Them

by Jon Ronson

  “Really?” I said.

  “Oh, yes,” said Omar. “This is just the beginning. I can promise you this. By autumn, I will have shaken up the entire world.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “You don’t believe me?” said Omar. “Just you wait and see.”

  ♦

  As the months progressed, I found my life becoming increasingly determined by Omar’s whims.

  “If you turn up late,” he often said, “I’ll give you sixty lashes. Ha ha!”

  On many occasions Omar would telephone and call me over urgently. I would cancel nights out with my wife and drive over to discover that he’d forgotten all about me and had taken the train to Plymouth, or Nuneaton, or to his secret Jihad training camp near Crawley. I sometimes felt I was getting a unique insight into what it would be like living under Islamic rule, with Omar as Ayatollah.

  ♦

  Omar’s plans for Britain’s biggest ever Islamic rally, the rally that would shake up the world, began to gain momentum around late summer. He put a deposit down on hiring the mammoth 14,000-capacity London Arena, in a scheduling gap between a Tom Jones concert and a show called The Wonderful World of Horses. Omar had never heard of Tom Jones and he was shocked to discover that women throw their underwear at him on stage.

  “My God,” he said, as we stood in the London Arena foyer, waiting for the management to show us around, “that is the sign of the hour, when women take off their own knickers and their own underwear. That is the sign of the hour.”

  “Do I look smart enough?” asked Anjem, Omar’s second in command, adjusting his tie. Anjem was a bookish, resolute young man, the plodding administrator realizing the wild plans of the idealist.

  “You look very smart,” said Omar. “I hope they don’t recognize me. Will they recognize me?”

  “No,” said Anjem. “They won’t recognize you.”

  They didn’t recognize him. Omar told the management that he was a teacher of Islamic affairs, and this would be an educational conference. Inside, we wandered around the huge, cavernous hall.

  “Yes,” said Omar, quietly to himself. “Yes. This will do.”

  Although I was unaware as to what Omar had in store for the rally, I was a little doubtful about whether this venture would be a success. His recent track record in these matters was shaky. Perhaps I was being naive about the Israeli Embassy debacle, as Omar had suggested, but I couldn’t help speculating that Directory Enquiries had given him the correct address and Omar had written it down wrong.

  Also, there was an unfortunate incident that had occurred at the end of Omar’s famous Trafalgar Square speech the previous summer. When the thousands of black balloons carrying the call to war on little attached postcards were unleashed from their netting, it became evident that the postcards were too heavy. The cardboard/helium weight ratio had not been accurately calculated, and the messages anchored the balloons to the Trafalgar Square pavement. The afternoon culminated in many of Omar Bakri’s followers kneeling amid five thousand grounded balloons, waving their arms about in an ultimately fruitless attempt to generate enough of a breeze to get them airborne. One or two of the followers eventually untied the messages and allowed the balloons to float away. But without the messages, the balloons lost their raison d’etre, and they soon stopped doing this. The last thing I saw was one young man, his face covered by a scarf, defeatedly kicking a listless black balloon and stomping off.

  So now, as we stood in the midst of the vast, empty London Arena, I couldn’t imagine how Omar intended to fill the 14,000 seats. And then he explained to me his masterplan. The rally would include videotaped messages and personal appearances from an extraordinary cast of Islamic extremists. There was the Blind Sheikh, Omar’s old friend, jailed for life for ‘inspiring’ the World Trade Center bombing. There was Hizbullah’s spiritual leader Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah. There was Osama Bin Laden, who had not yet been labelled ‘a man as dangerous as any state we face’ by Bill Clinton for his alleged role in the American Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, but had already been linked to a number of truck bombs in Saudi Arabia, killing US servicemen and Australian tourists, and had financed the Taliban in Afghanistan with some of his vast inherited personal fortune. There was Dr Mohammed Al Masari, the Saudi dissident who had called for the annihilation of the Jews. And so on.

  “So?” said Omar, when he’d finished reading me his list. “What do you think?”

