LONDON — As British war planes arc through Middle Eastern skies and security services race to unravel terrorist plots at home, the nation’s most prominent propagandist for the Islamic State sits in a London sweets shop, laying out his radical vision between bites of dessert.

Iraq and Syria, Anjem Choudary says confidently, are only the beginning. The Islamic State’s signature black flag will fly over 10 Downing Street, not to mention the White House. And it won’t happen peacefully, but only after a great battle that is now underway.

Additional Images

Anjem Choudary, center, has his share of admirers, including these men posing for a photo with him recently in Ilford, northeast London. Choudary, a lawyer by training, has been involved in extremist activities for nearly 20 years. Photo for The Washington Post by Andrew Testa

“We believe there will be complete domination of the world by Islam,” says the 47-year-old, calmly sipping tea and looking none the worse for having been swept up in a police raid just days earlier. “That may sound like some kind of James Bond movie – you know, Dr. No and world domination and all that. But we believe it.”

With such grandiose proclamations, it is tempting to dismiss Choudary as a cartoonish hate preacher. Many do. But harder to ignore is his record of inspiring impressionable young men to carry out violence in the name of Islam – both in Britain and overseas.

PLAUSIBLE AND PERSUASIVE

Counterterrorism officials and experts say Choudary and the many shadowy groups he has fronted have directly contributed to the indoctrination of dozens of people who have gone on to plan or commit attacks in the United Kingdom. His network, they say, has also become a vital facilitator in the flow of some of the thousands of Europeans who have swarmed to the battlefields of Iraq and Syria, and who could return to carry out attacks in the West.

But even as a coalition that includes Britain and the United States wages war on the Islamic State, Choudary and other enablers remain free to spread their seductively messianic ideology on the streets of the United Kingdom and globally, through the Internet. They do so by taking advantage of the very rights they condemn as un-Islamic and by using their considerable charisma to lure lost souls.

“These guys are very good at knowing where the limits of the law lie,” said Richard Barrett, a former counterterrorism director with Britain’s foreign intelligence service, MI6. “They’re also very slick, very plausible and very persuasive.”

Their elusiveness helps explain why extremism continues to flourish in Britain despite more than a decade of concerted effort to stamp it out.

Britain has long been a locus of Islamist extremism, with its large Muslim immigrant communities and its tolerant approach toward those with radical views. In the late 1990s and in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida attacks, north London’s Finsbury Park mosque became a critical way station for global terrorists.

FROM MOSQUES TO FREELANCERS

But years of aggressive policing and intelligence efforts have shifted the extremist threat away from Britain’s mosques and into the hands of freelancers who are much harder to monitor and control.

Choudary – a lawyer by training, not a preacher or religious scholar – has proved particularly adept at staying out of reach of the authorities.

Late last month, police raided his home on the suspicion that he was involved in terrorism-related activities, and his passport, phone and laptop were confiscated. But authorities held him for only a night before letting him go.

Choudary has been, for nearly two decades, at the forefront of a succession of groups – including al-Muhajiroun, Islam4UK and Muslims Against Crusades – that have been outlawed for extremist activities. Once a group was banned, Choudary quickly set up a new one with a similar structure and many of the same members but with a new name.

The majority of Britons convicted of Islamic-extremism-related offenses in the past 15 years have been members or supporters of Choudary’s network. Choudary himself, despite multiple arrests, has never been convicted of anything more than staging an illegal demonstration.

Days after his latest release, sitting in the northeast London neighborhood of Ilford, he is unbowed and almost dares the government to come after him.

“You need sufficient evidence,” he says, as numerous well-wishers stop by to vow their support. “And they have no evidence whatsoever.”

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