Young Muslims are being convicted of thought crimes and branded as terrorists for life, the country’s most prominent Islamic leader has told The Times.

Muhammad Abdul Bari said police and prosecutors were criminalising youths for harbouring “silly thoughts” and were undermining Gordon Brown’s £400 million drive to win Muslim hearts and minds.

Dr Bari, Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain, was commenting ahead of the sentencing today of Samina Malik, a shop assistant who styled herself as “the lyrical terrorist”, wrote poetry in praise of beheadings and joined extremist internet forums.

Malik, 23, burst into tears after an Old Bailey jury convicted her last month under Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000 of “possessing documents likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”.

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She was the first woman to be convicted under the terrorism legislation since the events of September 11.

The trial judge imposed bail conditions which he said amounted to house arrest and warned her that he was keeping sentencing options open.

Dr Bari told The Times: “Many young people download objectionable material from the internet, but it seems that if you are a Muslim then this could lead to terrorist charges, even if you have absolutely no intention to do harm to anyone else.

“Samina’s so-called poetry was certainly very offensive but I don’t believe that this case should really have been a criminal matter.

“Young people may well have some silly thoughts. That should not be criminalised. It is their actions that we should be concerned about.” He said that if police were concerned about Malik they should have placed her under surveillance and detained her if she was involved in “actual terror-related activity”.

Dr Bari added: “Instead, she was prosecuted for what can only be termed really as a thought crime. This should not be of concern just to Muslims, but to all in our society who care about natural justice.

“Her conviction raises a lot of deeply worrying questions about Section 58 of the Terrorism Act and just how incredibly broad its scope is.” He contrasted the stance taken by the police in cases like Malik’s with Gordon Brown’s antiradicalisation initiatives in schools, mosques and youth groups. The Prime Minister spoke in his security statement last month about mentoring programmes, roadshows and other methods to “isolate extremists”.

Dr Bari said that Malik’s conviction and other cases could prove counter-productive. He added: “It is certainly sensible for the Government to work with Muslim groups to counter extremist propaganda.

“This is, we have been told often, part of a ‘hearts and minds’ campaign directed at young British Muslims, but it is difficult to see how Samina’s conviction can do anything other than impair this effort.”

Malik, who worked at W H Smith at Heathrow, wrote crude poems with titles like “How to Behead” which began with the lines: “Hold him/Tie the arms behind his back/And bandage his legs together”.

On the back of a shop till roll, she had scribbled: “The desire within me increases everyday to go for martyrdom. The need to go increases by the second.” Prosecutors said she amassed “a library” of extremist material on her home computer, including the al-Qaeda Manual, the Terrorist’s Handbook, the Mujahidin Poisons Handbook, a manual for a Dragunov sniper rifle, a firearms and RPG handbook and a document entitled “How to Win Hand-to-Hand Fighting”.

Malik was a former St John Ambulance volunteer who had captained her school basketball and football teams in Southall, West London. But she subscribed to extremist websites and was arrested in October last year after her name appeared on the fringes of another investigation.

Giving evidence at her trial, she said that she had originally called herself “lyrical babe” on the internet but changed the name to “lyrical terrorist” to impress men. “It was only because it was a cool name, it doesn’t mean I’m a terrorist, it’s just a username,” she said. “This was me showing off, trying to be something I wasn’t, trying to get popularity from male users.”

Acting Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard’s Counter-Terrorism Command, described Malik as someone who held violent, extremist views which she shared with other like-minded people.

“Merely possessing this material is a serious criminal offence,” he said.

Terror targets

Section 58 covers the collection of information

The offence is defined as collecting or making a record of information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism

It is a defence for a person charged under Section 58 to prove that they had a “reasonable excuse for his action or possession”

A convicted person can be jailed for up to 10 years, fined, or both

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