  There was a long silence.

  “But what about your application for a British passport?” I asked him.

  “Mmm?” said Omar.

  “Don’t you think that when the Home Office hears about your list of speakers they’ll be reluctant to grant you British citizenship?”

  “It is freedom of speech,” chuckled Omar. “What can they do? We are breaking none of your laws.” He chuckled. “If I lived in Saudi Arabia, I could never get away with what I do here!” He paused. “Anyway. It is ironic. You want to get rid of me? Give me a passport! I will be on the first plane out of here. I will go to India for a holiday. I will visit my mother in Syria.”

  ♦

  Within days of the announcement of the London Arena rally, Omar and his roster of Islamic extremists were being debated across the world. Omar’s tiny offices at Arsenal were thrust into the limelight of international politics.

  The Egyptian government summoned the British charge d’affaires in Cairo to demand an explanation. There was talk of Egyptian sanctions against Britain.

  A communique from the Algerian Foreign Office read, “Algeria expresses its firm reprobation at this London rally. This permissive attitude clearly goes against the declarations of the G7 conference at Lyon where a new coordinated international effort was mounted to fight this menace to international peace and security.”

  Gay rights groups and the Board of Deputies of British Jews appealed to the Home Office for the rally to be banned.

  The Foreign Secretary announced to Parliament that the rally couldn’t be stopped unless laws were broken, and laws were so far not being broken.

  But the Home Office issued an open letter to Omar: “The British Government condemns any statement made at the rally in support of terrorism. We will monitor the rally and gather evidence to prosecute anyone breaking the law.”

  ♦

  In the space of one week, Omar had received 634 interview requests. Now, whenever I turned up to see him, I had to vie with dozens of other journalists for Omar’s attention. Omar was headline news worldwide. Day after day, newspaper and television editorials debated whether Omar, Osama Bin Laden and the Blind Sheikh should be allowed their freedom of speech. Most sided with the no camp. The Mail on Sunday wrote:

  This Man Is Dedicated To The Overthrow Of Western Society. He Takes £200 A Week In Benefits And Is Applying For British Citizenship.

  This report was illustrated with a large and somewhat sinister portrait of Omar scowling.

  “They took many, many photographs of me,” said Omar when he showed me this photograph, “and they were just looking for one to make me look angry. They said to me, ‘Say Teese, Cheese.’ They wanted me to show my teeth. I said, ‘What? You want me to do this for you?’”

  Omar held his hands out in front of his face and gnarled his fingers like a Nosferato vampire.

  “And they tried to take a picture of me when I was joking with them!”

  Only an editorial in the Independent newspaper took Omar’s side.

  Britain has a glorious history of hospitality to political radicals. Banning the rally would diminish the principles that uphold our society and be a victory for those who seek its destruction.

  In late August, Omar took a break from the rally preparations to attend a secret weekend social get-together with all of Britain’s Islamic fundamentalist leaders at a large Edwardian manor house in the countryside near Birmingham. There had been some in-fighting within radical Islamic circles, and this weekend’s fishing and table tennis was intended to help reb
uild bridges.

  The house was down a long lane, past some ‘No Unauthorized Entry’ signs. It was once the country pile of a mining baron, but now it was a college for Muslims. I arrived at 10 p.m., and parked the car. It was dark outside, and I could hear cheerful noises coming from the front parlour. I peered in through the window, and I saw a lot of men in robes shaking hands and hugging each other. Omar was there, laughing and joking.

  It had been said that Omar was not popular within many of Britain’s Muslim communities. Certainly many moderate Muslims – Chocolate Muslims, as Omar called them – considered him dangerous PR in a society that could be furiously Islamophobic. But even within his own militant world, there had been conflict. Many of Omar’s rival leaders thought that he’d made a mistake in calling for the assassinations of John Major and Tony Blair, for example. The London Arena rally too had generated some hostile debate. I imagined that this weekend social get-together had much to do with the rifts caused by his recent actions.

  I was caught peering through the window by a tall young man in a white robe.

