The Islamist

by Ed Husain

  I now started to spend more time studying with her in the town hall library, across the road from the college building. One afternoon a new recruit to the Hizb rushed over to ask me to go to the college immediately. Some black Christian boys had been hogging the pool table and were refusing to let a group of Muslims play. Things could get nasty. I rushed over to find a stand-off involving a dozen pool cues and a roomful of injured pride. How dare the inferior Christians refuse Muslims a game? For us, there was no right or wrong here. We were not interested in what had happened; we were there to support our brothers. At that point the fire alarm went off. We all knew what that meant: an invitation to fight outside. College managers restrained the Christian boys, allowing us to exit the building first. Majid and I led the Muslims to the other side of the street, ensuring we had more space if a ruck should break out. We led a crowd over 200 strong, repeatedly shouting ‘Allahu Akbar!’ and ‘Jee-had!’

  Now, as the students poured out into the streets and the fire brigade came rushing in to attend what we all knew was a false alarm, the black non-Muslims looked on, concerned by our numbers and the sheer power of our voices. Amid screams of ‘Jee-had’ many started to wave their fists too. The college rude boys of the previous year were now completely under our leadership.

  Amid the shouting, I felt a tug on my arm. I turned round to find Saeed standing next to me.

  ‘Saeed!’ I said, surprised. ‘What brings you here?’

  ‘Somebody called me from college. You need my help.’

  ‘Oh, no, no. I think we have things under control. Just a small scuffle over a game of pool.’

  ‘Yes,’ reassured Majid. ‘Nothing too difficult.’

  ‘They were calling us names, bro’,’ protested somebody from the crowd. ‘The Christian niggers need to be taught a lesson,’ continued the speaker without a trace of irony. There was a lot of anger. Saeed did not seem offended in the least: he was no longer black, he was a Muslim.

  In the end it all came to nothing. The college managers ushered in the Christian students and we decided not to bother. I asked the students who were involved to walk away and head to the high street. I still did not understand why Saeed was there.

  ‘You brothers are doing a great job,’ he said. ‘But listen, if anything kicks off, call me. I’ll bring Abdul Jabbar with me and we’ll settle things down for you.’

  ‘Abdul Jabbar?’ I asked, puzzled. ‘Who is he?’

  Saeed smiled, looked left and right, unzipped the front of his leather jacket, and reached for his inner pocket. He quickly pulled out a dagger, resting inside an ornate scabbard. I caught a glimpse and was immediately speechless.

  ‘Meet Abdul Jabbar,’ he said.

  We spoke about jihad, but we never anticipated real violence. Not yet, anyway. Recently there had been skirmishes between Muslims and Sikhs in Slough and Southall. Hizb activists from Newham and Redbridge had gone there to lend a hand in the fighting, but that was in a personal capacity. It was not ‘party policy’ to engage in violence before the caliphate came about. We believed that fighting as individuals was futile - our aims were greater. An army would fight entire nations with the military force of the Islamic state, not by vigilante gang warfare.

  With A-Levels pending, and under Faye’s spell, I spent whole days studying. I was fortunate that my halaqah had been cancelled for about two months during that time owing to an organizational restructure between Newham and Ilford. There was also a shortage of halaqah instructors as membership swelled. I was allowed a short break before resuming halaqah and a new book by Nabhani. It was an unexpected respite. I was no longer distributing leaflets, disturbing meetings of other groups, or shouting down our opponents in gatherings.

  One afternoon as I sat in the library, buried in my books, I heard voices outside. On the other side of the street a small crowd had gathered and Dave Gomer, the student affairs manager, was pushing people away. Within minutes an ambulance arrived and from where I stood, I could see a boy lying on the ground next to a pool of blood - one of the Christian boys who had been involved in the row over the pool table.

  Something terrible had happened and the library was no place to be. I sent Faye home. Majid arrived and we went outside, where police officers were speaking with Dave Gomer. No doubt our presence was duly noted.

