by Maajid Nawaz
HT’s vision was to rise to power on either side of Afghanistan, in Pakistan and Uzbekistan, after which the Taliban would act as the bridge in building the first modern, nuclear-armed Islamist superstate. In 1999 HT even sent a delegation of senior Arab members from Palestine in order to offer the Taliban just such a partnership for our future “nuclear Khilafah.” In those days, the Taliban had not yet come to believe that Pakistan was a kufr, un-Islamic state, but they politely refused to cooperate with HT.
It didn’t take long for our da’wah to change the Taliban’s view on Pakistan, and by 2009 they had usurped large parts of the country in the north as well. What 9/11 did, by precipitating the NATO occupation of Afghanistan, was destroy this dream of a Central Asian “Khilafah” in one stroke. We had always been critical of Jihadism for being the wrong way to go about bringing about an “Islamic state,” and now we had been proven right.
A couple of weeks after I had settled in Alexandria and begun my course, I made contact with HT in Egypt. Egypt in the 1970s witnessed the rise of state-sponsored Islamism, as Pakistan had, just as the decade before had witnessed the rise of socialism in both countries. President Anwar Sadat released thousands of Islamists from the jails of his predecessor, Gemal Abdel Nasser, in an attempt to shore up support for his new regime against the “Godless” socialists. He even ennobled himself as Ra’is al-Muslimeen, President of the Believers. But Sadat would soon learn the hard way that Islamism was not a beast easily tamed.
Having been founded next door in Palestine, HT had been operating in and out of Egypt since the late 1960s. Taking advantage of Sadat’s Islamization policy, HT managed to gain critical mass and planned a coup in Egypt as early as 1974. The failed attempt led to the loss of many lives and the virtual obliteration of HT cells in Egypt. But HT didn’t give up, and in the late 1970s a Jordanian member of the group named Salim al-Rahhal took up the task of reviving the group’s cell in Alexandria.
Because of the failed coup, HT landed on the radar of Egypt’s security establishment. In 1977 al-Rahhal set up a new organization called Tanzim al-Jihad, or the Jihad Organization. By all accounts al-Rahhal was a highly capable and dangerous man. Around eighty of his armed followers were discovered later that year in Alexandria raids. Eventually, considered too dangerous to remain, Salim al-Rahhal was expelled from Egypt. But as we were taught inside HT, ideas are more dangerous than people. Al-Rahhal left his disciple Kamal Habib in charge in Alexandria, while a man named Abdus-Salam Faraj began expanding the Cairo branch of Tanzim al-Jihad.
Still focused on the military strategy, Kamal and Faraj managed to find Abbud al-Zummar, a military intelligence officer who joined Tanzim al-Jihad in 1980. It was this core of Islamist activists at the helm of Tanzim al-Jihad, founded by HT member al-Rahhal, who went on to assassinate Anwar Sadat in 1981. Tanzim al-Jihad went on to split, forming the larger and more prolific al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya and the smaller yet more sinister Jihad al-Islami, led by one Ayman al-Zawahiri. Zawahiri later merged his group with bin Laden to form al-Qaeda, and the rest, as they say, is history. Thus the trail becomes clear: Hizb al-Tahrir is a significant and necessary link in the world of Islamism as we know it today.
In 2001 our job was to revive the original HT organization in Egypt. My contact began with an email, which led to a phone number, which led to instructions to travel to a town called Kafr el-Sheikh. There I met a man named Hisham, and we began studying in a halaqah, in the utmost secrecy. After a while, a meeting was arranged for me with Alaa’ el-Zanati, the head of HT in Egypt. I met Zanati and discussed my previous experiences in Pakistan, Denmark, and the UK. He was sufficiently impressed to put me in charge of HT activities in Alexandria.
The fact that I was given a central role so quickly, and the fact that seeing Zanati involved so many clandestine contacts, was indicative of what Egyptian society was like and how little penetration HT had by this time. The memory of the failed 1974 coup, and the group’s chilling effect on Sadat’s assassins, lingered on for Egypt’s Intelligence Services; they treated any hint of HT presence in Egypt as a “code red.” Because the Egyptian state was so dependent on the military, they were particularly watchful of a group whose aim was to infiltrate the army. The lengths that the state would go to shut down the organization were extreme. Since the assassination of Sadat in 1981, the country had been under Emergency Law, ruled with an iron fist by Sadat’s successor, Hosni Mubarak.
