by Maajid Nawaz
As much as Osman’s change surprised me, it pleased my dad. For many years at home, it had felt as though my brother and I had sided more with our mother and taken advantage of her more liberal views. For the first time, one of my father’s sons had taken a serious interest in Islam. At this point, my father didn’t understand what Islamism really meant. What he saw was his son taking an interest in religion and behaving more like the traditional Muslim he had always wanted us to become. He approved of that and encouraged it, and that led, inevitably, to a change of mood in the household: the balance of power, as it were, had started to shift. You could see it in Abi’s reaction. She didn’t know how to respond to Osman’s criticisms of her behavior. Later on, when I joined him, she would become even more isolated.
At that point, my impression of practicing Islam was still based on my early teenage experience of visiting the mosque. Osman’s conversion felt not only as if it had come out of nowhere but also like a retrograde step. To go back to that, to spurn all the girls and partying, just didn’t make any sense.
Osman was nothing if not persistent in trying to get me to go along with him. During that year he worked on those friends he thought would be most receptive: Moe, Nas, and myself. We all eventually converted. Although I would dismiss what he said at first, there was no denying his inner confidence when he spoke. As he continued to talk to me, I realized one of the fundamental points about Islamism that so many people fail to understand. The way Osman was speaking wasn’t in the orthodox, religious way of the imam with a stick; he was talking about politics, about events that were happening now. That’s crucial to understanding what Islamism is all about: it isn’t a religious movement with political consequences, it is a political movement with religious consequences.
Osman had learned well what the study circles had taught him. Nasim was an excellent teacher, able to expound his theories into a simple, coherent narrative that Osman soaked up. As part of Hizb al-Tahrir training, he had the answers and counterarguments at his fingertips, so any questions I had he could respond to and throw straight back.
Nasim knew that Osman and I were already quite anti-establishment. He knew that he needed to channel our energies from hip-hop and race issues to something more serious, more global. And he had just the thing to achieve this: the Islamist narrative. This was a powerful toxin and it resonated with us. Nasim argued that the suffering we had experienced in Southend, the attacks by Combat 18 and the discrimination we felt from the police, were not isolated incidents but part of a bigger picture. And we were deluded if we thought that it was just a race thing. Yes, race was a factor, but even if we solved that, Western society would never be satisfied with us. How much whiter could you get than the Muslims of Bosnia, and just look at what was going on there while the rest of Europe stood by and watched? And look at our brothers in Palestine, at Kashmir, or at the Muslims killed for defending the honor of the Babri Mosque in India. Why is it that every conflict and war today involves the killing of Muslims? Are you that blinded to believe this is a coincidence? Are you as shallow as the racists to believe it’s merely about skin color?
The truth is that there is an international effort to keep Muslims down, he said. They intervene in Kuwait for oil, yet stand by and watch as Muslims get murdered in Bosnia because, truly, they cannot tolerate a Muslim power in the heart of Europe. And if they cannot tolerate white Bosnians, what makes you think they’ll ever accept you? We have gone from being the world superpower, the Islamic Khilafah, to being the downtrodden minority who get stabbed in the streets of Essex. And we’ve sunk so low we don’t even know how to identify the problem.
The first time Nasim mentioned the concept of “the Khilafah,” I hadn’t even heard of it. That just served his argument.
“Why do you think you have never heard of it?” he asked. “Because it is the West that has written the history books, and decided what they want to teach in schools, even in Muslim lands after they left us their colonial ways.
“In the ‘official’ version of events, the last bastion of the Khilafah was called the ‘Ottoman Empire’; they don’t even call it by its real name. This Khilafah sided with the Germans against the British in the First World War, which is why they don’t want to tell you its history. They tell you it was the Turkish Empire that was disbanded because that is what they want you to believe—they don’t want you to know what the Khilafah really was,” he argued. “Do you think the Ottoman Khilafah would ever have stood by and allowed Bosnian Muslims to get slaughtered? Muslims stood united and protected under this entity before 1924. The West doesn’t want this to happen again, which is why they are working so hard to stop the reunification of Muslims.”
