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At the door of the Ihsan Mosque and Islamic Centre in Norwich, Khalil Mitchell is welcoming Ivan Humble as an old friend.

It is only when Khalil goes to hug him, you see the tattoo on Ivan’s right bicep. ‘EDL’ it says. ‘East Anglian Division’.

“This is where I’ve come from,” Ivan, 47, says, touching the tattoo.

“And this is where I’ve come to.”

He shows us his left forearm. There in indelible ink, are the words ‘More In Common’.

The day we meet is the third anniversary of Jo Cox’s maiden speech to Parliament where she said she believed her constituents “have far more in common with each other than things that divide us”.

Today, Ivan, once the English Defence League’s East Anglia regional organiser and a friend of its then leader Tommy Robinson, tells me those words have come to define his life.

“It all starts with Khalil,” he says.

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The day they met in December 2011, Ivan was deep inside the EDL. He had become a loner who lived online, inside secret chat rooms that spread poisonous hatred about Muslims. He spent his weekends organising and travelling to demos.

“I was a single dad neglecting my kids,” he says. “All my money and all my attention went on demos and the EDL.”

That day, he was shopping with his kids when they passed two Muslim women in headscarves.

“I spent all this time hating Muslims but I’d never actually met any,” Ivan says.

He followed the women to where the local Muslims were meeting.

“I banged on the window,” Ivan says.

“I was probably hoping for confrontation. But Khalil came to the door and spoke to me.”

(Image: Albanpix.com) (Image: Albanpix.com)

“The first thing I said to Ivan was ‘about time’,” Khalil says. “Why didn’t you come to speak to us before instead of just holding demonstrations?”

Ivan says: “We talked for about 20 minutes. I was just totally shocked. I didn’t expect the warm welcome. Why didn’t he have a go at me?”

Khalil invited Ivan for coffee the next day and they found they shared many thoughts about Britain.

“That’s all it is, conversation,” Ivan says. “It’s where it all starts”.

Khalil, a 42-year-old graphic designer from Edinburgh, converted to Islam in 2001.

Ivan, from Lowestoft, Suffolk, joined the EDL in 2009 after commenting on a Facebook video about Muslims protesting against a British troops’ homecoming parade.

“Very quickly I was hooked,” he says. “But I wasn’t radicalised by nobody. I was angry and frustrated already.

“I was angry for my town – no factories, no fishing industry left, people being forced into a hole. I was working for a forces charity, so attacking our troops made me even more angry.”

At that time Ivan was recovering from a breakdown.

“I found this whole community online. It was all about Anjem Choudary who was preaching hate and Muslim grooming gangs.

(Image: Albanpix.com)

“I thought I was protecting my children. I believed we were in a war. But now I had a Muslim friend and that confused me. Khalil is a white guy, but the EDL wasn’t about skin colour.

“We hated black, white, brown Muslims all the same.”

In 2012, vicar Dr Alan Clifford was banned from holding a stall at Norwich market after giving out “hate-motivated leaflets” against Islam.

Ivan organised an EDL demo to support Clifford, but worried it might be dangerous for Khalil.

“So I rang him to warn him it was happening,” he says.

The far-right demo was one of Ivan’s division’s most successful, attracting 1,000 protesters, but still left him questioning.

“You came to the mosque for Eid when you were still in the EDL,” Khalil says.

“Someone came to me and said there is a man here and he’s got a tattoo saying East Anglian Division EDL and I said ‘Oh good’. Ivan was welcomed by everyone, including the imam.”

The same year, Manwar Ali, a former Jihadist turned charity worker, bought an old church in nearby Ipswich.

“Instead of calling a demo I went to see him,” Ivan says. “Manwar explained he was actually trying to save a historic building and make it into a community centre for everyone.

“He said his life had been saved by a blood transfusion in the UK and he no longer knew if he had white, black or Jewish blood.”

The encounter left Ivan reeling.

(Image: Albanpix.com)

“My life was inside the echo chamber,” he says. “We believed what we heard in chatrooms.”

When his dad died in 2013, it was Manwar he turned to.

And when Fusilier Lee Rigby was murdered that summer, Manwar and Ivan organised a joint demonstration against extremism.

Then, in January 2014, Ivan wrote a Facebook post – “I’m out.” Ivan says: “I contacted the local hate crime service to see if I could help.

“After the first event, a woman came up to me saying her brother had been killed in the Soho bombing by extremist David Copeland.

“It made me think, the far right do kill people. We tell ourselves they don’t.”

Now he runs workshops with Me and You Education, tackling hate and division.

On June 23, he is hosting a Great Get Together in Jo Cox’s name with the Khadijah Mosque in

Peterborough, the first place he ever organised an EDL rally.

“Before Jo Cox was murdered by a far-right extremist, I hadn’t listened to her words,” he says.

“When I did they seemed to speak for my whole journey.”

He looks down at his tattoo. “That’s why I had this done. ‘More in Common’.”