These Emergency Laws gave the authorities sweeping powers to arrest and detain civilians indefinitely. (The laws stayed in place until President Mubarak’s overthrow during the Arab uprisings of 2011.) These were flagrant human rights abuses that the United States and its allies tolerated in return for the promise of stability in the region. Technically, HT wasn’t a banned organization in Egypt. But that was only because the Emergency Law worked the other way around: there was no natural right to association—a group needed the state’s permission to do so. While some political parties had a permit to operate, HT had never had any such thing.
In Alexandria, there were two other HT members from the UK who had also arrived in Egypt. Reza Pankhurst I had known for several years by this point, having recruited with him at Cambridge University and having encouraged him to travel to Pakistan to spread the message. Reza was in Cairo along with Ian Nisbet. Ian had converted to HT when he was a student at Westminster University. We all got on well, and Rabia and I would travel up to Cairo to meet their families on a regular basis.
Meanwhile, echoing Salim al-Rahhal in Alexandria all those years before I was born, I began the process of recruitment. Because of Egypt’s State Security, the much-feared Aman al-Dawlah, it was all very surreptitious. I did not talk about HT on the phone, in case it was tapped. If contacting people by email, I would write the blandest of messages, like “I am coming over for dinner.” I would meet up with people at prearranged places and was initially very careful about bringing HT into the conversation. It was more about befriending and getting to know people, getting a sense of their views.
One such individual was Ahmed Eid, a medical student at the University of Alexandria. Ahmed was very bright, had an almost photographic memory, and was already a very committed Salafist. Ignoring our tried and tested tactic of recruiting people from a secular background, I knew from Pakistan that it was indeed possible to recruit Salafists. What I had overlooked was that Egypt was not Pakistan; whereas Pakistan was only just coming to terms with Islamism, Egypt had already lost a president to it.
It was around December 2001 that things began to get serious. There was another British-Pakistani student on my course named Hassan Rizvi, a young streetwise kid who had come over from the University of Exeter. Like most young British Muslims in those days, Hassan identified with Islamism even if he hadn’t joined any group. We clicked immediately. One day we were out in Alexandria—we tried to mix regularly with Egyptians to help us improve our Arabic. Hassan had been in a mosque to pray, and as I met him outside I could see immediately that something was troubling him.
“Hassan bro, what’s wrong?” I asked.
“The weirdest thing, man, someone gave me a message for you,” he said, looking puzzled. “I was in the mosque, after having finished my prayers, when someone appeared next to me and asked if I was brother Maajid. He said he was a friend of Ahmed Eid’s, and that he needed to talk to Maajid urgently. He said that you were in danger, bro.”
By now, I felt worried too, and was looking around to see if anyone was watching us.
“He wanted me to take him to you,” Hassan said. But Hassan was street-smart enough to know what the score was. “I said no way, bro, I refused. I mean, he could’ve been Aman al-Dawlah for all I knew. I said I needed to talk to you first. If you wanna speak to him, I’ve arranged a time and place where we can go together, tomorrow. But I’m coming with you, bro, just so you know I’ve got your back.”
As Hassan was telling me this, somethin
g suddenly hit me. It might just have been coincidence, but I hadn’t seen Ahmed for a few days. There might have been any number of reasons for that, but I couldn’t recall having seen him around. Had he been picked up? He was the one person in Alexandria I’d discussed HT with, but our conversations had just been between the two of us. I decided that it was unlikely to have been the secret police who had been talking to Hassan; if they had wanted to find me, it would have been easy enough to have done so.
The next day I turned up at the prearranged meeting place with Hassan. We stood there waiting when a car pulled up and we were told to get in. We were driven around Alexandria for what seemed like an eternity. Then the car pulled up behind another vehicle, and we were told to get out and get in that one instead. Driven around the city again, we switched vehicles a second time. Eventually, we were put in a taxi and driven to the outskirts of the city.
