The Islamist

by Ed Husain

  America, in stark contrast to Europe, is a society built on the notion of meritocracy, which offers hope to newcomers in the form of the American Dream, a guarantee of certain rights that, if taken advantage of, can lead to upward mobility within one or two generations. Many young American Muslims feel both fiercely American and fiercely Muslim,without contradiction.The strength of the American Muslim identity has resulted in the emergence of several leading religious authorities in the United States, some of whom serve as advisors and role models to Muslim communities in Europe. American Muslim scholars such as Dr Umar Abdullah and Hamza Yusuf Hanson have shaped debate among younger Muslim communities in a constructive manner, particularly in the troubling times after 9 ⁄11. It is fair to say that the American Muslim leadership is in a strong position to pioneer Western Islam, to facilitate an understanding of Islam that can find a comfortable home in the West.

  Despite what seem like positive trends, however, there are dark forces simmering beneath the surface that, unless confronted, will prove to be a disaster for American national security. The crucial task at hand is to determine how and where they are operating.

  Terrorism is almost always preceded by political and religious extremism, which is itself preceded by a narrow, literalist interpretation of scripture. The Wahhabite sect of Saudi Arabian Islam is the most rigid, literalist interpretation of Islam with a significant foothold. Despite what the savvy public relations campaigns devised by Bell Pottinger and financed by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia assert, it is a nefarious, intolerant form of Islam, and has gained widespread influence on American Muslim discourse, in part because it has created new guises for itself.

  Saudi universities are responsible for the export of extremist Wahhabite ideas to the United States because their graduates often end up teaching in American mosques. Calling upon their own education and training, these schools maintain curricula that lead to the emergence of narrow, bigoted individuals, many of whom are in turn assuming public roles in Muslim communities across America. When this limited intellectual focus is combined with the most basic political literacy, these graduates espouse hatred and ignorance of medieval proportions during their Friday sermons. While I was in Saudi Arabia, I spoke with Western students who readily confirmed that there were many students, from several Western countries, with extremist political leanings in their midst, students whose political views were left unchallenged while they studied Saudi theology. Saudi universities are hotbeds of religious extremism, literalism, and anti-Western sentiment, evidence of which is ample during Friday sermons in the Kingdom’s mosques and in the hate-filled textbooks used in mandatory courses on religion.

  In the United States, a Saudi trained cleric named Ali Timimi is currently in prison for urging his followers to wage war against the United States, and for specifically encouraging them to use firearms in violation of federal law. I remember Ali Timimi for the fiery speeches he delivered when he visited London throughout the 1990s, wearing Saudi attire and serving as an inspiration for an entire generation of extremist Wahhabites.

  The two men convicted as the infamous ‘Paintball’ terrorists in 2004 were students of Timimi’s in northern Virginia. The attention that case brought on him only enhanced his credibility among young, influential American Muslims, and his students and former students continue to issue unapologetic, hostile, anti-Western statements that sow the seeds of animosity in young minds. One such student is Yasir Qadhi, who currently manages what is called the al-Maghrib Institute, which holds classes across America, Canada, and Britain to prepare future imams and Muslim leaders. Qadhi openly campaigns on behalf of his mentor, and recently asserted that Timimi is ‘one of the more sophisticated voices of reason representing orthodox Islam in the Western world.’ Rather than condemn an extremist figure like Timimi, influential preachers such as Qadhi support him.

  Qadhi, too, has a certain following among young American Muslims. He is a regular speaker at the largest annual American Muslim convention held at the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and actively engages in missionary work to spread his brand of intolerant, rigid religion in Europe and America. Here, for example, is Qadhi discussing the Holocaust at a conference in 2001:

  Hitler never intended to mass-destroy the Jews.There are a number of books out on this written by Christians, you should read them. The Hoax of the Holocaust, I advise you to read this book and write this down, The Hoax of the Holocaust, a very good book. All of this is false propaganda and I know it sounds so far-fetched, but read it. The evidences are [sic] very strong. And they’re talking about newspaper articles, clippings, everything, and look up yourself what Hitler really wanted to do.We’re not defending Hitler, by the way, but the Jews, the way that they portray him, also is not correct.

  Not only is there demonstrated support for advocates of terror, there is a failure to grasp the larger historical picture and a troubling tendency to believe in facile conspiracy theories that makes sermonizers such as Qadhi dangerously influential to young minds, setting them on a path to destruction. This virulent strain of extreme, historically inaccurate, Wahhabite Islam is spreading in the United States, and thus far the American Muslim leadership, in the name of Muslim unity, has failed to expose and oppose this trend.

  This same leadership, when in communication with various departments of the US government, has become infamous for the anti-Israel rants that they tend to unleash before taking any other matter seriously. I met with several of these same departments, and high ranking officials repeatedly told me about Hamas sympathis ers or leaders at CAIR and similar bodies who spent the first ten minutes of every meeting attacking Israel, regardless of the meeting’s agenda. The Islamism-influenced American Muslim leaders, of course, realise that Israel is here stay, and that no amount of intimidation or subversive politicking will lead to the destruction of Israel, but they persist in these counterproductive tirades.

