and suppressed evidence implicating Muslims in them, because they feared being accused of racism or "Islamophobia."
One victim, Mohammed Monzur Rahman, was left partially blind after being attacked by a mob in Cannon Street Road, Shadwell, for smoking during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. "Two guys stopped me in the street and asked me why I was smoking," he said. "I just carried on, and before I knew another dozen guys came and jumped me. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in hospital."
A group of Muslim men attacked a 23-year-old American student, who had only been in the country for three days, after they saw him drinking on an East London street. The student suffered extensive injuries, including a smashed eye socket. The perpetrators are now in prison.
The owners of restaurants and shops in Brick Lane in Whitechapel, a popular area of London, have been warned that they faced 40 lashes if they continued to sell alcoholic products.
In Leytonstone in East London, the former Home Secretary John Reid was heckled by the Muslim extremist Abu Izzadeen who yelled: "How dare you come to a Muslim area." A four-minute video of the incident can be viewed here.
Muslim gangs have also been filmed loitering on London streets and demanding that passersby conform to Sharia law. In a series of videos, the self-proclaimed vigilantes — who called themselves Muslim London Patrol — are seen abusing non-Muslim pedestrians and repeatedly shouting "this is a Muslim area."
One video records the men shouting: "Allah is the greatest! Islam is here, whether you like it or not. We are here! We are here! What we need is Islam! What we need is Sharia!"
The video continues:
"We are the Muslim Patrol. We are in north London, we are in south London, in east London and west London. We command good and forbid evil. Islam is here in London. [Prime Minister] David Cameron, Mr. Police Officer, whether you like it or not, we will command good and forbid evil. You will never get us. You can go to hell! This is not a Christian country. To hell with Christianity. Isa [Jesus] was a messenger of Allah. Muslim Patrol will never die. Allah is great! Allah is great! We are coming!"
In January 2015, twelve of the men were given Antisocial Behavior Orders ("Asbos"), forbidding them from "forcing their views on others" for a period of three years. Their spiritual mentor is a British-born Islamist agitator named Anjem Choudary, whose parents migrated from Pakistan.
In July 2011, "Muslims Against Crusades," a group founded by Choudary, launched a campaign to turn twelve British cities — including what it calls "Londonistan" — into independent Islamic states. The so-called Islamic Emirates would function as autonomous enclaves ruled by Islamic Sharia law and operate outside British jurisprudence.
The Islamic Emirates Project named the British cities of Birmingham, Bradford, Derby, Dewsbury, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Luton, Manchester, Sheffield, as well as Waltham Forest in northeast London and Tower Hamlets in East London, as territories to be targeted for blanket Sharia rule.
Muslims Against Crusades (proscribed in November 2011) is one of the many reincarnations of the Muslim extremist group al-Muhajiroun, which was banned in January 2010. A study published by the London-based Henry Jackson Society in September 2014 found that one in five terrorists convicted in Britain over more than a decade have had links to al-Muhajiroun.
An investigative report published by the British anti-fascism group Hope Not Hate in November 2013 concluded that al-Muhajiroun was "the single biggest gateway to terrorism in recent British history."
The group's founder, Anjem Choudary,