The Islamist

by Ed Husain

  At a three-day conference in Markfield I met several Muslims who would later rise to political prominence. They included Inayat Bunglawala, a democrat, a member of the Conservative Party, and a supporter of Muslim integration in Britain. The Hizb loathed those ideas, and more particularly the confrontational style in which he delivered them. He had been a thorn in the side for the Hizb in east London, myself included. I knew the Hizb activists who had plastered his street with stickers and posters, and vandalized his father’s car. Almost as an act of apology, I made it my business not to offend Inayat a second time.

  After the Markfield conference, Inayat asked me to attend a weekly usrah, something new at ISB. I had attended taleemi jalsa with YMO, kept a daily routine, been part of halaqah at the Hizb - but what was an usrah? ‘Come and see,’ said Inayat, and offered to pick me up on Wednesday nights. In the meantime the Arabic classes at north London were temporarily suspended and eventually cancelled on the grounds that the tutor was too busy. The ISB suddenly became my sole link to Islam; once again, my focus was becoming more political than spiritual.

  The following Wednesday Inayat called for me in his father’s green Fort Escort. With him were two others: Sher Khan and Abdul-Rahman Jafar. Khan and Jafar later became involved with the MCB, and Jafar took a leading role in the Respect Party, becoming its mayoral candidate for Newham in 2006. I attended weekly usrah meetings of the ISB with them.

  Usrah, in Arabic, means family. My usrah was in a house in Maryland, east London. The idea behind the ISB gatherings was that they were ‘family gatherings’ of brothers. It was an idea taken from the Muslim Brotherhood and I felt uncomfortable with it. Inayat introduced me to the murabbi, or instructor, a middle-aged, clean-shaven Palestinian called Abu Luqman. We started the usrah with recitations from the Koran, followed by his commentary and a discussion on what we had read. Finally, we shared a meal.

  The disciplinarian streak of YMO was absent, as were the mind-controlling tactics of Hizb ut-Tahrir. Luqman’s family was very hospitable and his wife served a different delicious Levan tine dish at every meal. I grew to like usrah and I liked Abu Luqman. There was only one problem.

  Abu Luqman told us that, during his youth, he had been a student of the firebrand Palestinian cleric Shaikh Ahmed Yasin. One reason these gatherings were so valued was because we believed Abu Luqman was a true Palestinian, trained by Shaikh Yasin and a member of Hamas. Abu Luqman’s deep and powerful hatred of Israelis and Jews was unmistakable. Many times he promised destruction of the state of Israel and the return of Muslim control of the Holy Land. I sat there and accepted this. The Palestinian hatred of the Jews, as occupiers of Palestine, that I had detected in Nabhani was equally strong in Abu Luqman. Neither Inayat nor myself questioned any of this. Jew bashing was an acceptable part of the Islamist curriculum though not necessarily accepted throughout the ISB.

  But I should have known better. By then I had studied the history of Jews in Europe, the pogroms, the rejection, the Holocaust. I should have spoken out, but I didn’t. Instead, I was now leading a different kind of double life. In private I was a free thinker. Among Islamists I was a ‘brother’. I was not to dispute our unquestioned perceptions: hatred of Jews, Hindus, Americans, gays, the subordination of women. I still had two faces, two personalities. Outside the classroom I switched off my critical faculties and accepted the religious and political assumptions that were dominant in the events I attended.

  I deliberately avoided any form of serious activism with the ISB, but every Wednesday night Inayat would pick me up and drop me off after a session of Koran recitation, religious discussion, anti-Semitism, and good food.

  Members of the ISB went to Palestine and returned with photos of themselves with Ahmed Yasin as a souvenir. Many cherished these links with Hamas members and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Two leading members of the ISB travelled to Egypt to become official members of the Brotherhood.

  At a national conference in Birmingham, ISB leaders proudly told us that a PhD student at Leeds University had concluded that, in the long term, ISB was the ‘real threat’ to Britain, not Hizb ut-Tahrir. That did not sit well with me. Why the pride in being a ‘threat’? The inherent Islamist desire to confront and control was also lurking within ISB.

