Last updated at 8:20 AM on 2nd August 2011
They must be the first teenage boys in history to take offence at the sight of a scantily-clad Playboy model.
Most young men would salivate over a poster of a voluptuous Kelly Brook pouting provocatively while thrusting her ample bosom in their direction.
But when Mohammed Hasnath and Muhammed Tahir encountered the image of the model/actress/whatever on the side of a bus shelter in East London they were horrified.
Angelic: But two young muslim men were so horrified at this picture of scantily-clad Kelly Brook they painted a burka over her
The sight of Miss Brook dressed as an angel in a Lynx deodorant advert was too much for their religious sensibilities. So they painted a burka over her. They said it was a 'sin' for a woman be uncovered in public.
This poster was just one of a number the pair defaced on decency grounds. At Thames Magistrates Court, in Tower Hamlets, they admitted six counts of criminal damage, were ordered to pay 283 each and given a 12-month conditional discharge.
Hasnath and Tahir, both 18, told police that the way the women had been photographed was against their religion. Hasnath said: 'If someone was to look at our wife or mother or daughter with a bad intention, we would not like it, so we were just trying to do good.'
There will be some sympathy for them — and not just from other Muslims. Plenty of people, especially those with young children, are uncomfortable with the proliferation of sexually-explicit advertising in public spaces.
You don't have to be a purse-lipped prude to believe there's far too much gratuitous nudity and hard-sell soft porn on daily display.
On one level, Hasnath and Tahir are no different from those Victorians who insisted on covering table legs lest they unleash pent-up male passion. It would be easy to dismiss them as harmless eccentrics.
But their actions come against a backdrop of growing militancy among young Muslim men and attempts to impose Islamic Sharia law on whole areas of Britain.
Mohammed Tahir (left) and Mohammed Hasnath (right) admitted six counts of criminal damage after defacing the poster
The most serious incident of religious intolerance in Tower Hamlets came back in April. I brought you the story of a 31-year-old Asian shop assistant in fear of her life because she refused to wear a headscarf.
Islamist hardliners first threatened to organise a boycott of the chemist's where she worked and then, when she still wouldn't cover up, told her: 'If you keep doing these things, we are going to kill you.'
Up the road in Waltham Forest, which is home to one of the country's largest Muslim populations, extremists have taken to the streets and declared the area a 'Sharia Controlled Zone'.
As Sue Reid reported in Saturday's Mail, stickers have appeared on walls, lamp-posts and in shop windows proclaiming 'no alcohol, no gambling, no music or concerts, no porn or prostitution, no drugs, no smoking'.
Militants say they will patrol the streets to enforce the Sharia code. It will come as no surprise to discover that one of the prime movers behind the Sharia Zone is Ram Jam Choudary, the jihadist formerly known as Andy.
While at college he was fond of a drink, a spliff and casual sex before he underwent a religious conversion and teamed up with Captain Hook at the Finsbury Park mosque.
Somehow he manages to stay just inside the law. I've always assumed that's because he is a paid MI5 informant.
There's no other good reason why he hasn't been banged up.
Whether it's beheading enthusiasts screaming abuse at British troops, burning poppies on Remembrance Day, or celebrating the mass murders on 9/11 and on the London Underground, Ram Jam's never far away.
His partner in jihad, Abu Izzadeen, styles himself 'Director for Waltham Forest Muslims' and was recently released from prison after serving a term for funding terrorism.
Blowhard: Self-appointed spokesman for Waltham Forest Muslims Abu Izzadeen
Izzadeen (real name Trevor Brooks from Hackney) is especially keen on killing homosexuals and segregation of the sexes.
Mainstream Muslim leaders are outraged at the activities of these extremists and denounce the likes of Ram Jam and Trev (sorry, Abu) as 'small-minded idiots'.
Small-minded they may be, but they think big. There is a tendency towards complacency in the face of their blowhard threats.
Of course they are not representative of wider Muslim opinion. But if someone tells me he wants to kill us if we don't covert to Islam and embrace Sharia law, I'm prepared to believe him.
What I fail to understand is why the authorities continue to indulge them. Both Ram Jam and Izzadeen are able-bodied and in the prime of their lives but they live on benefits. Izzadeen even boasts that his weekly stipend from the state is his 'jihad-seekers' allowance'.
Ha, bloody, ha.
Yet both of these jokers are heroes to young Muslim men of a certain mindset. I would hazard a guess that Mohammed Hasnath and Muhammed Tahir are among their admirers.
There are plenty of sexually-confused, impressionable young Muslim men ready to rally to the extremists' flag. Hasnath and Tahir would seem to exemplify them. Brought up in Britain, they have the appearance of any other young man of their generation.
