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by Sue Reid
{Edited for Length}
DailyMailUK
As a throng of Muslim families crowd around him, Abu Izzadeen speaks in a quiet voice of his plans for the future of Britain. The tall, bearded 36-year-old -- who was recently freed from prison after serving a term for funding terrorism -- is telling, in chilling detail, how he wants to impose Islam's strict Sharia law on this country.
At a shopping mall in Waltham Forest, North London, Muslim passers-by listen intently. Some shout greetings in Arabic from across the street.
Fathers push forward their young sons (wearing skull caps for prayers at the local mosque) so they can get a good view of the man who is plainly viewed by many as a hero.
Today, Izzadeen, the self-styled 'Director for Waltham Forest Muslims', will march with his supporters -- many of them new young recruits to Islam -- as part of their campaign to make the suburban borough into Britain's first Sharia-law zone.
Under his brutal set of rules, there would be a ban on alcohol, gambling, drugs, music, smoking and homosexuality, as well as on men and women mixing in public.
This is all part of Izzadeen's concerted campaign to defeat 'Western decadence' and turn large parts of Britain -- where, his supporters say, 'people live like animals in a jungle' -- into an Islamic Emirate.
Already, 20,000 yellow leaflets have been printed by Islamic activists, saying 'You are entering a Sharia controlled zone. Islamic rules enforced.' The leaflets have been stuck onto lamp-posts, put up in shop windows and on pillar boxes. As fast as the police and council officials tear them down, more go up.
Izzadeen says: 'This is the first step towards turning Britain into an Islamic state. There are nearly three million Muslims in this country. Islam is a sleeping giant that is waking. We have moved on from the debate about the provision of halal meat to more political issues.
'Twenty-five areas around Britain have large Muslim populations, including Bradford, Dewsbury, Leicester and Luton. We want to turn them all into Islamic Emirates, where the excesses of Western civilisation are not tolerated.'
One in seven of those living in the borough of Waltham Forest is a practising Muslim. Nearby Newham and Tower Hamlets, where leaflets are also being distributed, have populations where, respectively, one in four and one in three follows the Muslim faith.
According to the Association of Chief Police Officers, every year 17,000 Muslim women in Britain become victims of forced marriages, are raped by their husbands or subjected to female genital mutilation -- all condoned by more extreme Islamists.
The campaign to introduce Sharia-controlled zones is being run by a new and radical organisation, Muslims Against Crusades (MAC). Its slick website carries propaganda about why the Islamic way of life is best.
The website says Sharia law zones have 'momentous' support from Muslim businessmen, lawyers and community leaders, who are 'sickened by the alcohol, pornography and downright secular culture of Britain'.
One letter posted on the site yesterday, and said to be from a local man, says (in non-perfect English): 'Brothers, it is about time we open our eyes to the reality where our own community is being corrupted by the Kaffar (disbeliever) and their so-called freedom.
'The amount of our sons and daughter who have been affected by the non-Islamic culture is shocking. The Muslim youth today see no problem in having boyfriends and girlfriends before marriage, or walking out of college together.'
'What was once a predominantly Christian country has now been overwhelmed by a rising Muslim population, which seeks to preserve its Islamic identity and protect itself from the satanic values of the Britain.
'There are now more than 2.8 million Muslims living in the U.K., which is 5 per cent of the population. At least 5,200 people convert to Islam in the UK each year, 60 per cent of them women.
'The entire infrastructure of Britain is changing. Mosques, Islamic schools, Sharia courts, Muslim-owned businesses and banks have now become an integral part of the British landscape.'
So how likely are these extremists to succeed with their plans to turn parts of Britain into militant Islamic enclaves?
There are already 100 mosques in Waltham Forest, Newham and Tower Hamlets. Across London, 24 Islamic primary and secondary schools teach thousands of pupils the national curriculum, but can devote time to Islamic studies in religious lessons.
Hundreds of after-school classes (where boys and girls wearing robes, skull caps or hijabs and learn to recite the Koran by heart) flourish in the mosques of British cities.
Eighty-five Sharia courts now operate nationwide, parallel to traditional courts, with justice dispensed by Islamic judges on domestic rows, divorce, financial disputes and an increasing number of minor criminal acts, such as theft.
There is also a separate Islamic financial system which conforms to Sharia banking industry restrictions, including a ban on interest payments on loans.
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