The Islamist

by Ed Husain

  I grabbed pen and paper and started watching news bulletins in the mornings and afternoons. I took copious notes. I did this for about five months while Grandpa stayed with us, providing him with the details of Saddam’s rhetoric, Tareq Aziz’s interviews and John Simpson’s bomb-ducking analyses. I told him about George Bush’s remarks, Norman Schwarzkopf ’s peace deals, and Colin Powell’s press briefings. Before my sixteenth birthday my father’s interest in current affairs and Grandpa’s delegation of news monitoring to me meant that I had become politicized. Grandpa always listened to everything I said very carefully. His concern had always been for the innocent people caught up in the war, and for the tombs of revered saints in Baghdad, many from his own spiritual order.

  That year I grew extremely close to Grandpa and his family. His two sons had joined him on that trip, and they stayed with us too. Grandpa often returned home late from his duties, but was awake long before sunrise, locked away in his room, only silence and the occasionally creaking floorboard indicating that he was awake: bowing, prostrating, reciting. We all knew he was not to be disturbed - he was with his Lord.

  When Grandpa left later that year after a long tour of Britain my family went to see him off at the airport. As a parting gift he gave me a small bottle of perfume that he periodically applied in remembrance of the Prophet.

  As he approached the departure gates at Heathrow a crowd of his devotees surrounded him for a last blessing, a touch, a farewell. I kept at a distance, not comfortable with the pushing and shoving. He raised his head and saw me standing in a corner. He beckoned me towards him. I rushed over, as the elders made way, and embraced him. I felt a tremor in his body and knew he was crying. An overpowering wave of emotion overcame me; perhaps I would never see him again. He was now nearly eighty years old, increasingly frail, and unlikely to visit Britain again. Amid a crowd of grown men sobbing, women weeping, children crying, he wiped his tears and headed back to his village.

  Two weeks later Grandpa’s youngest son, a Dhaka-based journalist we called Uncle Husam, called my parents from Mecca. En route to Fultholy, Grandpa had stopped over at Mecca, Islam’s holiest city. Uncle Husam was in total panic. He was desperate to speak to me and establish if I was well. I had no idea why. Baffled, I spoke on the phone, though the echo on the line between Mecca to London made communication almost impossible. My parents gazed at me after the call. What had I done?

  That night my mother told me that in Mecca Uncle Husam had dreamt that I was sitting on the branch of a large tree. Suddenly, without cause, I fell down and died.

  2.

  Teenage Rebellion

  A young boy’s company determines his destiny.

  Eastern proverb

  At school, I was now even more of a misfit. My classmates had learnt that my father was a close disciple of the sage from Fultholy. I was now perceived as a boffin with connections to an elderly pir who went travelling around Britain with unfashionable, religious people. Somehow their approval no longer mattered to me. I knew Grandpa to be a generous, benevolent, worshipful man of God. If the Bollywood-hooked brigade of Bangladeshi boys did not appreciate him, it was their problem, not mine. I became resolute. Besides, I knew my Koranic Arabic better than they did, I was familiar with early Muslim history and had gained a good basic knowledge of Islam. Nevertheless I knew that there remained much more for me to learn.

  Keen to know more about my faith, I approached my school’s religious education department and asked if I could study Islam and Christianity out of school hours. In those days very few pupils expressed serious interest in study of any sort; the RE teachers were nonplussed. Mrs Rainey, head of the department, kindly volunteered to give twice-weekly extra-curricular tuition to me and another student at her home in Wapping.

  I enjoyed studying with Mrs Rainey more than anything else at school. She made it clear to us that she was of the Church of England, but that did not stop us from trying to convert her.

  The other student who joined me was Abdullah Falik, whom I slowly got to know well. In line with religious notions of respect I used to call him Brother Falik, while he called me Brother Mohamed.

  Brother Falik was a rather serious, observant young Muslim. Every lunchtime he helped rearrange the furniture in a classroom to ensure that other Muslim students could perform their midday prayers. After a while I started to help him in what seemed like a noble task.