  By focusing excessively on Israel, and by failing to distance themselves from Islamist-Wahhabism, American Muslims have become oblivious to an important strain of radical, rebellious Islam that is popular among many African American converts. A descendant of the Nation of Islam, and influenced by the teachings of Malcolm X before he travelled to the Middle East, this nascent strain is decidedly anti-establishment and operates on a grassroots, street corner level, producing its own rebellious subculture.These sentiments are supported by the missionary activities of Muslim extremists in American prisons, who often present fellow inmates with a salvationist form of Islam.They preach belief in the simple promises of paradise, damnation in hell and, most importantly, forgiveness for all sins and crimes upon accepting a rigid interpretation of Islam that incorporates unfailing animosity towards the West. Richard Reid, who boarded a transatlantic flight with a ‘shoe bomb,’ was a convert to this type of Wahhabist Islam, and there is no doubt that similarly impressionable individuals are being preached to in US prisons every day.These converts end up harbouring a deep sense of vengeance and hatred for free societies. This anger, the prisoners’ violent tendencies, and the new promises of paradise for martyrdom combine to create a lethal cocktail. For these reasons, prison conversion and radicalisation is anathema to security services across the world, particularly for the British, American, and French governments.

  In addition to the above trends, there is a new issue that has thus far gone unnoticed by American policy makers and security officials. The new wave of immigrants into the United States, particularly from Muslim countries, is not like the successful, educated intelligentsia it previously welcomed. In New York I saw strong indications that what we saw in Britain - a relatively poor first generation, keen to retain its ethnic identity by conglomerating into monocultural ghettos, and which prevents its children from integrating - may well be occurring in major American cities.

  In its attempt to support and recognise all cultures as equal, multiculturalism fails to empower minorities. How can the children of immigrants secure jobs in the workplace and ad
vance economically and socially when they aren’t even expected to learn English? Everything is translated for them, and this is for all immigrants, whether they are Hispanic or Muslim. A nation bonds through its language and shared culture; separate these two things and you have the vital precursors to self destruction.

  It is, in many cases, the children of blue-collar workers that proved to be vulnerable to extremist groups in England, and it was in so-called multicultural communities that Islamist groups set up base and festered. Majid and I spoke with several New Yorkers from Pakistan and Bangladesh, and many of them told us that they had brought their spouses with them when they immigrated, and were now living and having children in predominantly Muslim areas, away from mainstream American culture. When they talked about their families’ lives, we saw that their children’s problems are similar to those that were prevalent in Britain’s ghettoes in the 1980s, which contributed to the spread of radicalism of the 1990s.

  Terrorism does not emerge overnight, it takes root over time. Immigrant cab drivers in New York, isolated Arab communities in Michigan, and converts in Miami live physically in America but psychologically in their native countries, and this causes their children to develop confused identities. When this happens, religious bigots are happy to step in an offer a strong identity, and they usually find eager followers. Further complicating the struggle against the spread of extremist views is the fact that religious leaders and politicians in these communities tend to turn a blind eye to the activities of the Islamists who gain power and influence, if only to maintain a sense of Muslim unity. If they’ve considered the long-term implications of allowing their younger community members to flirt with Islamism, then they have chosen to ignore them.These unspoken policies have even reached the highest levels of government. My country, Britain, helped support the Wahhabite movement and create Saudi Arabia - a ploy to undermine the Ottomans at the time. And your country, the United States, helped the Mu jahedeen, precursors of the Taliban, fight against a rival superpower, the Soviet Union. These were short term solutions that have left us with complex problems that we will grapple with for an entire generation.

  Today America faces threats from three sources. Firstly, there are already cases of home-grown terrorism in the United States, from Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma to attacks on abortion clinics. Religious extremism is a manifest problem.With a black president, far-right terrorist activity is on the increase too.

  Among small sections of the American Muslim community, there are active cells of terrorists who would strike America at first opportunity. In 2006, seven young men were arrested in Miami for planning to attack Chicago’s Sears Tower, although they lacked the capability to do so. In addition to the Miami cell, the authorities have also arrested the Lackawana Six (New York), the Portland Seven (Oregon), and a group in northern Virginia, headed by Ali Timimi (mentioned earlier). Fortunately they were stopped in the planning stages, but that terrorist mindset, if left unchecked, could prove to be contagious, especially considering the efforts of Adam Gadahn - Bin Laden’s white American publicist - and the ongoing war on terror as background.

  Everyone arrested was a Muslim under the influence of Islamist ideas, but it’s worth noting that many were male African American converts to literalist interpretations of Islam, and prison radicalisation will only cause this phenomenon to spread. With Arab and Asian Muslims providing encouragement, leadership, notions of martyrdom, and a social support network for terrorists, the United States faces a dramatic increase in radicalisation. Condemnation of terrorism is not enough for Muslim organisations; at the minimum they need to undermine the theological arguments on which Islamists rely, and thus far they’ve failed to do this at all.