  I asked everybody to disperse, to go home and stay in contact by telephone. Majid and I left the scene with heavy hearts. We both knew that whatever had happened at college, as Hizb activists we were responsible. It was we who had encouraged Muslim fervour, a sense of separation from others, a belief that Muslims were worthier than other humans. And those ideas had been inculcated in us by Hizb ut-Tahrir.

  Majid had seen the whole thing. Apparently the boy, a Christian student of Nigerian extraction, had been throwing his weight around and being generally offensive towards Muslims and about their attitudes. Someone had phoned Saeed, who, as he had done previously, turned up within fifteen minutes. The pair confronted each other outside. The black boy drew a knife.

  Saeed remained calm, looked the boy in the eye and said, ‘Put that knife away or I will have to kill you.’

  The boy did not respond. Perhaps he thought Saeed was bluffing. Saeed walked closer and warned him again. Exactly what happened next is unclear, but within seconds Saeed had pulled out Abdul Jabbar and thrust it into the boy’s chest. This was murder. And had I not been with Faye in the library, I would probably have been somehow involved. It was a narrow escape.

  Early the following morning two police officers came to the door, asking to see me. My mother called me out of bed. I told them I had nothing to say. My father insisted that I co-operate; in all his life, the police had never knocked on his door. ‘We need to eliminate you as a potential suspect,’ they said.

  Although I was no longer attending halaqah, I was still intellectually committed to the ideas of Hizb ut-Tahrir. How could I speak to two kafir officers and inform on a fellow Muslim? Impossible.

  Besides, I was still in pyjamas. They issued threats of arrest, detention, prosecution, but I refused to budge. Reluctantly, they gave me their contact details and left.

  The murder was now all over the local press. I felt unremitting guilt at what had happened. As Hizb’s representatives, Majid and I had met Saeed when he had come to college that first day and asked for Hizb ut-Tahrir. However, now, under police and media pressure, the Hizb leadership put out press releases that it had never operated on the campus.

  Dismayed, Majid went to see Omar Bakri, who had visited Newham days before the murder, and gave him a full explanation of what had happened, explaining that Saeed had acted in self-defence and asking Omar to stand beside the college’s Muslims. Instead the Hizb leadership issued a condemnation of what had happened, saying that it was a non-violent party. This myth was swallowed by investigators who never really understood the seriousness of the Hizb’s form of violence. Even today, a primary reason for Western failure in the War on Terror is this same cause: an innate inability to understand the Islamist psyche.

  That murder, the direct result of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s ideas, served as a wake-up call for me. Now, every time I saw a leaflet with Hizb’s flag and masthead posted above photos of the globe I felt nauseous. It was not mere PR - they wanted to control the world, to conquer countries.

  Soon Saeed was arrested, charged, and convicted of murder. Since my first meeting with him at Christian Street he had left the Tablighi Jamat and become what we now mistakenly called a ‘jihadi’ or vigilante. Despite their condemnation of vigilantism, most Islamists are jihadis, particularly members of Hizb ut-Tahrir and its offshoots. Individual jihadis are driven by ideas that prompt them to immediate personal action; Hizb ut-Tahrir encourages individuals to form an army dedicated to a prolonged military campaign. In essence, the differences from vigilantism are simply of time and scale.

  9.

  Farewell Fanaticism

  The facts of history are nothing; interpretation is everything.


  E. H. Carr, British historian

  Just as I had become a member of the Hizb over a period of time, my departure from the organization did not occur on a specific date. Attraction and commitment to extremism have always been part of a gradual process. My first move away was to dissociate myself from the halaqah, a move prompted by the taking of an innocent life, Omar Bakri’s subsequent deceit and my horror when I realized how poisonous was the atmosphere I had helped create. Most important of these was the murder - the Hizb’s ideas had led to the belief that the life of a kafir was of little consequence in attaining Muslim dominance. I could not bear to be associated with such ideas any longer. I was frightened of where they might lead. Did I really want to follow a credo that led to violence and murder? I had advocated the ideas of Muslim domination, confrontation, and jihad, never for one moment thinking that their catastrophic consequences would arrive on my own doorstep. It had all seemed abstract and remote, relevant for Bosnia or the Middle East, not Britain.