  I now wanted everything to do with Islam. There was one problem: Grandpa and my parents had taught me by setting an example, by living faith. Mrs Rainey taught us with books.

  The first book I read about Islam in English was Islam: Beliefs and Teachings by Gulam Sarwar. My parents and Grandpa had taught me Islam without books, but via an oral tradition, partly because of a lack of books in English on Islam for children, but also because they believed Islam was an internal condition, to be instilled in human hearts by teachers, not lifted from dry pages. But I had always been an avid reader; and now warmed to the idea of reading about Islam in English. Sarwar’s book filled a gap.

  At school, Sarwar’s was the main textbook for those studying RE. I set out not only to read it but to ensure that I understood it thoroughly. Whether I succeeded or not, one part of the book has stayed with me.

  I had been taught that Islam was a path that would draw me closer to God. During my reports of the political situation in the Middle East, Grandpa had never spoken about an ‘Islamic state’. In all his discussions about his most beloved Prophet, Grandpa had never portrayed him merely as a founder of an Islamic state, a political leader. In all the books Grandpa read, the chapters he discussed with his students, he never raised a subject known as ‘Islamic politics’. Yet, in Sarwar’s book, there was a chapter on the ‘Political System of Islam’. From a young age I had been exposed to politics: my father’s addiction to the news, Attlee’s statue outside my local library, family visits to Gandhi’s Kingsley Hall, discussions about Churchill, and my father’s acquaintance with our local MP, Peter Shore, all meant that I had strong political roots. At no time, however, did I hear complaints from the thousands of Muslims I met while travelling with Grandpa about the need for (or the absence of ) an ‘Islamic state’ or a ‘political system of Islam’.

  The first lines of Sarwar’s chapter read:

  Religion and politics are one and the same in Islam. They are intertwined. We already know that Islam is a complete system of life . . . Just as Islam teaches us how to pray, fast, pay charity and perform the Haj, it also teaches us how to run a state, form a government, elect councillors and members of parliament, make treaties and conduct business and commerce.

  In concluding his introductory chapter Sarwar wrote that there was no Islamic state in the world today in which Islam was a system of government. He commended the efforts of several organizations that were dedicated to the creation of ‘truly Islamic states’ and mentioned several groups by name, including the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East and Jamat-e-Islami in the Indian subcontinent, which were working for the ‘establishment of Allah’s law in Allah’s land’.

  Today, in British schools, Sarwar’s book continues to be used in RE classrooms. In mosques and Muslim homes across Britain it is promoted as an introductory text for young Muslims. What I did not know at school was that Sarwar was a business management lecturer, not a scholar of religion. And he was an activist in the organizations that he mentioned. Sarwar’s book was not the dispassionate educational treatise it purported to be.

  He was also the brains behind the separation of Muslim children from school assemblies into what we called ‘Muslim assembly’, managed by the Muslim Educational Trust (MET). What seemed like an innocuous body was, in fact, an organization with an agenda. In my school, a Jamat-e-Islami activist named Abdul Rabb represented the MET and awarded us trophies and medals for our performance in MET exams. Ostensibly it all seemed harmless, but the personnel all belonged to Jamat-e-Islami front organizations in Britain. Their key message was that Islam was not merely
a religion but also an ideology that sought political power and was beginning to make headway. The spiritual Islam of my parents’ generation was slowly giving way to something new.

  I, at sixteen, was already wondering why my parents had never spoken about this most important aspect of our religion, the Islamic state. In all my discussion with traditional Muslims during the recent Gulf war, why had no one made it clear that religion and politics are ‘one and the same in Islam’? And why had none of us sought to ‘establish Allah’s law in Allah’s land’? And if this was what movements such as the Jamat-e-Islami and the Muslim Brotherhood were aiming to do, well, what was wrong with that?