  The short time I spent with the Islamic Society of Britain was confusing; I was caught between British Islamists, Hamas supporters, and Wahhabi sympathizers. The ISB was going through an identity crisis itself: many within wanted to establish links with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt while others demanded that we sever ties with Islamic movements. I was among the latter. The society later split: the Muslim Brotherhood brigade broke off and formed the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) in 1997, which was instrumental in creating George Galloway’s Respect Party in 2004.

  One day, on the way to the usrah, Inayat played a tape of a Muslim speaker, somebody with a soft voice, speaking in an erudite American accent. There was a certain gravity in his words, and attraction in his tone, that kept me engaged for a while.

  ‘Who is he?’ I asked.

  ‘An American shaikh. He sounds good; I’m not sure of his name. He’s new on the scene. Check the cover in the glove compartment.’

  The man was Hamza Yusuf Hanson. Who was he? I thought. Inayat kindly lent me the tape and I took it home.

  Imam Hanson spoke about things that I had never heard about in my life. He had become a Muslim in 1977 and his grasp of early classical Islam was beyond anything I had heard to date. His words, even on tape, carried a certain weight. He spoke about Islam being a beginner’s level, an early stage in one’s spiritual growth. Based on questions that the angel Gabriel had asked the Prophet, Imam Hanson explained that the next level was iman, and the final level was spiritual perfection, known as ihsan.

  He spoke about the heart being the receptacle for iman, and not the intellect. In the Hizb we were always taught that Islam was an intellectual conviction. In Imam Hanson’s estimation, I was still a beginner! So were most of my Islamist colleagues, for we were still at the Islam level. The deep conviction in his voice indicated that this was a man who spoke from spiritual experience.

  I started to ask more questions about Imam Hanson. Very few people knew much about him other than the fact that he had studied classical Islam for more than ten years in various Muslim and Arab countries, had converted at a young age, and was not involved in Islamist movements. The latter was off-putting to us. Although we fought among ourselves between different Islamist factions, and the ISB was a moderate outfit while Hizb ut-Tahrir was more radical, we all understood that we sought political domination in some way. At first, this made me slightly wary of Imam Hanson. But I liked what he had to say and thought it would be interesting to meet him one day. I did not have to wait long.

  In the summer of 1996, still at university, I attended a three-day ‘Living Islam’ family camp in Worcester organized by the ISB. It was a large event, drawing around 3,000 Muslims and their families from across Britain.

  That night I had helped with security while the families slept. As I prepared to sleep I wondered if I was getting embroiled in activist Islam afresh. I did not take part in the arguments between ISB and the jihadis led by Babar, but I was troubled by the sight of Islamists arguing among themselves as to whether jihad or political engagement was the way forward in Britain.

  After morning prayers I went to sleep in a rabbit shed as most of the tents were taken by families with young children. It was a cold morning: I zipped myself into my sleeping bag and dozed off.

  A powerful yet soft voice coming over the loud speakers broke my deep sleep. I listened enthralled to its Californian accent filled with well-pronounced Arabic references to poetry and the Koran. I got out of my hutch, brushed my teeth, and rushed over to the main hall. On stage stood an American Muslim scholar, speaking passionately about the need to revive the Muslim spiritual condition, escape intellectual slumber, gain knowledge of Islam through classical sources at the feet of traditional Mu
slim scholars, and renew our personal commitment to God.

  I sat in silence and absorbed every word Shaikh Hamza Yusuf Hanson uttered. He spoke about a daily dawn cry from the depths of the earth, ana khalkun jadeed, meaning ‘I am a new creation’. Our yesterdays, he explained, have gone and we have no power to alter the past. Muslims, he said, should be abna al-waqt, children of the moment, trying to maximize the benefits of the present with a view to the future, both earthly and heavenly. I was struck by Hamza Yusuf ’s eloquence and presence, and his vision of Islam as empowering individuals rather than activist groups.

  Free from Hizb ut-Tahrir, I had no rehearsed questions to subvert his message, no leaflets to distribute to his audience, no instructions to sabotage his gathering. There was purity in his speech and a depth to his presence that resonated with me. After having watched Islamists bicker about jihad and Syed Qutb, I wondered how Imam Hanson avoided such politicization of religion.

