So this is sharia

Police were called to a debate in London on ‘Shariah Law versus British Law’ organized by a Muslim student group after violence erupted over segregation last night.

The event, which was to be addressed by al-Muhajiroun’s new leader Anjem Choudary and by Doug Murray, Founder Director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, was halted just half an hour into time, before Murray had arrived.

The event erupted in a brawl after male and female members of the public protested at being seated separately.

The injured man was David Toube, controversial blogger at Harry’s Place website who is a city finance lawyer.

He alleged he was manhandled and assaulted after attempting to enter the Conway Hall in Red Lion Square with a female companion – and is pressing charges.

Doug Murray, 29, a frequent guest on the BBC’s flagship current affairs programmes Any Questions and Newsnight who has debated Choudary twice, including on TV, refused to take part in the debate after discovering it would be segregated.

A CSC spokesman said afterwards:  ‘The Centre had been misled. The security guards were members of al-Muhajiroun. The student society had neglected to mention the event would be segregated. The society’s “independent chair” was involved in the assault.

‘It soon became clear that the student society was, if not a front group for al-Muhajiroun, then at least Islamist-sympathisers hijacked by the extremist group.

‘No employee from the Centre for Social Cohesion would speak on an al-Muhajiroun platform.

‘An unrepresentative fringe organisation, their ideology glorifies violent jihad and calls for the murder of non-Muslims and Muslims who do not subscribe to their narrow interpretation of Islam.’

Police stood by as the entrance to the main hall was physically barred to women by dozens of foreign Muslims in shalwar kameez.

One officer said:  ‘There’s been a racist incident.’

Murray is calling on the government to ban al-Muhajiroun, who have been implicated in terrorism around the world.

CSC revealed earlier this month that one in seven Islamist-related convictions in the last decade have had links with the extremist group.

Fifteen percent of all those convicted in the UK of terrorism-related offences were either members of, or have known links to, the organisation.

CSC claimed last night that present in the audience was Simon Keeler – one of the six al-Muhajiroun members convicted in April 2008 for inciting terrorism overseas and terrorist fundraising.

The CSC previously revealed that these men had been granted early release from prison in May this year.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair failed to get al-Muhajiroun banned in 2005, after they disbanded. Its founder, Syrian preacher Omar Bakhri Muhammed – known as the Tottenham Ayatollah – was banned in August 2005. The group re-formed under new names – and remains legal.

Said Murray, flanked by two enormous bodyguards outside the Conway Hall last night: ‘Once again the thuggery they organize shows why they should be banned. It is an extraordinary oversight by the government not to have banned them before now.’

Conway Hall Chairman Giles Ender, who halted the event, said, after the crowd left the building, that it had been booked on the condition that men and women could mix in the main hall.

He had agreed to the gallery being reserved for ‘more orthodox Muslim women’ – but it meant disabled and elderly women could not get up the stairs.

‘A group of thugs would not let any women into the ground floor,’ he said.

When challenged about the right of women journalists to access public events, Choudary told Lapido Media:  ‘We don’t acknowledge your constitutional rights.  When you go to the jungle, you don’t live like the animals.’

Ender said he had been a victim of Islamists, when he received death threats by telephone after hosting the Council of Ex-Muslims in Britain last October.

Onlookers in the hall who witnessed massed ranks of foreign Muslims shouting ‘Allahu Akhbar!’ on a warm summer’s evening in Bloomsbury, were astonished by what they experienced.

Mateusz Krzemien, a 30-year old Polish land surveyor in the crowd told Lapido Media: ‘We have Labour to thank for this. Their immigration policies are responsible.’