by Ed Husain
Falik rang the mosque’s security buzzer and we were admitted without interrogation. Inside the mosque the atmosphere was incomparably different from Brick Lane. There I was a young boy, in my father’s shadow; here the place was buzzing with young, trim-bearded, English-speaking activists. There were no sombre and elderly worshipful Muslims in these offices - pious Muslims belonged only in the prayer hall - rather a sense of organization and discipline; everybody seemed to know their place.
Falik introduced me to no fewer than fifteen people that night, some set to emerge as national ‘moderate’ Muslim leaders in the years that followed. Almost without exception they took an interest in me, my studies, my family, and my future plans. I could relate to them. I respected them for their seniority, dynamism and commitment to Islam. They seemed like worthy role models: English-speaking, educated, and rooted in faith.
I felt that I could easily become part of this highly organized robust network of brothers who led a mosque-centred life. At Brick Lane mosque the elders only stroked my head to acknowledge me. It was my father they engaged with; I was merely his little boy. The people here were interested in me. To an isolated schoolboy, that mattered.
Brother Falik showed me round the mosque. I was most impressed with the prayer area for women, neatly tucked away behind curtains on the top floor. Over at Brick Lane women were forbidden to enter the mosque; that this was not the case at East London seemed like feminist progress.
Then Falik showed me the mosque bookshop. He warned me that the small shop was controlled by the rival Dawatul Islam, and that I should refuse to buy anything from it. A boycott would soon put them out of business, he explained, although their lease was due to expire soon anyway and Islamic Forum Europe, who now controlled the mosque, would refuse to renew it.
I was startled by this unexpected display of rancour and animosity from my trusted friend. We ended the evening with the last congregational prayer of the day, the Esha. While most of the worshippers performed their ablution in a large washing area in the basement of the mosque, I, with Brother Falik, again had the privilege of using a different area reserved for mosque activists. I felt very special.
In the prayer hall there were more differences from my father’s mosque. At Brick Lane we all wore skullcaps, similar to the Jewish keppeh but white rather than black. Muslims wear skullcaps in remembrance of the Prophet Mohammed, and other prophets who went before him, as a sign of humility. But I had left my cap at home, thinking I was attending an RE lesson. How could I pray without one?
Then, as the young activists I had met earlier stood to pray, I saw that their heads were bare. This came as a shock to me, but I reasoned that if they, in their twenties, surely knowing more than I did, and well versed in their religion, could pray without covering their heads, then so could I. What did it matter?
That was my first act of rebellion. I prayed that evening with confidence, with a feeling of difference, of greater ease. And free from the need to ruin my carefully arranged hairstyle.
The East London mosque was more than a place of worship. It housed the infrastructures of activist organizations, hosted meetings and weddings, and offered other facilities for the local community. The prayer hall was for worshippers, the offices were for the many voluntary managers of the mosque who were from Jamat-e-Islami. They referred to themselves as the ‘mosque committee’, elected not by the worshippers but by a group of selected individuals known as ‘members’. I later learnt that leading managers of the mosque such as Dr Abdul Bari and Chowdhury Mueen Uddin2 did not live in Tower Hamlets but in Haringey. Their control of the mosque came from their allegiance to Jamat-e-Islami, not as local Muslims.
Back at school Brother Falik and I continued to hold and lead midday prayers, with help from other students. And at home my father occasionally asked how my friend was doing. He continued to ask me to invite him and I kept delaying. ‘I’ll do it in the summer holidays,’ I said.
Meanwhile, Mrs Rainey’s husband, who was in the army, had returned from a posting abroad and she could no longer teach us after school. Instead I spent time at the East London mosque, hanging out with ‘brothers’ from the YMO and Islamic Forum Europe.
I left my parents under the impression that I was still studying with Mrs Rainey every Wednesday evening while I went with Falik to the Fieldgate Street offices of the YMO, manned voluntarily by its members. We would phone individuals on our contacts list and invite them to YMO events, ensure the office was tidy, and help with the accounts - all members of YMO paid a monthly subscription to illustrate their commitment.
