The Islamist

by Ed Husain

  My mother had long promised me a car if I passed my driving test, a promise she kept despite her revulsion at my extremism. In 1995 I became the proud owner of a small but serviceable Austin Metro, in which I was able to take Majid home to Southend at weekends to visit his parents. His was a different home from mine; his parents were not particularly religious. The Hizb was his way of defining himself against his non-practising Muslim parents. Oddly, the Hizb served the same purpose for me: defining me against my observant parents. We were both rebelling against our parents’ beliefs.

  Often Majid would eat at my home, where during Ramadan of that year we regularly broke the fast. At the end of the month Majid bought my mother an electric kettle as a token of his appreciation. He was lucky: almost without exception the parents of our members made us feel unwelcome in their homes.

  Majid was keen to shake up Newham College, and his enthusiasm combined with my experience at Tower Hamlets would prove to be dynamite. Unlike me, Majid oozed street cred. He wore the latest baggy jeans, expensive trainers, and had good hair. He had once worn an earring and the empty piercing spoke volumes to east London rude boys. Majid was equally at ease among aspiring black rappers and budding Asian bhangra singers. His clothes, attitude, good looks, and street speak made him very popular, very quickly.

  Majid and other members of the Hizb often spoke about their jahiliyyah days, a reference to the period of time in Arabia before Islam. But how could people born and raised in Muslim homes know jahiliyyah? Just as the Hizb had influenced Syed Qutb, Qutb had influenced the Hizb. Qutb had declared modern-day politicians in the Muslim world as non-Muslims, from the time of jahiliyyah. For Majid and others, becoming Islamists was rejection of jahiliyyah.

  We were an odd couple. Majid’s clothes all bore designer labels while I wore blazers, shirts, chinos, and thick glasses. What united us were our ideas: a common vision of a new world on the horizon. Having observed their stern Salafi speakers last year, I knew that working with the Islamic Society would prove to be a waste of time, so instead we set up a debating society. While Majid recruited contacts and made large numbers of friends in the college canteen I dealt with the college principal and head of student affairs. I assured them that ours was an intellectual venture, launched to facilitate debate among students and develop their presentation skills. At Hizb ut-Tahrir we knew how to work an audience. While I was soothing any concerns the college management might have had, Majid, with new recruits around him, was whipping up fervour in the common room, canteen, and, increasingly, the classroom.

  Newham students, Asian and African, tended to group themselves along ethnic and tribal lines. We aimed to change all that. For us there were only two divisions: Muslims and the rest.

  In the library Majid and I would start discussing current affairs stridently so that other students were compelled to listen. When the librarians expelled us, we took a crowd of Muslim students to the canteen or common room and continued speaking. Our primary audience had always been Muslim youth, but confrontation with non-Muslims, particularly Sikhs and Hindus, helped to consolidate Muslim support for us. Since we had provoked the confrontations, and then elicited Muslim support, we always led the masses.

  Unlike Tower Hamlets College, Newham had no prayer room. We knew that prayer was something all Muslims held dear and would easily unite behind. Our first confrontation with management, therefore, was to demand a prayer room. Their reluctance to provide one led to accusations that the principal of the college was Jewish and did not want to see Muslims at prayer.

  ‘They slaughter us in Bosnia, expel us from our homes in Palestine, and refuse us the basic right to pray in Britain,’ I would say to students in the corridors. Again, just as the Hizb had trained us, we were linking local issues to global politics. We needed to accustom Muslims to talking and thinking about the wider Muslim world, for it was from there that our state would rise. Soon our arguments spread like wildfire among the students. Newham management was increasingly perceived as anti-Muslim and racist. At the same time we opened a second front to our confrontation, this time with Sikhs and Hindus.