This logic led to the curious position of Hizb al-Tahrir endorsing Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait during the first Gulf War. They supported it because it fit in with their narrative of Muslims uniting under a single entity. It also explained the American intervention: the United States didn’t want to uphold the principle of national sovereignty, they wanted to stop such an entity beginning to form. It wasn’t that HT were fans of Saddam Hussein: far from it. But if Saddam was in charge of two countries, then that was one less tyrant the group needed to overthrow.
Nasim argued that the Western response to repel Saddam was nothing more than a reinforcement of their imperialist past. The British and French had carved up the Middle East in anticipation of the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate: these were countries with borders drawn quite literally with a ruler at the Sykes–Picot summit in 1916. Look at the right angle that separates Egypt and Sudan: is that a natural, historical boundary? These are the anachronisms of empire, still visible on the maps of today. Kuwait and Iraq were artificial entities. The West intervened to uphold these boundaries to reinforce its own set of colonial rules, not ours.
Everything about the modern Middle East, according to HT, was a product of this colonialism. Even the government of Saudi Arabia, on the face of it a deeply conservative Muslim regime, was an imperialist puppet regime. They allow the Americans to base their troops there and sell them their oil. Saudi Arabia was in fact created as a reward to the House of Saud for their rebellion against “the Khilafah.” Throughout the region, there were agents of the West in charge, torturing the true Muslims to keep them from power: rulers like Mubarak in Egypt, the Shah of Iran before his fall in 1979, even Saddam Hussein had been the beneficiary of Western support for many years. The West talked of democracy and yet pumped millions into propping up these brutal dictators to keep the real force from coming to power: Islam. For HT, none of these regimes had legitimacy: their political authority was based on that of their current, neocolonial masters.
I was sixteen at the time I started hearing all this. When you’re that age, already angry and disenfranchised, you’re very susceptible to absolutes. This globalization of our grievance was what many would later come to know as the powerful Islamist narrative. It would go on to stir the hearts of thousands of young Muslims around the world, leading to the creation of groups who would commit many atrocities in its name. At that time, before al-Qaeda was ever conceived, all this sounded highly credible to me. I didn’t have the political knowledge to come back and challenge what I was being told, and I didn’t trust the typical authorities to tell me the truth. I could see the passion with which Osman would lay out his new position, hear Nasim’s carefully crafted narratives coming through in what he was saying. I could sense the way it chimed with my own experiences, could smell the atmosphere on the streets. And considering everything my young mind could see around me, it sounded credible.
To begin with, I stuck with what I knew: hip-hop and the counterculture messages the lyrics contained. Even here, though, things were changing. Within Public Enemy, there had always been two competing voices on the mic. The group was first and foremost Chuck D’s band—his strident belief in black power, in ensuring the work of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X was brought
up to date for a new generation gave PE’s message an untainted authority. But equally important for the band’s message was Professor Griff. Griff was a member of the Nation of Islam: he didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, and had his S1Ws, his Security of the First World, dressed up in military gear, carrying imitation machine guns onstage. Griff’s politics were more radical and more controversial. He had given an interview to the Washington Times in which he claimed that “Jews are wicked . . . [and responsible for] the majority of wickedness that goes on across the globe."* This was on the heels of giving a television interview where he said he didn’t wear jewelry because it was named after the Jews, who ran the trade in South Africa. The group’s response was to fire Griff for anti-Semitism. For a PE fan like myself, the split was shocking. Public Enemy had politicized me: now there were schisms emanating from the camp. So where hip-hop had once given me strength and identity, its impact was dulled a little from this confusion. I was now facing a split along similar lines at home, between Osman and me, and was desperately trying to work out which way to go.
* Washington Times, interview with David Mills—May 22, 1989.