In the room next door there were meetings of the Central Executive Committee of the YMO, an all-male gathering of long-time activists. The Central Executive Committee organized youth camps, national football tournaments, and fundraising events for the mosque, thereby maintaining a tight grip on the lives of its members. My Wednesday evenings taught me much about the organization and the tight-knit community surrounding East London mosque. I looked forward to my visits and quickly became familiar with leaders of the YMO such as Siraj Salekin, Mosaddeq Ahmed, and Habibur Rahman.
The person I warmed to most was Siraj Salekin, whom I had seen at school careers advisory sessions and at other community events in Toynbee Hall in Aldgate. As a youth worker he had a high profile in the locality and the more I saw him, the more he acted as my mentor. He gave me small gifts, memorabilia from his trips to Bangladesh. I was genuinely impressed by his tender and brotherly behaviour. I was the eldest child in my family, with no older sibling to look up to. Brother Siraj quickly filled that void. As the weeks passed by he gave me lifts home and took an interest in those I loved most: my parents. Had Siraj, a seasoned activist of Mawdudi’s form of political Islam, realized that the way to a potential recruit’s heart was through his family?
Falik never openly tried to recruit me to what was increasingly referred to as the ‘Islamic movement’, an array of organizations ideologically linked to Mawdudi. However, as I spent more time in the company of activists from the movement, the questions in my mind started to trouble me deeply. Ours was an open family, we ate together, spoke about almost everything without reservation, and yet I was betraying my parents, beginning to lead a double life. I wanted to tell my father about my new companions at the East London mosque, the YMO, but I could not. I had made friends there whom I did not want to lose. I knew my father would challenge my new beliefs, so I wrote the leaders of the YMO a letter. I sought clarity on what they thought about the arch enemy of traditional Muslims, their founder, Abul Ala Mawdudi. I asked what they thought about famed saints across the Muslim world, including Grandpa. I asked why traditional Muslims accused Jamat-e-Islami and its offshoots, such as the YMO, of denigrating the Prophet Mohammed.
I sealed my four-page letter in an envelope and gave it to Falik to pass to the Central Executive Committee, hopeful of receiving a written response which I could show to my father, even Grandpa if need be, proving that there clearly had been some misunderstanding.
A few days later Falik informed me that Siraj Salekin would like to see me. The following Wednesday, with Falik in tow, I met Siraj at Fieldgate Street in a small, threadbare-carpeted room in which stood a desk and telephone, several chairs, and a corner bookshelf stacked with English books. He went through my letter, thanking me for asking such detailed questions and wondering how I knew about Mawdudi, Jamat-e-Islami, and, most of all, who had taught me. I answered honestly, telling him about my time with Grandpa and the spiritual Islam practised by my parents.
He told me how he had family members who admired Grandpa, and how he had no problems with the spiritual form of Islam taught at Brick Lane, but he preferred an ‘Islam that was a complete code of life’. To his credit, Siraj admitted that he did not know much about mystical orders of the Muslim world.
He also said he knew Jamat-e-Islami leaders at first hand and they were not the corrupt, politicized deviants most Muslims labelled them but were decent, morally upright workers o
f the Islamist movement. On the subject of denigrating the Prophet, he seemed genuinely shocked that the YMO could be accused of such a thing. I said that Mawdudi had compiled unauthorized, amateur exegetical works; that he had made serious mistakes. Siraj pointed to four volumes of Mawdudi’s exegesis and said, ‘Please show us where the mistakes are and we will change them. Also, we don’t think Mawdudi was perfect, he made mistakes. You can disagree with Mawdudi, and yet join the Islamic movement. Our aim is to change the Muslims, to make them live Islam as a complete code of life, not as a mere religion. Islam is more than a religion. We want to see Islamic government, Islam taken out of mosques and homes, and into all areas of life.’
