By Chaminda Jayanetti

The good people of Wootton Bassett can breathe a sigh of relief this morning as they wake to the news that Anjem Choudary, the loudmouth leader of lunatic mob Islam4UK, has given up on his fantasy of a supposedly 'anti-war' hate-fest through the streets of their quiet town.

As reported by the BBC, Guardian, and pretty much every other news source you care to google, Choudary has decided to abandon his plan to carry fake coffins - supposedly representing the civilian dead of Afghanistan - through the streets of Wootton Bassett, the town through which the real coffins of Britain's military victims are taken on their return from the conflict.

Choudary's climbdown had been predicted by, well, pretty much everybody. As usual, the whole purpose of this absurd fiasco was simply to raise his own profile and, well, offend everyone else. Having bagged the standard tabloid hysterics, he then wakes up to the fact that he won't actually be able to get so much as 50 protesters to join him. Like the office bore who realises no-one will come to his party, he invents some risible excuse for why he has to, er, cancel.

His excuse this time is that having "successfully highlighted the plight of Muslims globally and having successfully engaged with thousands of ordinary people", Islam4UK had come to the conclusion that "no more could be achieved even if a procession were to take place in Wootton Bassett".

Successfully engaged with thousands of ordinary people? Really Anjem? Do you want to just check that first? Because last time I saw, the internet was literally aflame with hatred - mostly directed just at Choudary, but some aimed more broadly at Muslims in general. The English Defence League - the football hooligans' movement against 'extremist' Islam that was formed after Choudary's barely-attended protest in Luton last year - has had a recruitment field day. This is the real legacy of Anjem's antics.

There's much (much) more in Islam4UK's rambling statement, but I can't be bothered to go through the whole thing because life's too short. If there are any bored immortals out there, feel free to let us know if there's anything worth reading lower down the statement, but I'm warning you, there probably isn't.

More interesting is the suggestion by Janet Daley in the Telegraph that it was the opposition of mainstream Muslims - including those in Wootton Bassett itself - that persuaded Choudary to stand down. Certainly, while Choudary will shrug off critics among the 'kuffar', it's harder for him to ignore the outright hostility and vitriol that has been coming from what he may have dared to hope was his own side.

Meanwhile, the News of the World - that renowned bastion of accurate reporting, ahem - said yesterday that the Home Office is to ban Islam4UK this week. Like they banned the Saved Sect and Al-Ghurabaa, two groups Choudary previously ran before the law forced him to, erm, rename them as Islam4UK. All three groups are merely fronts for Al-Muhajiroun, which was wound up before the government had a chance to ban it. All of which begs the question of how precisely this ban will be any more successful than the last.

Given that the driving force of all these groups is Choudary, wouldn't it make more sense to look at prosecuting the man himself under British hate laws., rather than chasing his rent-a-mobs around? I couldn't pass myself off as an expert on Britain's hate laws, but it would seem obvious that calling for homosexuals to be stoned to death (but only if they have gay sex in front of four eyewitnesses, doncha know) must amount to inciting hatred on the ground of sexual orientation. If the government does go ahead and ban Islam4UK - and this story doesn't turn out to be a cynical New Labour public relations stunt to appear tough on Anjem, tough on the causes of Anjem - The Samosa will return to this point.

On a final note, it's worth remembering what Anjem pretended his protest was about - the lack of British media coverage of civilian deaths in the Afghan war. So, did he succeed? Well, here's a test - just days after he launched his ill-fated expedition to Wootton Bassett, the Afghanistan Rights Monitor published a report showing that on average, three children a day were killed in Afghanistan last year due to the war - two-thirds of them by Choudary's idols, the Taliban. It was reported in international media, and covered by the AFP newswire. But did a single major British newspaper report this clear evidence of massive human suffering in Afghanistan? No.

Still think your antics were "successful", Anjem?