  Now I began to wonder whether Islam had anything at all to offer. I had completely confused Islamism with Islam: to me they were the same. Did God really want government in the name of religion? I had serious doubts. If God was on the Muslim side then why had we failed to establish the Islamic state? Why were the ‘enemies of God’, as we viewed the West, politically dominant?

  I wanted to find out, and the only way to do so would be to learn Arabic so that I could read the Koran and classical Muslim sources for myself. Had I been duped by both Jamat-e-Islami and Hizb ut-Tahrir in their deployment of Arabic? Like many Muslims, I had learnt from a young age how to read and pronounce Arabic words, but I had no idea what those words meant. What I did not realize was that even in trying to set my mind free, I was taking steps that Islamists take: going direct to divine text without scholarly guidance, believing that I, with the mere understanding of a language, could interpret what Muslim scholars have debated and discussed for centuries.

  All the while Faye’s companionship and love helped me to maintain my composure. We spoke about the Hizb for hours and there was no doubt that she preferred me out of the Hizb than in. I told her about the arguments I had had with my father and that similar tension existed between nearly all Hizb activists and their parents. Faye reminded me of one of Islam’s most basic teachings: be kind to your mother and father. ‘How could people in the Hizb reject their parents so easily? Don’t they know about the man who wanted to go on a military expedition and the Prophet said that looking after elderly parents was more important that jihad?’ In my pursuit of political power I had become remote from such teachings. Had it not been for Faye’s guidance and encouragement, I might well have returned to the Hizb.

  In an attempt to persuade me that the Hizb was more than Omar Bakri’s deceit, that the ideas and concepts were still true, Majid and three other Hizb members visited me. Members of my old halaqah came to my home, outraged that I could even contemplate severing my ties with the Hizb. They forcefully explained that as long as I agreed with the ‘concepts’ of the Hizb, I was part of the Hizb. I was ‘carrying their ideas’. ‘Carrying’ - I felt like a woman pregnant with a violent partner’s child.

  In my mind, there was turmoil. I was still ‘intellectually convinced’ (to use Hizb phraseology) that oppression and subordination of Muslims must be reversed, but I could no longer endorse violence as a means to do so. I knew the Hizb’s ideas were designed to confront, subvert, and ultimately annihilate opposition through violence. In my heart, though, I felt that my time inside Islamism had ruined me and my relationship with those around me, particularly my parents. It was time to stand back and think again.

  The indoctrination of the Hizb was powerful and it was many years before I was completely free of it. With the help of my teachers I managed to pass my A-Levels, and I chose to read history for my degree. I was offered a place at the School of Oriental and African Studies and Faye was offered a place at Queen Mary and Westfield College, but I knew that the Hizb was active at both institutions. Fortunately we were both also offered places at what was then the University of North London, and decided to accept on the grounds that we would be together. More than ever before, I needed Faye’s love and warmth to help me reconcile my mind to the modern world and come to terms with the reality that surrounded me, rather than trying to dominate it in the name of religion. I tried to avoid the Hizb as much as possible. I stopped answering phone calls from former friends, avoided shopping centres in Ilford, Walthamstow, Green Street, or even Whitechapel on Saturday morning because I knew the da’wah stalls would be there.

  Away from activist Islamism, for the first time in nearly five years I was hopeful of being able to study conscientiously. I had no daily routine to complete, no weekly halaqah to attend, no one telling me what to think. I loved my time at university. My understanding of my subject had hitherto been blinkered by the arguments of Mawdudi, Qutb and Nabhani that history was a conflict between Islam and the rest of the world. But I was determined to open up my worldview and slowly, independently, question some of the concepts and tenets I had once held so dear.