I liked Brother Siraj’s open-door policy, his willingness to be critical of Mawdudi. He invited me to attend their weekly meetings on Saturday evenings, known as taleemi jalsa, and ask any questions I wanted. The YMO had given me friends, a place in the world. Now, as they had answered my questions, their place in my heart was confirmed. At the time, as a result of the months-long violence in one of Britain’s largest mosques, the YMO had gained a reputation in Tower Hamlets and beyond as being tougher than the toughest gangsters. The Brick Lane Mafia, Cannon Street Posse, and Bethnal Green Massive shrank to the stature of playground bullies when compared with the rising star of the YMO. YMO had several members in prison. They won fights, deployed kung-fu experts in the mosque hall, defied the police, and were ‘bad boys’, too. They just liked to call themselves ‘practising Muslims’. YMO football tournaments were renowned for mid-game interruptions to perform prayers. In their ranks they had martial-arts experts such as the locally well-known Abjol (now a Respect Party councillor in Tower Hamlets). They were as bad and cool as the other street gangs, just without the drugs, drinking, and womanizing.
At school Falik and I were now openly known as brothers from the YMO. After five years, I had found both a friend and a cause to which I belonged.
My GCSE exams faded further into insignificance as I became involved in organizing a national youth camp at Gilwell Park in Essex. We produced T-shirts, put up posters in Muslim areas of London, persuaded parents to encourage their children to attend our events. I took particular pride in ensuring that there were several posters on the doors of Brick Lane mosque. Where others respected the rivalry between East London and Brick Lane, I was now keen to bring my father’s mosque, or at least its younger worshippers, over to the Islamist movement. And I began to lie to my parents a little more.
I told my father that I wanted to revise for my GCSEs with Falik and that there was a good revision programme at East London mosque on Saturday nights. My parents were hesitant about the benefits of revising for school exams at a political centre, but somehow, reluctantly, my father agreed that I could go.
I still remember my very first taleemi jalsa. It was not in the main hall of the mosque but in a large rectangular room with green carpet. About fifty young men sat on the floor in a rough circle, with two men sitting at the head. The main speaker was a young undergraduate, a rarity in Tower Hamlets at a time when few young people of Bangladeshi origin went to university.
‘Islam is the source of all knowledge,’ he told us. ‘Before Islam the world was in darkness. Today the West is proud of democracy, but where did it come from? The first democracy in the world was in Medina, when the Muslims elected caliphs in free elections. So much of what the West has today comes from Islam, especially democracy . . .’
That insight into history stayed with me. The unquestioning assertion of Islam’s, or more precisely Islamism’s, political superiority over the West was a constant theme in YMO events. In other taleemi jalsa gatherings similar themes of Islam’s ascendancy over communism and capitalism were also a subject of study. Often speakers would quote extensively from Mawdudi’s The Islamic Movement, stressing the importance for Muslims of striving together to create a true Islamic society in the world. In explaining the ‘main objective of Islam’, quoting Mawdudi, one speaker read, in English:
These aims cannot be realized so long as power and leadership in society are in the hands of disbelieving rulers and so long as the followers of Islam confine themselves to worship rites, which all too often depend on the arbitrary patronage and support of those very rulers. Only when power in society is in the hands of the Believers and the righteous, can the objectives of Islam be realized. It is therefore the primary duty of all those who aspire to please God to launch an organized struggle, sparing neither life nor property for this purpose. The importance of securing power for the righteous is so fundamental that, neglecting this struggle, one has no means left to please God.
His scathing attack on ‘disbelieving rulers’ and promoting his own followers as ‘Believers’ and criticizing those who ‘confined’ religion to worship made me think about my own approach to Islam. Most compelling was Mawdudi’s conviction that the struggle for removing ‘disbelieving rulers’ and creating a society ruled by ‘the righteous’ was the only ‘means left to please God’.
As I heard more references to Mawdudi, I started to read his books for myself. The loathing for Mawdudi instilled within me by Grandpa gradually evaporated.