  In addition to the home-grown threats described above, America is also vulnerable from Islamist extremists from Europe and, sadly, Canada. From my meetings with State Department personnel, it is clear that American officials are trying to unravel Europe and the Islamist underworld in which extremists fester. Hizb ut-Tahrir and other Islamist groups have produced Jihadists as a result of their rhetoric, mindset, and plans of global domination. They are experts at injecting potent ideas into young, vulnerable minds, but when these same young adults realize that their intellectual approach is failing to establish the mythical caliphate, they often turn to direct action, to terrorism. From Egypt to Pakistan, wherever there are radical Islamist movements, Jihadist groups have arisen. And this now includes Canada, a country that is proudly multicultural and officially refuses to address religious radicalisation for fear of upsetting minorities. There are cells of Hizb ut-Tahrir operating in Toronto, and unless they are closely monitored, the United States could see a crisis emerge very close to home.

  With the election of Barack Obama as president, the United States is at an important juncture in history, and Americans have turned a new page. Across the world, people are prepared to lend the United States an ear once more.The duties of the leader of the free world are varied and immense, but reaching out to ordinary, peaceful Muslims in order to build coalitions against extremism and tyranny is among the most vital. Islam is the antidote to extremism, to Islamism. It’s important to remember that ordinary Muslims have been the greatest victims of Islamist terror, and that their desire to put an end to the threat is perhaps greater than ours.We must recapture Islam from Islamists, neutralise radical theologies, and empower pluralist Muslims.This is our first line of defence against terrorism.

  Acknowledgements

  The production of a book involves much more than one’s own writing. I am eternally grateful to my parents for encouraging me constantly and reminding me of moments that I had conveniently forgotten. Their ongoing love, protection, and prayers remain a source of inspiration for me.

  My beloved wife Faye has endured my insularity during thought and recollection. Without her practical, literary, emotional, and financial support this book, and indeed many developments in my life, would have been impossible. To her I owe much.

  I am thankful to my sister Shahida for reading the first draft and providing valuable commentary, despite the demands of my new nephew, Zaki.

  The Caroline Davidson Literary Agency has been unfailingly professional in handling the manuscript from its earliest stages. Caroline masterfully extracted what I had committed to the beginnings of an earlier concept, and has been generous with her time and much-needed advice. At CDLA, I am also grateful to Victoria Kwee and Harry Miskin.

  I have been most fortunate to have worked with Helen Conford, senior commissioning editor at Penguin Press. Throughout, she has been an accommodating yet forthright editor, tactfully pointing out shortfalls and ensuring that The Islamist found a welcoming home at Penguin.

  I am also indebted to a trusted and valued circle of friends who have supported my work by reading various sections of the manuscript, often at very short notice, providing critical feedback, and/or critically responding to some of my initial thoughts. They include Kelly Grant, Alex Whiting, Sidi Abu’l Fadl, Fr Damian Howard SJ, Joel Santaro, and the good people on Deenport.com.

  I should also like to thank Maleiha Malik, Omar Faruk, and Majid Nawaz for sharing their thoughts with me.

  Finally, I am grateful to several generous individuals for their comments, opinions, and time. You know who you are.

  1 Now Bangladesh.

  2 Dr Bari later became a leader of the Muslim Council of Britain, while chair of the East London mosque and Islamic Forum Europe. Mueen Uddin chaired Muslim Aid and manages Islamist events and leaders from behind the scenes, occasionally stepping into the limelight.

  3 In recent years the Foundation has employed people at junior levels from non-Islamist backgrounds.

  4 Other plural forms are kafireen and kafiroon, depending on where in a sentence the word appears.

  5 Jamiat Ihyaa Minhaaj al-Sunnah (Movement for the Revival of the Prophet’s Way).

  6 Quotes from the English translation of Mafaheem (undated).

  7 Interview with Jack O’
Sullivan in the Guardian, 8 October 2001.

  8 In the United States, Henry Ford’s newspaper Dearborn Independent often cited the Protocols as evidence of a world Jewish threat.

  9 Shaam, or Bilad al-Shaam, consisted of Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine.

  10 See Article 184 of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s draft constitution for the Islamist state.

  11 Since as early as 1991 Dr Bari has played host to leaders of Jamat-e-Islami in East London mosque and other public venues. I witnessed his promotion of Matiur Rahman Nizami, Abdul Qader Mollah, Delwar Hussein Sayedi, Khurshid Ahmed, and later the then leader of Jamat-e-Islami in Bangladesh, Professor Gulam Azam.

  12 In television documentaries, including the BBC’s Panorama, and public meetings organized by the London-based City Circle organization in late 2006, Sir Iqbal refused to retract his infamous statement that ‘Death is perhaps too easy’ for Rushdie.