Hasnath may subscribe to a medieval philosophy when it comes to women, but he is pictured wearing 21st century iPod headphones.
What's he listening to, I wonder — Adele or a podcast of the latest rantings from some preacher of hate?
There seems to be no shortage of frustrated foot-soldiers in the scramble to impose Sharia law. But the Government has just quietly shelved an inquiry into the spread of Sharia courts because no one would co-operate.
And except in the more extreme cases there's a reluctance not only to prosecute but make any connection between extremism and Islam itself.
Hasnath and Tahir were originally charged with 'religiously-aggravated' damage. The religious bit was dropped when they agreed to plead to common or garden criminal damage.
But their actions were religiously motivated.
The same philosophy underpins both painting a burka on Kelly Brook and issuing death threats against a woman shop assistant who refuses to wear a headscarf.
Let's hope these two young men have learned their lesson and can now grow up and channel their energies in another direction.
Getting a girlfriend might be a good start.
Here's a story that slipped under the radar. Education Secretary Michael Gove is scrapping a whole raft of 'Mickey Mouse' courses.
One for the chop is the NVQ in hairdressing. It has been revealed that this qualification is worse than useless since pupils are banned by elf'n'safety from using scissors.
How do you cut hair without scissors — pull it out by the roots?
You couldn't make it up, although it may well explain the state of some of the strange barnets you see wandering the streets these days.
Ugandan discussions 2011-style
Earlier this year, a failed Ugandan asylum seeker who claimed to be a lesbian won an injunction against deportation.
The woman, known only as BN, said she would face persecution in Uganda.
As it later turned out, she isn't a lesbian after all. A judge ruled that she wasn't gay and could be removed from Britain.
The High Court has now overturned that order on the grounds that she could still be 'suspected' of being a lesbian and therefore remained at risk.
Run that by me again. 'Suspected' of being a lesbian? Since when did that become grounds for asylum?
Meanwhile, a convicted sex attacker from Togo whose claim for asylum was thrown out eight years ago is still living in Britain at taxpayers' expense.
He has won repeated appeals even though he is classified as posing a significant risk to women and children. He has cost us hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal aid and benefits.
The Government says it is still trying to deport him but is hindered by the Yuman Rites Act.
I suppose if all else fails, he could always claim that he is suspected of being a lesbian.
Ed Miliband is reported to have two unsightly bungs in his nostrils as he recovers from an operation to cure his snoring and eliminate the nasal twang in his voice.
For some reason I'm reminded of the scene in A Fish Called Wanda in which Kevin Kline shoves chips up Michael Palin's nose.
Kevin Kline tortures Michael Palin by shoving chips up his nose in a scene from the 1988 film A Fish Called Wanda
Jude's law: One in three of all crimes reported are never investigated
A couple of weeks ago, MPs were excoriating the police for failing to properly investigate phone hacking.
Now it has been revealed that one in three of all crimes reported are never investigated because officers believe they can't be solved.
Last year 650,000 crimes were 'screened out' – everything from cycle thefts, up to and including drug-trafficking and violent sexual assaults.
Since most people would be more concerned about getting their bike back than finding out who listened to Jude Law's voicemail, can we now expect a frenzied Parliamentary inquiry into this outrageous dereliction of duty?
What do you think?
Nine out of ten incapacity benefit claimants have been found fit to work after being made to undergo medical examination.
Graham Lukes writes from Fife to tell me that because so many people have been miraculously 'cured' of their afflictions since being called in for tests, the Glasgow office of the DSS is now known as 'Lourdes'.
@ed: "sexual imagery" Sex is in the mind of the beholder. These brats are against women showing skin - whether arms, legs, stomach or chest - all female skin is sinful in their eyes. NOT SINFUL: "Half naked" women (as Chaudrey phrases it) are not sinful. Sex is not sinful. "Sexual imagery" is not sinful. Freedom is not sinful. Wine is not sinful. Medicine (drugs used properly) is not sinful. SINFUL AND EVIL: Slavery IS sinful. Raping children (forced marriage) IS sinful. Apartheid IS sinful. Religious oppression IS sinful. "Hasnath said: If someone was to look at our wife or mother or daughter with a bad intention, we would not like it, so we were just trying to do good." Maybe someone could start educating Britain's youth that we had an enlightenment a few hundred years ago, and women are no longer the property of their husbands, sons, or fathers, deciding who is "allowed" to look at a women is not "doing good".
- gsw, Kingston, Surrey , 04/8/2011 12:23
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