  Sikhs and Muslims often dated. This mixing of religions troubled me. We were Muslims, superior and different from others. I was determined to get this message out. The caliphate would reinstate our superiority. Muslims who advocated inter-faith dialogue and coexistence we condemned as having a ‘defeated mind’. I was convinced that the harmony that existed in Newham was a result of that defeated mind among Muslim youth who saw themselves as Pakistani or Indian rather than Muslim. As far as I was concerned, that had to change. For us, there was no such construct as ‘Pakistan’, or ‘Turkey’. These were imperial creations and deserved no recognition. Muslims were not to associate themselves along national lines - we were Muslims, plain and simple, and not in need of nationality. Our abhorrence of nationalism was something Indian students at Newham College could not understand.

  In our debating society Majid and I openly challenged Hindus and Sikhs to put their case. ‘No outside speakers,’ I used to boast. ‘I’ll take on any Sikh or Hindu any time. Tell me, what does your religion say about economics? Politics? I’ll dismantle your belief system in five minutes.’ To compound such arrogances, we declared that India was Muslim land: ‘The Moghuls were Muslims and before the British colonized India, Muslims were its rightful owners. The Islamic state will reclaim India, as it will Spain.’ Such provocative comments infuriated non-Muslim Asian students, but strengthened the self-belief and confidence of hundreds of my fellow Muslims.

  Muslims increasingly defined themselves against Hindus, Sikhs, Jewish management, Christian Africans. We saw ourselves as Muslim more than anything else. Muslim confidence was not only reinstated within months, but a feeling of Muslim superiority was palpable.

  The Islamic Society looked on, stunned by our success, as we went from strength to strength. They organized formal weekly talks while we held spontaneous public sessions almost every day in packed canteens, common rooms, and even corridors. Majid or I would start to discuss a topical issue while our sympathizers, spread across the room, directed the others’ attention to us.

  Soon our success in Newham became known in the local community. We could, at an hour’s notice, gather a crowd of nearly a hundred at the main gates of the college. ‘There will be a talk at lunchtime today’ was sufficient to rally Muslim support. And if the word had not spread, then we began our talks by shoring up Muslim spirit, invoking the mob mentality. Either Majid or I would stand on a bench at the college steps, just as we had learned from Farid Kasim and Waj, and then someone would shout from the back, ‘Takbeeeer!’ To which the crowd responded with a resounding ‘Allahu Akbar!’ This style came from the Middle East, the shouting of ‘God is Greatest!’ in martial tone.

  In my childhood I heard melodious chants glorifying God and the Prophet, but now we had done away with the Prophet and melody. All that was important to us was God, an angry God. Terrified non-Muslims would pass us, not daring to look. At no point did a single member of staff try to stop us.

  Once again I started to miss classes. My sociology teacher, a committed socialist, came to find me. He took me aside and uttered only one sentence, then walked away. To this day, I have not forgotten his words: ‘If you want to change the world, then you must get an education first.’

  Most of my teachers disagreed with my politics, yet on a personal level we still got on rather well. I owe that teacher a debt of gratitude for those words and his help later, when the defiant ethos we had created came tumbling down.

  As had happened at Tower Hamlets, Newham’s Muslim women students started to wear the hijab. There was a new level of conviction in their faith, a sense that all others had lost to our arguments. In common rooms Muslims played games of pool in Muslim-only groups. In the canteen Muslims socialized only among themselves. Being a Muslim was a badge of pride.

  In addition to the many Muslim students who ‘returned to Islam’, or became ‘born again’, sever
al non-Muslims converted to the supreme ideology we had been promoting. A Hindu girl and a Christian boy accepted Islam as a consequence of our Islamization of campus. We drew them to Islam as a force, a power. Today, I doubt very much if they were humble hearts who turned to God.

  I was about four months away from my A-Level exams when a Muslim student came to see me accompanied by a lanky black Brit whose face seemed familiar. ‘This is brother Saeed. He is looking for Hizb ut-Tahrir.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Saeed,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen you somewhere before, haven’t I?’

  As I studied his long face, his deep eyes under his thin black turban, I heard Majid’s voice in the background. As Majid and Saeed introduced themselves to one another, I remembered where I had seen him.

  ‘Saeed, we met at Christian Street mosque. Don’t you remember? We ate together!’