The culmination was that final meeting with Mickey. The show of strength that I had been part of in Ockendon suddenly felt parochial. The strength that my brother’s conviction and politics brought with it seemed to have real power. I’d caught a glimpse of what it could do in Mickey’s reaction. I could only begin to imagine its impact if it were replicated on a global scale. The fact that my brother succeeded with a green backpack where all my knife fights and shows of strengths had failed, made me think.
I remember something else, too. Whereas, before, his dependable green backpack had PLO graffitied over it, now he had struck out PLO and started to write the name of a group unknown to me: Hamas.
“What’s that mean?” I naively asked.
“Forget the PLO sell-outs,” he said. “They’re not Islamic. This is Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement. The future belongs to Hamas.”
Oh cool, I thought, Professor Griff would like them. I agreed to go to study circles with him, to see what Hizb al-Tahrir was about.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A Land Where Fetuses Are Cut from Wombs
Hizb al-Tahrir study circles took place in people’s houses. There would be five to six of us sitting in a circle with the speaker at the center. Nasim or another speaker would talk on a set topic for about an hour and then take questions afterward. The content would be more political than theological, with occasional reference to Islam to back up the point. There was a methodology to these discussions, the framework of which I’ve continued to use effectively to this day: always destroy before you build.
HT was very good at taking apart existing deeply held prejudices, stripping them down to their bare bones, and then rebuilding a new set of reference points. Often it was said, if you try to build on top of existing corrupt concepts, one day your ideas will fall like a stack of cards. In keeping with this, the circles first focused on a thorough critique of ideas such as freedom, human rights, and democracy. Every critique addressed an intellectual, political, and scriptural angle. These discussions were like a thorough, deep cleansing. Such was Nasim’s contempt for Western society—it was clear his country of birth was no longer part of his identity. He defined himself directly against this.
There was no link between these study groups and the local mosque. In fact, the study groups were outright critical of the religious classes. This disdain was based on piecemeal history and an element of truth that had been embellished out of all proportion. During the British Raj, there was a theory among some Muslims that the best way to further themselves was to appease their colonial rulers. The Hindus were in the majority, and it was said that if they ruled India they would use their power to oppress the Muslim community. The best way, therefore, to protect Muslims was to keep the British in power—a trade-off between being allowed to pray, fast, and practice rituals, and having to subjugate themselves to foreign rule.
Islamists used this position, which some religious clerics took in India, as evidence against all religious clerics. They had lost their way and turned Islam into Christianity—a meek, spiritual creed that had no effect on life and no control over society. Again, there is some truth to this narrative. Muslim religious leaders had indeed let modernity overtake them, had become politically complacent, and were grossly out of touch. These were the types sending mosque imams, who could not speak English, to teach us in Britain. Rather than admiring the piety of Muslims who quietly went about practicing their faith, Islamists disparaged them for not challenging the neocolonial state they were living in, or the “Westernization” it brought with it.
Secular Islamic heritage, historically strong among traditional Muslims, was taking an Islamist battering. It didn’t help that some of the staunchest advocates for this secularism were not democrats but Arab despots. It followed therefore that it was Islamists who were going to liberate the lands and minds of Muslims by teaching them the impact Islam demands to have on life, society, and governance, by overthrowing these despots, rejecting the West and reclaiming their identity, and by establishing the true system for Muslims, “the Khilafah.” Secular Muslim heritage, caught completely unawares and half asleep, caved in.
Of primary importance was the overall narrative of Islamism: historical facts and theological points were chosen to support this, rather than beginning with the information and postulating a theory from it. So the information and stories chosen were never lies or untruths, but seldom were they the whole truth. The element that supported the story was mentioned; the part that complicated the issue was ignored. That was true of both history and theology: where a reference to Allah was relevant, it would be dropped in.
