THE Islamist group Islam4UK, which planned a march through Wootton Bassett — the English market town where honouring of British dead has come to symbolise the fatalities sustained by UK forces in Afghanistan — and its 'parent' organisation, al-Muhajiroun, will be banned under new legislation outlawing the 'glorification' of terrorism.

The order, which will come into effect on Thursday, will make it a criminal offence to be a member of either of the groups, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

“I have today laid an order which will proscribe al-Muhajiroun, Islam4UK, and a number of the other names the organisation goes by,” Home Secretary Alan Johnson said on Tuesday. Other names are Call to Submission, Islamic Path and London School of Sharia. The group is already proscribed under two other names — al-Ghurabaa and the Saved Sect or the Saviour Sect.

Johnson said proscription was “a tough but necessary power to tackle terrorism”, adding that it was “not a course we take lightly”.

The decision, based on months of monitoring the output of websites and comments by senior figures, will have to be endorsed by parliament. Al-Muhajiroun was founded by Omar Bakri Muhammad and Anjem Choudary, and has been operating in Britain since the mid-1980s.

The group became notorious for praising the Sept 11 attacks in 2001. Bakri was banned from Britain by a former home secretary Charles Clarke in August 2005, on the grounds that his presence in the country was “not conducive to the public good”.

— The Guardian, London