I bought a copy of what was mandatory reading for all Islamist movement activists, Let Us Be Muslims, from a Leicester-based Islamist think tank, the Islamic Foundation. The Islamic Foundation was staffed by leading intellectuals of the Islamist movement, men trained personally by Mawdudi, such as the late Khurram Murad, the Pakistani economics professor Khurshid Ahmed, and others such as the director Manzair Ahsan.3 The Islamic Foundation was committed to propagating the ideas of the Islamist movement, and translated and published the writings of Mawdudi. Let Us Be Muslims was prominent among them. I started to read the book with keen interest. Sarwar’s Islam: Beliefs and Teachings had already got me thinking about the need for an Islamic state, and a political system of Islam. It was the summer of 1991. My evenings were filled with YMO events and meetings, my time at school in organizing and leading prayer meetings, encouraging others to join the YMO. I was sixteen years old and I had no white friends. My world was entirely Asian, fully Muslim. This was my Britain. Against this backdrop, the writings of Sarwar’s guru, Mawdudi, took me to a radically new level.
3.
The Ultimatum
Islam is a revolutionary doctrine and system that overthrows governments. It seeks to overturn the whole universal social order.
Abul Ala Mawdudi, Islamist ideologue and founder of Jamat-e-Islami
I knew my father would not tolerate Mawdudi’s books under his roof, so I put paper covers on them, blacked out the author’s name, and secretly read as much as possible. While fellow teenagers were smuggling pornography into their rooms, my contraband consisted of books written by Islamist ideologues.
Now I was not a mere Muslim, like all the others I knew; I was better, superior.
The Muslims in my life were to be compared with a new category of people my parents never introduced me to: kafir. In our home, my parents never distinguished between Muslims and kafirs or kuffar,4 an Arabic term as derogatory to non-Muslims as ‘wogs’ is to non-whites.
Mawdudi’s works drew comparisons with kuffar in order to place Muslims on a religious pedestal. In the East London mosque we used the word regularly in gatherings. We were believers, Muslims; all others were kuffar. And we were no ordinary Muslims, but superior to others. As Mawdudi explained:
We have already seen that the only difference between Muslims and Kafirs is in the matter of knowledge and actions. Men who call themselves Muslim but whose knowledge and actions are the same as those of Kafirs are guilty of blatant hypocrisy. Kafirs do not read the Koran and do not know what is written in it. If so-called Muslims are equally ignorant, why should they be called Muslims? . . . If Muslims behave the same as non-Muslims, what difference is there between them and Kafirs?
Mawdudi taught that there were ‘partial Muslims’ and ‘true Muslims’. ‘Partial Muslims’, Mawdudi explained, confined religion to praye
rs, rosary beads, remembrance of God’s name, piety, and dress. I agreed with Mawdudi’s definition, for the majority of the Muslim population I had encountered in Britain was of this variety, the silent majority. However, in Mawdudi’s understanding, they had fallen short of the mark. They were not ‘true Muslims’.
‘True Muslims’, Mawdudi wrote, allowed their ‘desires, their ideologies, their thoughts and opinions, their likes and dislikes, all [to be] shaped by Islam. Allah’s guidance holds complete sway over their hearts and minds, their eyes and ears, their bellies, their sexual desires, their hands and feet, their bodies and soul.’
My frequenting of YMO meetings, helping Brother Falik in the office, and attending taleemi jalsa, meant that I was considered part of the Islamic movement. I had taken no vow, nor sworn allegiance to a leader. That happened only after years of activities and proving one’s total loyalty. For now, I was a member and was expected to work within YMO, slowly move up the ranks to become a rukon (Arabic for pillar), or senior member, and then on to the National Executive Committee.
My readings of Mawdudi were not altogether inspired by genuine intellectual curiosity, although that played a part. As a YMO member, every evening I had to account for my day’s activities. Brother Falik had given me an A4 sheet of paper with ‘YMO Daily Routine’ written across the top. Listed on the sheet were activities I had to report on every day, including how many of the five daily prayers I had read in congregation at a mosque; how much of the Koran I had recited; how many pages of Islamic books I had read; how much time I had spent with family; how many hours I had dedicated to the movement; how many new members I had targeted for recruitment. I kept my routine sheet hidden in my coat pocket, wary lest my parents should ever discover it.