  Sarwar wrote about ‘Islamic movements’ in the Muslim world as perfectly normal developments. But I recalled Grandpa and his students, many of them clerics trained in madrassas in India and Bangladesh, talking about the Jamat-e-Islami in disparaging terms. I had heard many of these conversations taking place between imams in various towns, and they complained about the increasing influence of Jamat-e-Islami activists in their mosques. They had sought clarity from Grandpa about the nature of the Jamat-e-Islami, and Grandpa had spoken repeatedly about a man named Abul Ala Mawdudi.

  Born in 1903, Mawdudi was a Pakistani journalist who translated the Koran according to his own whims, without reference to or within the paradigm of classical Muslim scholarship. He developed and promoted a new brand of Islam, highly politicized and deeply anti-Western. Mawdudi, who died in 1979 during a speaking tour of America, was the first Muslim to reject Islam as a religion and rebrand it as an ‘ideology’. This ‘ideology’, political Islam, was actively propagated by the organization he had started in 1941 in British India: the Jamat-e-Islami. Seeing the name on the pages of my school textbook began to make the Jamat-e-Islami seem respectable. Perhaps Grandpa was wrong, I thought.

  Brother Falik and I continued to attend classes in the evenings at Mrs Rainey’s home. He was always punctual, hard working, and just as committed to being a good Muslim as I was. In fact I thought him a better Muslim, because he was also involved with the Young Muslim Organisation UK (YMO) and spent much of his spare time helping to run events at the East London mosque. While I was busy trying to be a ‘good son’ to my parents by studying the Koran, helping them with the shopping, and staying away from the gangs, Falik was actively contributing to the Muslim community by organizing football matches, youth camps, and study circles.

  At school we became closer. I learnt that Falik had recently completed the Haj and that his father had passed away, leaving him to care for his mother. Like me, he prayed regularly. Like me, he was a misfit at school. Together, we started to assert a new identity: we were young, Muslim, studious, and London born. We were not immigrants and neither understood the mentality of our peers who reminisced about their villages in Bangladesh, nor shared their passion for Bollywood actresses. At lunch Falik and I would take turns to lead the other boys in prayer. After a while I mentioned my new friend to my parents.

  Falik used to wear a black and white chequered scarf. While preparing my reports for Grandpa during the 1990-91 Gulf war I remembered seeing Yasser Arafat wearing a similar scarf: Bedouin headgear conveniently appropriated as a symbol of Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation. When I bought my own scarf, my father was puzzled.

  ‘What is that?’ he asked.

  ‘Brother Falik wears one,’ I answered. ‘It’s to support the Palestinians.’

  ‘How does wearing a scarf support the Palestinians?’ he asked, bewildered. ‘And who is Brother Falik?’

  ‘He is my friend from school, Dad. He prays regularly, recently did the Haj, and he also attends classes with Mrs Rainey.’ I withheld any information about YMO and the East London mosque, knowing instinctively that those names would infuriate my father. The YMO and the East London mosque both venerated Mawdudi and, as a result of Grandpa’s teachings, my father loathed anything to do with him. Had my father caught me snorting cocaine he would have found it in him to forgive me, counsel me. But I knew he would not be able to tolerate any association with those he considered enemies of God: Mawdudi’s followers, the activists at the East London mosque. Since childhood my father had always taken us to pray at Brick Lane. In many ways, Brick Lane mosque was the rival to the more glamorous, publicity-craving East London, which had received donations from Saudi Arabia, was custom built with minarets and a dome, and employed Saudi-trained imams. Most of its committee members were affiliated to the Jamat-e-Islami.

  Throughout the late 1980s, the East London mosque had been the site of conflict between rival factions of the Jamat-e-Islami in Britain (calling themselves Dawatul Islam and Islamic Forum Europe to conceal their extremist connections). Both organizations knew that whoever controlled this strategically placed institution, at the heart of the densest population of Muslims in Britain, would command significant power among Britain’s Muslim community. For years the rival factions had been engaged in a bitter and sometimes violent power struggle.

