He saw light from the jaws of jihad

The story of Ed, or “Mohammad'', is fascinating not just because this Muslim “choirboy'' fell under the spell of extremism and radical Islam but because he went from being a Hizb Ut-Tahrir operative and “the challenger of kafir (non-Muslims)'' to detaching himself from extreme Islamism, summoning the courage to write honestly about it and emerging as a respectable British citizen and PhD student at the School of Oriental and African Studies.

A candid account of his life story — why he got sucked into jihadism and why he left — The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left (Penguin Books, 304 pages) dissects the psyche of extremists and allows us to understand the brainwashing and indoctrination of young Muslims by organisations such as Hizb.

It is difficult to imagine that this very British, smartly dressed man ever deemed himself a pioneer “of this new global development of confronting the West in its own backyard'' and was committed to “establishing the Islamic state''.

Today, Husain is as committed to the cause of tackling homegrown terrorism as he previously was to being a jihadist.

Who is to blame?

When Husain ventured into these organisations, there were between 300 and 400 young Muslim extremists in Britain.

Today there are officially between 3,000 and 4,000 in the country.

According to Husain, “they are using religion as a political movement to define themselves against the other (non-Muslim) society.

"It is this mindset of separatism — them and us — that is the prelude to violence.''

There are various reasons why Britain is home to so many Muslim extremists.

Husain feels “the British government is partly to blame. It gave radical clerics of the Middle East shelter throughout the 1990s.''

These extremists, expelled from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Palestine, had a free run in London and “went around preaching they were the real Muslims from the Arab world who understood the Quran''.

I can't help but feel that although clerics such as Omar Bakri did a good job of brainwashing young Muslims in Britain and the older generations of mosque-attending elders who, in Husain's words, “failed to articulate an Islam that we in the West relate to'', some of the blame also lies with young Muslims.

Being the educated middle class that they are, surely they must have had the intelligence not to be hypnotised and indoctrinated by some radicalist?

Husain is right in saying that all these factors put together have created “a generation which is not at home in Britain and not at home in Pakistan''. But what, then, is the solution?

“There is no quick-fix,'' Husain says. “This mindset that most Muslims have — that they are [in Britain] for a temporary period of time, that they are going back home and are going to get married back home — needs to stop.''

Multiculture Misnomer

Does this mean that Britain isn't a multicultural society?

“Multiculturalism in Britain needs to be mended,'' says Husain, using the example of Bradford, where, on Sunday evenings, all the young Asian boys roam the streets while their sisters are not allowed out, and yet local schoolteachers won't question this as it is not their culture.

“That's not multiculturalism — that's monoculturalism at its best.''

Something has certainly gone wrong “and unless we talk about it openly, we are not going to fix it''.

There are, however, some good signs within the Muslim community, Husain says.

There are now closer ties between Muslims in Britain and spiritual Muslims in the Middle East, a prime example being Habib Ali Al Jifri from Abu Dhabi, who regularly tours Britain and addresses countless Muslims.

“When he speaks, he touches people's hearts. There is a spiritual presence about the man,'' Husain says. “That kind of Islam we didn't have in the 1990s. Then, it was the Islam of Al Qaida.''

Husain is a rare example of a young extremist who has seen right from wrong. Writing this book put him in some danger but he could either have remained silent or migrated to another country — which he tried to do — or speak out.

“The third option sat most comfortably with me,'' he says.
We can only hope that there will be others who will find their way out of this cobweb of fanatic cultism and realise that a ‘them' and ‘us' worldview will only lead to destruction.

Meera Manek is a freelance writer based in London.