Anjem Choudary urges Taliban to be MORE hard line:

From the Mail on Sunday

Anjem Choudary, 54, who inspired a generation of jihadi fighters and dozens of terrorist murders, is urging the Taliban to impose a stricter form of Islamic justice – including stoning adulterers, chopping off the hands of thieves and lashing anyone caught drinking alcohol. (He) also wants to ban music and mixing between sexes, and says non-Muslims should pay an ‘infidel tax’.

His outpourings are included in an extraordinary 3,500-word treatise entitled Sincere Advice To The Leadership Of The Taliban.

In it, the firebrand cleric, from Ilford, East London, calls on Afghanistan’s new government – which has tried to project a more moderate image – to expunge all traces of Western culture and ban ‘useless pursuits such as music, drama and philosophy’. Expressing his opinions on the encrypted social media network Telegram, Choudary appeared to suggest British and American forces were legitimate targets, urging Taliban fighters to point their guns at ‘occupying forces’ and anyone who ‘stands in the way of implementing the rule of Allah’.

And with world leaders beseeching the Taliban not to isolate Afghanistan, Choudary advises closing down the country’s embassies abroad, even in Muslim countries, and expelling the United Nations from Kabul.

Any non-Muslims living in Afghanistan, he says, must pay a tax known as ‘jizya’, often referred to as the ‘infidel tax’. This toll ensures they receive protection.

Choudary says the Taliban must enforce strict sharia law, and run only sharia courts, getting rid of existing bodies such as high courts and supreme courts. Only strict sharia punishments – including chopping off thieves’ hands and stoning adulterers – must be implemented.

He said: ‘The penal code or Hudood is the right of Allah… to cut the hand off the thief, stone the adulterer, implementing capital punishment upon the apostate and lashing those who drink alcohol (all after due court process and evidence) must be implemented without question and hesitation.’

According to Choudary, the level of strictness employed by the Taliban to implement sharia law will determine whether it is ‘truly Islamic’. He said: ‘Muslims around the world must… assess whether this fledgling state is really implementing Islamic law or whether it is just another country choosing Islam to be part of its name that it wishes everyone to call it by. . . There should be the removal of all borders and an invitation to all Muslims to become citizens of the new Islamic State with the aim to unite the Muslim land of the Indian sub-continent to begin with, to be the precursor of greater unity under the Khilafah [caliphate].’