  In response to one questioner Imam Hanson went as far as to declare that there was ‘no such thing as the Islamic state’. I liked his courage, his willingness to stand up for traditional Islam when every Muslim organization had become dominated by the need to establish ‘a state’. Imam Hanson explained that the Prophet referred to political power in Medina as hadha al-amr, ‘this affair’. He cited other historical arguments and reprimanded those who adopted modern European political idiom and sought to impose it on a 1,400-year-old tradition. His final argument, that God never bestowed power on those who sought it, meant a lot to me. I had seen enough of the Hizb’s remoteness from God to know full well what the Imam meant.

  He gave historical examples from the time of the Prophet. To Arabs who wanted to become governors the Prophet gave warning that we do not give ‘this affair’ to those who covet it. How distant, I thought, the Hizb was from this Prophetic Islam. Imam Hanson’s blunt criticism of political Islam only reinforced my doubts about the wisdom of seeking power to ‘establish Islam’.

  He explained Islam in a way that I could relate to. I bought other tapes by Imam Hanson and these led me to other Western Muslim scholars, including the Cambridge theologian T. J. Winter and the American Sufi Nuh Keller. However, I was not ready to accept them, I was still not sure they were ‘right’. I found the subdued, spiritual approach to religion difficult. I could not understand a God-driven Islam. Indeed, Imam Hanson could not be right: he was not from the Islamic movement and therefore suspect. His Islam did not advocate overthrow of governments, indiscriminate jihad, perennial confrontation, but rather knowledge, spiritual growth, and divine love. For me, Islam was still about domination, if not in Nabhani’s mode, then in some other vague way. Yet, deep down, I knew these scholars possessed a transcendent form of faith that I wanted to draw closer to.

  While I led this double life, between mild Islamism and free thinking, switching off my brain at Islamist gatherings, accepting suicide bombings and supporting Hamas, believing that somehow, someday we would Islamize Britain, I attended a three-day camp at the Islamic Foundation. There I met two key individuals of the Islamic movement in Britain. One was Khurram Murad, deputy leader of the Jamat-e-Islami in Pakistan and translator into English of Mawdudi’s writings. He had been ill but still made a point of visiting the ISB gathering and wishing us well. Khurram Murad was one of the first Islamist thinkers to speak of developing an Islamizing presence in Britain, and he saw the work of the Islamic Foundation as key to this objective. He endorsed the ISB as a wholly British-based organization, with few or no links to global Islamism, despite the fact that its murabbis (instructors) were drawn from Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. As deputy leader of Jamat-e-Islami, Khurram Murad was devising strategies for Islamists in Britain.

  The second person I met was Dr Zahid Parvez, a lecturer at the University of Wolverhampton and president of the ISB, who treated us to a two-hour hi-tech presentation on how we should Islamize Britain. Responding to the rhetoric of the Hizb, he had drawn up a ‘methodology’ whereby members of the Islamic movement, or Islamists, would enter key positions in government and the professions, invest in key business structures, and thus slowly exert influence on British public life. Away from Britain, secluded in the quiet, Islamized terrain of the Islamic Foundation, this seemed possible. That night, an extremely cold one, all the men slept together on the floor of the mosque of the Islamic Foundation. The sisters had the good fortune of sleeping in the bedrooms upstairs.

  The ISB was different from the Hizb. There was more of a feeling of Muslim fraternity among their members; they were very close as individuals, wrestled with one another, cracked jokes, and seriously debated whether they should cut their ties with the world Islamic movement and go native in Britain.

  But despite this closeness, I was never able to become an activist again. Noticing my reluctance to commit fully to ISB, a senior member and good friend of mine, the barrister Omar Faruk, took me to meet the Egyptian leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Kemal Halbawi, their strategist in Afghanistan. Halbawi, I was told, was the Muslim Brotherhood’s emissary to Afghanistan and had tried to bring the warring factions together. Now he was in London to try to strengthen the presence of the Muslim Brotherhood there. Halbawi was a chubby man with a gruff voice. I prayed with him that night. It was Ramadan and Muslims say extra prayers during that month. Dr Halbawi led Omar and me in prayers, and to my amazement he was keen to pray more than the basic requirements. His extra prayers were the first I had heard in Islamist circles, and he sat holding a string of prayer beads while he recited them. Again, I was taken aback. Only Christians used prayer beads, or so we had been taught.