  While I was in Tower Hamlets targeting various mosques, Patrick and I had visited the mosque before our regular Thursday night attendance. Saeed had sat down with us and we had spoken for a long time. I remembered because it was the first time in my life I had eaten from a single plate, sharing with two other people. Patrick, Saeed, and I had had pitta bread with lentil soup, sitting on the floor. I left hungry and uncomfortable. That memory had not left me.

  ‘Yes, of course, brother!’ said Saeed. ‘I remember!’ In my mind, I wondered what a Tablighi Muslim was doing at the college. Did he want to register on a course? And why was he looking for Hizb ut-Tahrir?

  Majid and I took Saeed around the college, showing him the classrooms, library, and common rooms. Looking back, it almost was our college, our personal property that we were displaying to him.

  ‘I heard Hizb ut-Tahrir run things here,’ he said. ‘That’s good. The kuffar need to know that they should not mess with the Muslims.’ He dug deep into the outer pocket of his leather jacket and took out a business card bearing his name and phone number. ‘If they mess with you, just ring me. I’ll sort it out.’

  We accepted his card, slightly bemused by his confidence. We ‘ran things’ at college without help from Tablighi people. The Hizb was enough for us. Besides, we had learnt from Hizb leaders that Nabhani had taught that all Muslim groups were ‘barking dogs’ who should be ignored. We, Hizb ut-Tahrir, were on a fast track to a specific destination. In our speed and single-mindedness, no other Muslim group warranted our attention. Much of our combative attitude towards other groups came from these teachings.

  As we walked round the college Saeed handed his card out to every Muslim we introduced him to. He was a visitor with Majid and me, and people noticed him. Many of the younger students took a liking to him, the ‘black brother’ who was Muslim. Soon I learnt that some of the young Muslims from college had met him once or twice outside college.

  The Islamist control of Muslim student populations was not limited to Newham and Tower Hamlets. At Walthamstow and Redbridge colleges similar activities were taking place. At many universities the tactics of confrontation and consolidation of Muslim feeling under the leadership of Hizb activists were being adopted. The Hizb confronted the Jewish, gay, or confidently secular or socialist lecturers. We led Muslim opinion and directed it towards contentious politics, a feeling of global Muslimness, the ummah, which needed the leadership of the Islamic state. While we waited for the state to be established in the Middle East, and the army of the caliph to invite and invade other countries, the Hizb ut-Tahrir would lead Muslims. Of this we made no secret. What dumbfounded us was the fact that the authorities on campuses never stopped us.

  On a personal level, my relationship with God had deteriorated. If we were working to establish God’s rule on earth, as we claimed, then Hizb ut-Tahrir activists were the most unlikely candidates God could have chosen. My comrades were heady and headstrong young people. We were ecstatic at the thought that soon a ‘real Islamic state’ would emerge in the Middle East, reverse history, and allow a return to the glory days of Islam.

  Yet as I had become more active in the Hizb, my inner consciousness of God had hit an all-time low. The presence of God in my life, a gift from my parents to me, was lost. Externally I portrayed signs of piety to maintain a standing among my target audience, but I was no longer an observant Muslim.

  We sermonized about the need for Muslims to return to Islam, but many of the shabab did not know how to pray. I witnessed at least four new converts to Islam at different university campuses, convinced of the superiority of the ‘Islamic political ideology’ as an alternative to capitalism but lacking basic knowledge of worship. Within three weeks of their conversion they were lecturing others about the need for a khilafah, the role of the future Muslim army, and the duties of citizens in the future Islamic state. But when it came to reciting the Koran or maintaining basic Muslim etiquette, they were clueless.

  When Patrick and Bernie came to ask me about basic verses of the Koran for recital in prayers after they had delivered sermons at prayer rooms in universities, I began to realize how little these people knew about the Koran. I was getting older, and the Hizb seemed suddenly like pretentious, counterfeit intellectualism.

