by Maajid Nawaz
Most importantly, Muslim leaders and theologians needed to be firm in the face of this ideological onslaught against our faith. And while theologians are especially responsible for leading the Muslim resistance against Islamism, Muslims could not be expected to do this if Islamism’s twin, Islamophobia, was not also challenged. There are those out there who harbor an irrational fear of Islam. Islamophobes and Islamists have this much in common: both groups insist that Islam is a totalitarian political ideology at odds with liberal democracy, and hence both insist that the two will inevitably clash. One extreme calls for the Qur’an to be banned, the other calls to ban everything but the Qur’an. Together, they form the negative and the positive of a bomb fuse.
A counternarrative needed to be created out of these ideals: a respect for basic human rights, pluralism, individual freedoms, faith, and democracy had to be reconciled with Islam not in the ivory towers of academics but out there in the hearts of the masses. To do that, we needed to permeate all elements of society with the counternarrative: politics and policy, media, the arts, social media, academia, and public opinion. We needed the backing of states, parties, coalitions, and movements, and we needed ideas, narratives, leaders, and symbols, all pooled together, just as Islamism had been doing since the 1920s.
For decades Islamists had spread their ideology at the grassroots, while Muslim liberals either detached themselves in their mansions or embroiled themselves in the corrupt politics of their regimes. As Islamists, we would look upon these elite Muslim liberals as completely out of touch and detached from the sentiments of their people.
Was it any wonder then that Islamism had become the most effective social phenomenon among Muslims in the world, in dictatorships and democracies alike? Dictators would either try to co-opt it or brutally suppress it. Both tactics inevitably aided its growth. In democracies, electoral politics could only react to votes, and if the most organized bloc is the Islamist bloc, they will have their way, intimidating government after government with their opportunistic use of Islam to influence policy. Why were governments everywhere scared of upsetting the sleeping giant of Islamism? Why had they gradually succumbed to the Islamisation of their societies? Why did they not fear a similar internal democratic lobby? Where was the democratic intimidation?
What I saw clearly now was the need for a radical new social movement, a Muslim Brotherhood equivalent, sitting above short-term party-political goals. It would advocate the democratic culture among Muslim grass roots: a civic-democratic intimidation pushing for democratization. Sitting in the seclusion of Abi’s home in Southend, I realized that my quest for justice that began here was far from over.
I knew now what had to be done, and I knew the cost of doing it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Decade-Late Apology
It was on the site of the 7/7 attacks in London, appropriately enough, that Quilliam came into being. Two years after the bombings, London life had moved on, and apart from the commemorative plaque in Tavistock Square, much had returned to normal. The London bus with its top ripped open had long been taken away, and its image was now a memory of history. Another number 30 continued the journey that bus should have completed, driving past a parked, clapped-out blue Renault Clio. Inside, an exhausted student was trying to sleep, curled up under a blanket on the backseat.
In the weeks after leaving HT and during my estrangement from Rabia, my car had become my home. I had my final exams to take and had to be in London rather than with Abi back in Southend. When I left HT, I also left my friends behind. My life had been so entwined with the organization that my entire social circle had gone with it. I didn’t have a job or any money, and so the car became where I went at the end of the day. I’d drive around until I found a space in one of the streets near SOAS—Tavistock Square, Russell Square, usually—and that would be where I spent the night.
But it wasn’t all bad. My final graduation ceremony, ten years after initially enrolling, was quite a sight to behold. SOAS had run out of seats in the main hall so some of us would receive our certificates and proceed to an overspill room to watch our own graduation ceremony via video link. I had waited ten years for this moment; my family was proudly in the main hall expecting me, and they had no idea that we would be denied seats alongside them. SOAS had just kicked the wrong guy out of his own graduation ceremony.
Quickly, I rallied and organized the by-now extremely distressed students. We were outraged, and I spread word that I would refuse to receive my certificate unless they made space for us all in the main hall. The majority of students followed my suggestion, and others wouldn’t argue against my reasoning: if prison couldn’t stop me from graduating, I’d be damned if this would. We announced our refusal to cooperate, declaring a sit-in. The management had no choice but to cave. A hasty compromise was suggested: we were told that we could sit on the stairs in the main hall, and we readily agreed.
It was a peculiar twist of fate that on that day Irene Khan, then secretary general of Amnesty, was to receive her honorary doctorate from SOAS. Irene was onstage to witness what happened next. As my name was called, I rushed onto the stage, and overcome with joy, I hugged the university president and raised my hands in celebration. To my surprise, the students started cheering my name, and they rose in a standing ovation. As I embraced her, the university president asked, “What did you do to get a standing ovation?”