  “Can I help you?” he said.

  “Ah,” I said, “I am personal friends with Omar Bakri.”

  There was a long silence. He looked me up and down.

  “Are you?” he said.

  “I really am,” I said.

  Doubtfully, he went inside. He returned, a few moments later, with Omar.

  We were then left alone in the car park.

  “Oh my God,” laughed Omar. “They told me not to communicate with the media. They expressly said no journalists.” He laughed. “What can I do?”

  Some more Islamic militants arrived, and they embraced Omar warmly. Then they stopped and looked at me.

  “This is my friend,” said Omar. “He is writing about my life. Nothing to do with the meeting. He is following me around for maybe ten or fifteen years.”

  And then I heard a voice behind me. A small group of Omar’s fellow militants had formed, and one of them said, softly, “I have brought a spare suitcase. Dr Al Masari has brought a spare pair of shoes. You, Omar Bakri, have brought a spare journalist.”

  “Maybe I can come inside?” I said, quietly, to Omar.

  “Wait here in the car park,” said Omar. “I’ll do my best.”

  Omar vanished inside the country house. I waited. Some time later, he returned.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “They said no way. There’s nothing I can do. You have to go away now. Goodbye.”

  “What’s going on inside?” I asked.

  Omar grinned. “Everyone’s here!” he said. “Really! Everyone!”

  “And what are you all talking about?”

  “Oh, it’s very informal,” he said. “We are splitting into groups. Tomorrow we will go fishing.”

  “There seemed to be some tension before,” I said. “I was wondering if some of the other leaders consider you to be too extreme.”

  “What is this word ‘extreme’?” said Omar. “Words like fundamentalist or terrorist or extremist mean nothing here. Those are your words. For you, a terrorist is somebody who blows up a bus here and there. But for the people here, I am on the front line. I am a great warrior, a great fighter.”

  At this point, I think that Omar registered my disappointment. He brightened.

  “Would you like an ice cream?” he said. “I can get you an ice cream.”

  “Yes, please,” I said.

  “OK,” said Omar. “I will get you an ice cream.”

  Omar wandered inside again. He came out a few minutes later with a vanilla choc ice.

  “OK,” said Omar. “So I am cooling down the temperature and also the tension with an ice cream for you.”

  “Thank you very much,” I said.

  “You must go now,” said Omar. “So, goodbye.”

  ♦

  I drove into Birmingham and checked into a Holiday Inn. I decided to return the next morning. I was keen to see Omar at play, which was something he rarely does.

  “I get dizzy when I am not furthering the cause of Islam,” he had once said to me. “I cannot take a day off, an hour off, even a minute off. I will take time off when I am with Allah, when I die in the battlefield and become a martyr.”

  But he was due to make a rare exception this weekend, fishing in the pond in the grounds of this country house.

  At six the next morning, I drove once again into the long lane. I spotted Omar immediately. He was taking an early-morning stroll with a small group of robed men. I beeped and waved merrily.

  To my surprise, however, Omar seemed furious to see me.

  I pulled up, and jumped out of the car.

  “Hi!” I said, cheerfully. “Omar!”

  Omar pointedly ignored me.

  “Omar?” I said, quizzically. “What’s wrong?”

  “How did you know I was going to be here this weekend?” barked Omar. “Who told you? Why have you tracked me down here?”

  “Omar?” I said, confused. “What’s going on?”

  “What do you want from me?” said Omar, sharply.

  “I just wanted to see you fish,” I said, hopelessly.

  “Who told you I was going to be here?” snapped Omar. “Tell me their name!”

  There was a long silence.

  “I have no idea,” I said, finally.

  There was another awkward pause.

  “Well, now you’re here,” said Omar, “you may as well stay.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  We carried on walking. When Omar was looking away, one of his fellow walkers smiled softly at me.

  “That was quite a show Omar put on just then,” he said.

  “Yes it was,” I replied.

  “So,” said Omar, merrily, turning around to us, “where is everybody and where is the fishing?”