  Despite huge political success, I despised myself for appearing pious and upright in Muslim eyes when all the while I knew that there was a vacuum in my soul where God should be. I spoke to several Hizb ut-Tahrir members about this and they were unanimous in saying that this was my personal responsibility and Hizb ut-Tahrir was a political party, not a spiritual order. That response annoyed me. They were shirking responsibility for developing the Islamicness of their Islamic recruits - but content to use these same recruits to promote a seemingly Islamic cause. I was not persuaded.

  I went to the top. I found myself alone with Omar Bakri one night in a car on the way to a mosque in Edmonton. I put it to him that we were not sufficiently Muslim in our personal lives, and asked how we could establish the Islamic state if we, as a group, did not master the acts with which we earn God’s pleasure. How did we expect Muslims to trust us? Omar was candid: he agreed. He went as far as saying that the founder of Hizb ut-Tahrir believed that members of the group, especially in the 1970s Middle East, were not sufficiently pious. Why else was God withholding the state from Hizb ut-Tahrir? Nabhani had believed that within thirteen years of the Hizb’s establishment the Islamic state would be set up. In later life he blamed his members’ distance from God for the Hizb’s failure to secure the state. But the effort to gain a state never evaporated. If anything, it increased in intensity. Omar said that he had noticed vast gaps in the knowledge of group members in the 1990s. Omar reassured me that something would be done; a training session had to be held. Months passed and nothing happened. I approached Jamal Harwood, a leading Hizb apparatchik and city accountant. He instructed the shabab to pray at mosques ‘to show Muslims we were serious, to provide leadership’. As usual, prayers were linked to political ambitions, but at least instructions to worship were given. Still nothing changed: members knew that prayers were not the first priority. It was Islam’s first command to Muslims, but not of much interest to Islamism’s activists.

  We continued to disrupt meetings of other Muslim groups, to plaster the walls of inner-city London with our posters late into the night, come home in the early hours of the morning, and go to bed without saying our prayers. We were too tired to pray; establishing the Islamic state was more important than minor matters such as praying, reciting the Koran, giving to charity, or being kind to our parents and fellow Muslims.

  At home, I no longer knew I had a family. By day I was active on campus, and in the evenings I kept myself away from my parents and siblings. I could not bear discussions with my parents any longer. All subjects returned to what my father called my ‘going astray to the enemies of Islam’. Those words angered me. My life was consumed by fury, inner confusion, a desire to dominate everything, and my abject failure to be a good Muslim. I had started out on this journey ‘wanting more Islam’ and ended up losing its essence.

  Nevertheless, in public I wa
s still the mighty leader of the Hizb on campus, the challenger of kuffar in the name of Islam, the leader of Muslims. I went around college with Majid and many of our new recruits, maintaining our visible presence and making ourselves available to the ummah.

  Of the many faces I encountered on a daily basis there was one belonging to a girl called Faye that did what mine used to do a lot: smile. As an Islamist I had lost my ability to smile. Every time I approached Faye with an invitation to our meetings, she smiled, accepted, then failed to turn up. Faye confounded me. I wanted to get to know her more. Slowly, we became very good friends.

  Faye was no ordinary girl: her genuine and illuminating smile, caring eyes, her endearing face with its olive complexion, her warm ways, drew me to her. I discovered that we had identical ancestral and social backgrounds, a common interest in learning Arabic, and shared a desire to travel. In time we realized that our friendship was no longer platonic. The new threshold of our relationship was to mark a milestone in many ways.

  We would write to each other, and Faye’s letters and verses spoke of a God that was close, loving, caring, facilitating, forgiving, and merciful. Faye was close to God: she prayed regularly. I, by contrast, believed in a God who was full of vengeance, a legislator, a controller, a punisher.

  I could not envisage a future without Faye. I marshalled sufficient courage to write and ask if she would consider me for her future husband. She paused for thought for a week and eventually said yes, but only on condition that we both complete our studies and pursue careers. Love illuminated beyond all expectations.

  For the first time in many years, I was uplifted from within. At halaqah, we were told to be serious people - how could we smile? Whenever I saw Faye, how could I not?