A while later the taxi pulled up and we got out. Ahmed’s friend was waiting for us, and he apologized for driving us around.
“We had to be careful,” he said. “We had to make sure that you weren’t being followed.”
By now, my head was rushing. “What’s up?” I asked in my newly acquired Arabic. “Where is Ahmed? Is he OK?”
“He is OK now,” the friend said. “He was arrested and tortured. He has just been released and wanted me to warn you.”
“Subhan Allah—Exalted be Allah! What? . . . Why?” I asked, as my heart started to beat fast and my brow broke out in a cold sweat. “What’s he been arrested for?” I suspected the answer.
Ahmed’s friend looked at me gravely. He must have seen what the Aman al-Dawlah had done to his friend and knew, as I did, that it was his association with me that caused it. “Ahmed wanted me to tell you that Aman al-Dawlah knows all about you. They know that you are a member of HT, they know your life history. They know about you recruiting in Pakistan and about your desire to establish a Khilafah here in Egypt. You need to know that Hizb al-Tahrir is considered by them the most dangerous organization to have ever come to Egypt. They hate you more than they hate the jihadists.”
It was the word “Pakistan” that really took me aback. I had discussed HT with Ahmed, but I hadn’t gone into my time in Pakistan. That information could only have come from Aman al-Dawlah.
“Ahmed wanted me to tell you,” his friend continued, “that they are preparing a major case against you; they will arrest you and put you on trial. That was why he was tortured, to gather information for the case against you. He tried to protect you as best he could, akhi.” Ahmed’s friend emphasized the point about the trial again. “They’re not talking about deporting you, but incarcerating you. Akhi Maajid, you’re from the UK, your jails are not our jails. Do you understand what that means? Wallahi—by Allah, Maajid, do you know what might happen if they find you guilty?”
I nodded. At this moment my mind started to drift to minutiae, the way it does when it senses pending danger.
“Where are we, by the way?” I heard myself mutter.
“We’re in Abu Keer, on the outskirts of Alexandria; it’s an old village famous for its fish.” He got back to the point. “Ahmed wanted me to tell you, as a friend, that you should leave Egypt immediately. You should get out while you still have the chance. Allahu ma’ak—May Allah be with you.”
Ahmed’s risk in getting this message to me is what we called in Egypt Gad’ana, a very chivalrous thing to do. It touched me deeply: here was a man tortured for information about me, and yet he further risked his safety, and that of his friends and family, to warn me in advance. Such loyalty, such brotherhood, is hard to come by. It was in moments like this that Islamism seemed to be the only bond that could inspire such chivalry in the hearts of men. The easy option would be to get himself free through setting me up, or failing that, to have nothing more to do with me.
I replayed what Ahmed’s friend had told me over and over in my head, blood pumping through my temples at a speed I didn’t know was possible. The time had finally come. All those years of preparation, the romanticism of struggle, and now it was my time. I knew, too, that I couldn’t just pick up the phone and ring Nasim back in London for his advice, or try to make contact with my other HT members in Egypt. There was a strong likelihood my phone was already tapped: there had been clicks on the line ever since I arrived in Alexandria. There was a good possibility I would be followed and lead Aman al-Dawlah to the whereabouts of other activists. Whatever I decided to do, I only had Allah to rely on, Allahu Musta’an.
I thought hard about leaving the country. But how would I get past airport security? Surely they would just stop me at the border. As fortune would have it, Rabia and Ammar were already out of the country, having gone back to the UK to see family. I decided it was too dangerous for them to return, and got a message to them, without giving anything away, that they should stay in the UK until further notice. Rabia immediately knew the code for what it was; we had rehearsed this moment over and again, and she spent weeks in prayer worrying for my safety. I decided the best course of action was to lie low. I stopped all HT activity instantly and without notice. I steered clear of my flat and moved around instead, staying with friends until everything had calmed down.