But there was never a session on how to pray. There was never a session on how to fast. There was never a session on how to read the Qur’an. We learned how to pray alone; we did because it was considered important to keep up the ritual, and because it was part of the ideology as a whole. But it was very much only part of the overall scheme. Islamism is a total theory that encompasses politics, economics, societal affairs, and personal spiritual ones. For Islamists, the faith element was something of a given—it was the politics and other issues that were the focus of attention.
The speaker brought to each meeting that session’s leaflet, usually a single sheet divided into two columns with a heading at the top. This would be the subject of that day’s discussion: a single, straightforward idea that they wanted the group to adopt.
At one of the first study circles I went to, the leaflet was titled “Born to be Brown.” The basic idea was that skin color is irrelevant, and what mattered were ideas and narratives. Just because someone is brown doesn’t make them your brother; the person of the same skin color as you can just as easily be your enemy. What matters is whether you were a Muslim (by Muslim, they meant an Islamist, which is what they considered to be a “proper” Muslim). The dividing line did not fall between ethnicities or nationalities: it was about Islam versus everyone else. That involved a recalibration of one’s identity, to start defining oneself as Muslim against the rest of the world.
This particular leaflet stuck in my mind because it challenged the bricks and mortar with which I’d built up my teenage identity. My group of friends was almost uniformly drawn from the minority communities of Southend. We’d joined together because of the threats we had faced, and through a shared interest in hip-hop and black culture. I was told that what I’d previously found strength in was irrelevant. It was quite a lot to take in; after all, the racism I’d experienced was part of the pathway for wanting to join HT in the first place. To stop thinking in terms of racial lines—and start thinking in terms of Muslims versus the rest—was quite a shift.
I had very few Pakistani friends. Most of my friends growing up had been white English non-Muslims and then, when the racism kicked in, we beca
me part of a West Indian group. I didn’t really feel affiliated to Pakistan or to England, and I knew I was not West Indian. So there was a real vacuum in my identity, which was the ideal place for someone to be before recruitment to an Islamist organization. They were able to offer me an identity that had previously been absent.
The study circles were supplemented by videos, and most strikingly, those of the conflict in Yugoslavia and the appalling treatment of the Bosnian Muslims by the Serb forces. This was taking place prior to the Internet taking hold: the technology was not yet up to the sort of dissemination of videos we are familiar with today. Back then, it was all about VHS cassettes: copies would be made and meetings would be arranged to watch these tapes. This was footage that wasn’t shown on mainstream media; it was shocking, appalling stuff, especially to a raw sixteen-year-old.
The footage reached us because people from the UK had gone to fight in Bosnia. British Muslims went as civilians, trained in camps funded by the Saudis, fought in Bosnia, and came back to recruit more soldiers. This was at a time when, amazingly, going abroad to fight in a war was unlikely to get you stopped and questioned—as long as you were not fighting against your own troops.
In some ways, Bosnia was no different from the situation then in Afghanistan: in both cases, there were Saudi funds available to train and fight. There were training camps all over Bosnia, and a huge growth of Saudi-built mosques that were clearly aimed at funding a religious revival in the country. The major difference with Afghanistan was the proximity. Bosnia was a war taking place on the European mainland, a conflict that was less than a three-hour flight away. When these fighters returned to the UK, they were treated like heroes: with their big beards and talk about Islam, they felt like our very own Che Guevaras.
The videos featured disturbing content. Trays of what appeared to be genitals cut off from Bosnian men by Serbs. Footage of pregnant women with their bellies cut open and their babies ripped out alive. You’d see the dead woman on the floor with the baby lying next to her, the umbilical cord still attached, and the gash down the front of her stomach. There would then be combat footage as well, of trained Muslim fighters defending themselves against the Serbs. The footage was well put together considering the limits of technology. Some scenes were a little grainy, but they’d been edited professionally. I hesitate to use the word “propaganda” because that has negative implications, but that is essentially what they were. There was a genocide going on, and the appalling crimes committed were being used to further an Islamist recruitment drive across Europe. And it worked.