  And then, ahead of us, was a small, shady pond. It was a lovely rustic sight. A cluster of Islamic militants were gathered around fishing rods. For bait, they were using sweetcorn. We wandered over. The first thing Omar said was, “How many fish did Hizb-ut-Tahrir catch?”

  The other leaders glanced at each other and raised their eyebrows. Omar’s split from Hizb-ut-Tahrir – the group he had previously led before branching off to form Al Muhajiroun – had been painful and acrimonious, and now there seemed to be some competition between them.

  “He didn’t catch any fish,” came the reply.

  “Ha ha!” says Omar. “No fish! Really? Ha ha! Somebody give me a fishing rod.”

  Soon after casting off, Omar’s rod began to twitch. He had caught a fish.

  “Praise be!” he exclaimed. “I’ve got a fish! I’ve got one! Ha ha!”

  He lifted his rod out of the water, and the bedraggled fish struggled mid-air on the line, while all the Islamic fundamentalists gazed at it.

  “Ha ha!” said Omar. “It looks like one of the Jewish Board of Deputies.”

  There was a smattering of polite laughter.

  “What do I do now?” said Omar.

  “Pass me the green knife,” said a man to Omar’s right. “Quick! The green knife!”

  In a panic, Omar reached for a tin opener.

  “Not the tin opener! The knife! Hold the fish, Omar Bakri. Just hold the fish.”

  “No,” said Omar, quietly, “I cannot hold the fish.”

  There was a silence.

  “Hold the fish!”

  “No. I cannot hold the fish. What do I do with a fish?”

  “Oh, give it to me!”

  “OK,” said Omar. “You hold the fish.”

  The other leaders glanced despairingly at Omar. And then one of them sighed, reached for the fish, and said, “How do you expect to fight the Jihad, Omar Bakri, if you cannot hold a fish?”

  Omar didn’t return my calls for a few days after the fishing trip.

  ♦

  It was midnight, back in London, a few days later. Omar and his people were flyposting for the rally. Omar asked me to join in, so I could provide a lift for some of
his supporters. They covered Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square. They flyposted telephone boxes, stop signs, no-right-turn signs, buses, tube trains, pelican crossings, and age-old statues of generals on horseback.

  “Who the hell is that?” said Anjem, referring to a statue of Field Marshal John Fox Burgoyne in a street behind the Mall.

  “Who gives a tinker’s toss who that is,” replied a young man called Naz, pasting glue over the statue’s base.

  They stuck a JIHAD! sticker on a gold knob at the end of an iron railing outside Buckingham Palace. But there were too many air-bubbles. Gold knobs are not suitable for rectangular stickers. They spent five minutes or so attempting to iron out the bubbles. They stood around the gold knob in silence. Finally, one of them said, “It’s not working, is it?”

  ♦

  Within the next few days, the London Arena received complaints from twenty-eight local councils about the flyposting. There had been bomb threats too, and the Arena announced that they intended to charge Omar £18,000 for extra security. When I paid the Arena an impromptu visit to ask them how they were coping with being in the midst of a burgeoning international incident, they threw me out. They wouldn’t even let me stand in the foyer.

  That afternoon, they called Omar and told him that, on top of the cost of removing the flyposters and the £18,000 extra security charge, they wanted to renegotiate the car-parking facilities. This was a strange new twist. Omar sent Anjem to the Arena to explain that, firstly, the flyposting could only have been the work of an unknown band of supporters. Omar was just a simple man. He couldn’t control the enthusiasm of all the Muslim people.

  “But, Omar,” I said, “your phone number was printed on the bottom of the leaflets.”

  “Do you know my phone number?” said Omar.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And how did you first find it,” he asked, “all those months ago?”

  “The phone book,” I said.

  “Exactly,” said Omar.

  “Ah,” I said. “Clever.”

  And in response to the Arena’s second demand: what possible need could there be for security guards at an educational conference on Islamic affairs? All this talk of bombs and terrorism and extremists was just lies generated by media infidels.