Over the next few weeks, I was living on the edge of my nerves. The fact that I was crashing on different people’s couches didn’t help—bad nights of sleep punctuated by being woken by every new creak and groan of the floorboards. But as the days turned to weeks, I began to relax. It was the Christmas holidays: I had no classes to attend, Rabia and Ammar were away, and I couldn’t do any HT work. It might seem an odd scenario under which to have a break, but for the first time in a long while, that’s exactly what I did.
Toward the end of the holidays, about a month or so after the meeting with Ahmed’s friend, I felt confident enough about the situation to test the waters. I decided that I would try to leave the country to see what would happen. So Hassan, Hiroshi (my Japanese friend from Arabic class), and I caught a bus from Alexandria to Cairo, and went to catch a ferry, assuming security there might be less rigorous than at the airport. To my huge relief, I got through border security without a murmur. We took the ferry across the Red Sea to Aqaba, in Jordan, and drove over to Amman. From here we caught a taxi over the Allenby Bridge into Jerusalem, where we stayed in the Old City for a night. We were going on an adventure.
Being in Jerusalem, or al-Quds in Arabic, was like taking a walk through an ancient history book. I remain mesmerized by the sheer majesty of the place. I traced the steps of Jesus ‘alayhi salam through the old city, eyes welled with reverent tears. I was incredibly humbled by the fact that I was walking in the footsteps of prophets. I saw the Mosque of Omar, the Prophet’s companion and Second Caliph of Islam, built on the footsteps of a church because Omar refused to enter the church to pray, out of fear that his followers would later convert it into a mosque. So they built the mosque on the footsteps anyway.
And as we entered the Al-Aqsa compound, into Islam’s third holiest site for Friday prayers, I became overwhelmed. The sheer significance of where I was, the purity of the place, and the fact that each brick, each slab, was currently suffering due to the conflict, overcame me. We could see bullet holes in the sacred walls. We prayed there, salat al-Jumu’ah—our Friday prayers, right there under the green dome of the Al-Aqsa Mosque; right there where the seal of Allah’s Prophet Muhammad ‘alayhi salam led all other Prophets in prayer on that night known as Israa. Muhammad ‘alayhi salam then ascended to Jannah—Paradise, from the very rock beneath the golden dome of the Qubbat al-Sakhra, right there, where I broke down and kissed the floor and begged Allah to forgive my transgressions against Him, my wife, and my son in case I never saw them again. My own group, Hizb al-Tahrir, had been founded in this very mosque in 1953. Filled with an all-encompassing sense of awe, from that day I dedicated my heart to the lands of Palestine.
It felt so good to be away fro
m Egypt. For those couple of days, it felt as though the suspicion and the stress of being watched were falling from my shoulders. It’s difficult to describe the experience of living in a police state if you’ve never lived in one, but because someone might be watching you or listening, because you can never quite be sure, there’s an inherent tension in how you go about your life. It’s only when you leave the country, and you literally feel this tension disappear, that you realize how wound up you’ve been. It’s hard not to check your actions or feel paranoid, even when you’re doing nothing wrong. Ironically, I felt more relaxed in Israeli-controlled al-Quds than I had been in Egypt.
While I was still in Jerusalem, I took the opportunity to reconnect with HT in the Al-Aqsa Mosque. I introduced myself to Issam Amireh, a senior member. I told him about my background, my studies in Egypt, and my HT activities in the UK, Pakistan, and Denmark. He suggested that I should return there after I had finished my year in Alexandria, to study with him for a while. This would have been a huge honor, and I readily agreed. We discussed the situation in Egypt, but not in detail—there was little he could have done to help me with Aman al-Dawlah. For those golden couple of days, I could see my HT career stretch out in front of me: studying in Jerusalem, returning to Pakistan to recruit, and cementing my place in Islamic history by helping to bring about “the Khilafah.”
I returned to Egypt by the same route. Again, there were no problems at the border. In retrospect, it does seem strange that I got in and out so easily. It might have been because they’d deduced from my return ferry ticket, and that I didn’t have any possessions with me, that I was planning to return. Equally, it might have been a mistake on their part. Just because Aman al-Dawlah was ruthless in its actions, it didn’t mean that they were competent in everything they did. Theirs was perhaps a more scatter-gun approach to keeping tabs on people.