  Halbawi and I spoke about the Hizb. I wanted to hear his refutation of them but he was more concerned about promoting his own mentor, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hasan al-Banna. The more I spoke with Halbawi, the more I realized this was not a man who was committed to an organization or a structure, but one who was really a devotee of the charismatic, assassinated martyr of the Islamist movement.

  My time in ISB was a confusing period in my life, more so because the organization itself was seeking a clear path. It was during my time with ISB that I visited the Palestinian Islamist Azzam Tamimi, widely considered to be a leading member of Hamas in Britain. I also met the leader of the Tunisian Islamist movement, Rashid Ghannoushi, who sought political asylum in Britain. While attempting to sever links with Islamism, we were busy meeting leaders of world Islamism in London: Halbawi, Tamimi, Ghannoushi. What were the ISB? Were they Islamists or British Muslims, looking to lead an ordinary life? Or both? Would they support the coming caliph? Why did they - and I - find it so difficult to sever Islamist ties?

  I had tried to be a Muslim and felt as though I had failed. At that time, being a young Muslim could only mean being an Islamist. All other options were considered to be a throwback to a colonized form of Islam. There was no other significant alternative, no voice. Grandpa’s Islam was for elderly people from the Indian subcontinent and now, after my membership of three different Islamist organizations, I considered most of what Grandpa was doing to be bid’ah, newly invented matters in faith, not endorsed by orthodox Islam. I had been successfully indoctrinated: even though I was no longer a member of a group, Islam had become politicized for me. Despite my interest in Imam Hanson, I couldn’t accept Islam as a spiritual pursuit.

  Not content within a confused ISB, I disassociated myself from them. I saw myself as a veteran of the Islamist movement now. I had done my fair share of leafleting, speaking, recruiting, marching, rallying, leading. There was a sense of burnout; I wanted a quieter existence but was always on standby to assist whenever there was a real need. Today, across the world, I believe there are tens of thousands of people in this position. They harbour a confrontational worldview, but are not actively involved in the world of the Islamist movement. However, a cataclysmic event would bring these people, along with new recruits, back to the organizational front line. In my case, I stayed in touch with friends from the ISB, particularly Omar
Faruk, occasionally had dinner with them, but concentrated all my energies elsewhere.

  So now I wanted to lead a ‘normal life’, but had no clear idea what I wanted to do, other than to learn more about certain subjects. I had monitored the 1997 election campaign closely and, in defiance of Hizb’s teachings, voted for Tony Blair. That year the Hizb had put up posters in all Muslim areas of Britain saying that it was haram to vote and we would burn in hell if we did. Because the Hizb ordered me, and Britain’s 2 million other Muslims, not to engage with the political process, I decided to do the opposite. I voted and went further. I joined the Labour Party - an act of defiance.

  Omar Bakri had left the Hizb and formed his own organization, called al-Muhajiroun, in 1996. In essence, they both wanted to Islamize the world, but the Hizb believed that the Middle East was their first priority and Omar believed that the whole world, including Britain, should have equal priority.

  The 1997 election campaign was an exciting time, and I was excited too. The country was at the cusp of renewal - ‘new Britain’ as Tony Blair had called it. Of all the arguments he and Gordon Brown made against the Conservative government, there was one I failed to understand: economics. Having passed my history finals, I now wanted a job where I could learn more about economics and how the world of business worked. Faye too had graduated, although she was planning to return to university to complete a Postgraduate Certificate in Education, hoping eventually to teach. That summer she had taken a temporary job with HSBC bank. While at secondary school I had done two weeks’ work experience with the Midland Bank and my first bank account had been opened with them at the age of eleven. All their young customers received a sports bag with a study pack inside it, which included the first dictionary I ever owned. Faye’s summer experience had been positive and she recommended I apply to work with its successor, HSBC.