  Much of the conflict was to do with provincialism, personality clashes, and financial disputes. Money from Saudi Arabia helped build the East London mosque and its leaders were channelling funds into their organizations and earning salaries as ‘ministers of religion’ by associating themselves with Saudi Arabia’s missionary arm, the Muslim World League. Some of these Saudi stooges came from Sylhet in the east of Bangladesh, others from Noakhali in the south, and the difference in culture often led to personality clashes between key individuals. There were accusations of embezzlement which in 1990 resulted in High Court injunctions against the then imam of the mosque, Abu Syed, and other key Jamat-e-Islami figures. Several organizers at the mosque were imprisoned following violent clashes. The humiliating spectacle of the Metropolitan Police breaking up fights between activists led Jamat-e-Islami from Pakistan and Bangladesh to send leading members from their central executive committee in an attempt to end this shameful exhibition of Islamist infighting. But to no avail. The expelled imam Abu Syed held Friday prayer congregations under police guard outside the mosque for several weeks while his opposition, led by the newly formed Islamic Forum Europe, prayed inside the mosque. (In later years Abu Hamza would follow this precedent, praying outside rather than inside after clashing with the authorities at Finsbury Park mosque.)

  All the while, over at Brick Lane, worshippers shook their heads in disgust at Jamat-e-Islami politics being fought out on the streets of Britain. Grandpa’s warnings, it seemed, were all too necessary.

  ‘This Falik sounds like a really good young boy,’ my father said. ‘Perhaps you should invite him round for dinner one night. What do you think?’ My father’s words surprised me. Since I had left Sir William Burrough I had brought none of my friends home, mainly because they included no one of whom my father would have approved. But Brother Falik was different - as long as I could hide the East London mosque connection.

  One evening Falik and I arrived at Mrs Rainey’s to find a note on her door saying that she had had to take her cat to the vet.

  ‘Why don’t we go to the mosque and study together instead?’ asked Falik.

  ‘The mosque’ was, of course, the ill-reputed East London. What would my father say? Even to set foot inside East London mosque, which was regarded by my family as a centre of political activity for Jamat-e-Islami rather than a place of worship for ordinary Muslims, seemed practically sacrilegious. Then again, I did not want to alienate the first genuine friend I had had in many years.

  ‘All right, then,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’

  As we headed towards Whitechapel Road I confessed to Falik that I had never visited the mosque before. ‘We always pray at Brick Lane,’ I told him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, in a sympathetic tone. ‘The recent violence at the mosque and the High Court case has scared many people away. It’s perfectly safe now, you know. I know people in the community speak about the sniffer dogs the police used when they entered the mosque, searching for weapons, but the carpets have been wa
shed since then.’

  My friend had just told me more than I knew. I had no idea that police had raided the mosque with sniffer dogs. (I was later told that weapons had been kept there as a precaution against attacks from the rival faction but that, after a tip-off, they were moved to the homes of unsuspecting families in nearby Old Montague Street.)

  ‘But my father’s been praying at Brick Lane since well before the violence. He says the mosque is a centre for Jamat-e-Islami, a political organization, not for worship.’

  Falik looked at me, bemused.

  ‘You know the Jamat-e-Islami?’ he asked, as we walked along.

  ‘Yes. According to my father they’re a sinister political organization, use Islam as a political tool and demean the Prophet’s original teachings.’

  Falik was rather shocked by such blunt accusations. His older brother was a member of Jamat-e-Islami and, as far as he could make out, they were upright Muslims trying to ‘bring Islam’ to Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka. Perhaps I should meet some people from the organization and decide for myself, he suggested.

  For me, that was an acceptable answer. Now I could discover at first hand whether Jamat-e-Islami did indeed loathe Muslim saints, denigrate the Prophet, and want to politicize Islam.

  That evening, inside enemy territory, I was given VIP treatment. My schoolmate, it transpired, was extremely well connected. He knew all the movers and shakers behind the office walls of the East London mosque. Most worshippers removed their shoes and put them on rails adjacent to the main prayer hall; I was privileged, along with Brother Falik, to put my shoes behind closed doors in an area reserved for activists of the YMO and the Islamic Forum Europe.