You can watch the MAC’s recent press conference on YouTube, with Choudary playing an Islamic Moe to his associate stooges—ineffectual, fussy Larry (Abu Rumaysah), frazzled Shemp (Sayful Islam), and portly, dopey-faced Curly (Abu Izzadeen). It’s easy to laugh at MAC’s self-importance and fake piety—they are, after all, state-benefit-collecting conmen (Izzadeen lives with his wife and three kids off state welfare handouts, which he wittily refers to as “the jihad-seekers allowance”) whose outspoken contempt for their host culture would land them in prison or worse if they were to try it in Iran or Saudi Arabia, and they know it. Their previous zany hijinks include calling for the decapitation of British soldiers serving in Iraq and burning poppies on Britain’s Remembrance (Memorial) Day. Such cartoonish provocations seem so painstakingly engineered to shock mainstream English culture’s straights and squares that they’re hardly worth getting upset about. It’s like the Islamo-retard version of Marilyn Manson doing the Devil sign at a ladies’ Sunday-tea get-together.

Still, vigilante religious police are no laughing matter in many underdeveloped parts of the world, and they’re hardly anybody’s idea of the kind of vibrant, exotic, super-authentic cultural import for which the West should be clamoring. Reports suggest that the British Constabulary is outnumbered—they take down hundreds of Shariah-zone warnings every day, only to have hundreds more appear the next day. If the Shariah zones take root and turn out to be more than an attention-getting media farce, much of their success will depend on whether people are willing to tolerate them. That would seem to include not only moderate Muslims—many of whom likely emigrated from elsewhere precisely to avoid having religious thugs dictate every detail of their dress and behavior—but also the native population.

The Brits I’ve met while living and traveling in Europe tend to fall into two distinct camps. Group A are self-loathing, chinless uber-wimps who express a self-abasing level of contempt for their own nation, culture, and history that borders on the pathological—while they fawn obsequiously over every other culture in the known universe. Group B are shaven-headed, tattoo-faced yobs whose levels of cultural sensitivity and open-mindedness hover at a level somewhere near Himmler’s.

So it will be interesting to see whether this conflagration-in-the-making catches fire. Will the Brits keep to their traditional preference for a quiet life—avoiding eye contact when entering Islam-dominated boroughs, dressing “their” women modestly, and preemptively submitting in the name of tolerance, diversity, and respect? Or will working-class yobs, enraged at being denied the right to a pint of lager in their own neighborhoods, react with the equally quaint British tradition of “glassing” their opponents and other such thuggish violence? Will women cover themselves modestly to avoid harassment in certain designated (and presumably ever-expanding) areas? Or will they take the risk of letting their full British “slag” hang out openly?

Thankfully, those of us who don’t live in Britain won’t need to find out firsthand. A multi-ethnic, religiously diverse tapestry’s rich delights always seem more entertaining from a safe distance.