  It was not easy. At first I still saw non-Muslim academics and their interpretations of history as part of a global conspiracy against Islam and Muslims. Even some Muslim authors I regarded as suspect, remembering how Farid, Jamal, and others had publicly mocked Muslim scholars as government agents, puppets of the West, unworthy of attention. When the Cambridge-based Pakistani scholar Professor Akbar Ahmed produced a BBC documentary series highlighting various manifestations of Islam in different countries, Hizb leaders publicly dismissed it as ‘Mumbo-jumbo from bungo-bungo land’. When Muslim scholars from Al-Azhar in Cairo, the oldest surviving university in the world, declared that signing a peace treaty with Israel was in the interest of both Islam and Muslims, the Hizb lampooned them as ‘scholars for dollars’. The Hizb’s mental barriers were not easily broken down, and only slowly did I become conscious of how deeply the Hizb had penetrated both my life and my teenage mind.

  Such a doubtful and rejectionist mindset was hardly helpful to my studies. Hizb activists obtained their degrees by writing what the examiner wanted to see, not what they believed was true. I was determined to avoid this Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde approach. Nevertheless, of my first essay (on the 1882 British invasion of Egypt) my tutor wrote: ‘The author of this paper is culturally and politically committed to Islam’. Mr Hyde was obviously still alive and kicking.

  A major influence on me during my time at university was Professor Denis Judd, a British historian who has written several books on empire. More than any other tutor he nurtured my mind with academic rigour, critical thinking, and fresh interpretation. He was a warm, approachable, and respectful teacher who welcomed me to his office whenever I knocked on his door.

  After almost a decade I was once again experiencing some of that heartfelt, sincere humanity that I had encountered as a child at Sir William Burrough. Professor Judd taught me much about the British Raj, Victorian and Edwardian Britain, Britain’s involvement in the Middle East, and the international fallout that followed the dismantling of the Empire. We discussed British- Muslim relations in India and the Middle East and I learned about the perception of Islam in British minds in Victorian Britain. What struck me most about Professor Judd’s subject and his teaching methods was that he, despite being a non-Muslim, did not express enmity or animosity toward Muslims and Islam at any stage. How could that be?

  To my Islamist psyche, anyone who did not accept Islam was an opponent of it, a kafir. The neutrality towards Islam of Professor Judd and his students left a mark. Where was the ‘Islam ophobia’ or ‘orientalism’ that Hizb ut-Tahrir had warned me to expect from kafir teachers? The exceptionally friendly Professor Judd, openly discussing the merits of Muslim identity in British India and the exploitation of these sentiments by egotistical politicians to later break up India and form a new country, Pakistan, in the name of religion, hardly conformed to that stereotype.

  Profes
sor Judd also introduced me to the ideas of Keir Hardie, Harold Laski, and others influential in the Labour movement during the last century. Professor Judd’s commitment to centre-left politics reminded me of my father. After Labour’s 1997 election victory Professor Judd put a poster on his office door for all to see that read: ‘We Won’. I recalled my father’s words about joining the Labour Party.

  But I was not yet ready to commit to man-made politics or, worse, democracy. In the Hizb we had constantly attacked representative government. We preached ‘democracy is hypocrisy’ in an attempt to dissuade Muslims from engaging in British politics and so they would not expect the future Islamic state to be a democratic one. To us democracy implied sovereignty for man, whereas Islamism demanded sovereignty for God. I started to read as widely as possible about representative government, freedom, and democracy and realized these were all contested concepts, that the definitions of these ideas were constantly in flux, reflecting different social and political realities in different countries.

  Nabhani disliked democracy not because it in any way undermined God but because it was a Western idea. Much like his rejection of kafir Western terms such as ‘social justice’, democracy too was un-Islamic and haram. His argument was rooted in separatism and rejection of the West. (For similar reasons, he had declared Islam’s greatest philosophers, Averroes and Avicenna, non-Muslims.)

  I learnt that rejection of democracy was nothing new: Plato detested it too. But I began to see it as an attempt to govern by consent and to resolve conflicts by peaceful means. Increasingly I developed a nuanced, contextualized understanding of democracy and gradually started to question Nabhani’s pedantry and extremism.

  All university professors teaching the history of the Middle East were referred to by the Hizb as ‘orientalist’, professionals who sought to demonize Islam and Muslims and define themselves and their culture and history, i.e. Western civilization, as superior by portraying Islam as inferior. I had thought that history was a collection of facts, a factual narrative of what happened. I could not have been more wrong.