“Oh you really don’t want to know,” I replied, laughing.
Earlier that year, I had one of those moments when the universe seems to align itself perfectly. At just the time when all my HT friends were viciously turning on me—Traitor! Sell-out! Agent!—I bumped into someone from my old days.
“Maajid! Subhan Allah! Habib—my dear friend, you’re back from Egypt. I saw your news on TV. How are you?” Standing on the SOAS steps, exactly where I had last left him, still wearing his trademark blazer, was none other than Ed Husain, now studying for his PhD.
It had been ten years, but the bond between us remained as strong as ever. Ed was in the process of writing his acclaimed book, The Islamist, which would end up being published around the same week I left HT. Sensing that my thoughts had moved on considerably, he asked me to look through and comment on the Newham sections, which served as a reminder, if I needed one, of how far I had come. By this point I knew that I was going to leave HT but hadn’t broken the news to the world yet. In fact, the first version of The Islamist concludes with the speculation: “Which direction will HT go in, the moderate direction of Maajid Nawaz, or the hard-line one of Jalaluddin Patel?”
The conversations and debates Ed and I shared in the back of my clapped-out car during those days were critical to informing our joint direction for years to come. For both of us, it wasn’t enough just to leave HT behind.
“We need to reform the way we Muslims see politics, and revive knowledge of our traditional jurisprudence through the Sufi path,” Ed suggested.
“No, habib, trust me, everything, absolutely everything needs to be reformed, and that includes traditional . . . what I call medieval, jurisprudence. It simply doesn’t address our contemporary problems.”
“But, that’s . . . that’s nothing short of a complete overhaul of the deen,” Ed exclaimed.
“Exactly. I’m talking about enshrining absolute freedoms, human rights, a respect for individual liberty, women’s rights, and reconciling modern scientific facts with Islamic interpretation. And I don’t just mean in the lofty circles of academia or theology, that’s all been done before, but actually out there, in the real world, just as we did for Islamism back in the day.”
“Yes, we can start doing da’wah for these values, just as we did back at Newham for HT.” The glitter in Ed’s eye began to betray his excitement.
“Indeed! Da’wah for a religion-neutral space in the public sphere, dhormo niropekhota, I think it’s called in Bangla. You know, it’s
so bad that in Pakistan’s Urdu there is no appropriate word for secularism? They use laa-deeniyat, which implies no-religion. With such a translation, obviously Islamism will have a head start.”
“You do realize there is a mammoth task ahead, Maajid, we will be roundly attacked,” Ed said rather too eagerly. “But I have just the idea for how to begin. Let’s start it all with a think tank, to lay the seeds for this idea globally, and let’s call it after the Englishman who opened England’s first mosque, to make the point that Islam doesn’t always have to clash with society. His name was William Quilliam!”
And so it was, in that old Renault Clio, parked somewhere on Russell Square in London, the idea for Quilliam was born.
What Islamism had done in Europe was to set Muslim communities back an entire generation. It created a separatist agenda that became self-fulfilling. In an effort to protest discrimination, all it achieved was further segregation. Further social immobility created more discrimination, not less. When Omar Bakri Mohammed had left HT, he had founded al-Muhajiroun, which had protested against the bodies of soldiers returning from Afghanistan. In response to this, the English Defense League had been formed. Islamism was in danger of making the situation worse, repeating the cycle of racism: Islamist extremism, more racism, and more Islamist extremism. It is no wonder then that Omar Bakri’s own daughter grew so disillusioned with her father’s rhetoric that in one monumental act of defiance she left home and became a stripper, proudly declaring her profession to the tabloid press with glee.
What exacerbated the situation was a lack of understanding about what Islamism was. Governments were allowing the Islamist narrative to drive the debate, accepting it as the majority Muslim voice. This simply wasn’t true: Islamism was a modern political phenomenon with opinions that could be every bit as offensive as those held by far-right organizations—its anti-Semitism and homophobia, for example. But government and society instinctively resisted challenging this for fear of coming across as racist.
Official policy lumped all Muslims together as “one community,” the so-called Muslim vote, which required a “native-chief” to speak on its behalf. Instead of being represented by their Member of Parliament, like everyone else, Muslims were encouraged to seek separate representation via an exclusively Muslim political umbrella. In a “poor natives” sort of way there was the arrogant assumption that Islamism was a true expression of our authenticity, even if the so-called moderates tried to distance themselves from it. In a form of reverse racism, liberal values were expected of the civilized white person, but the brown Muslim could not be held to those same standards and should be judged by his or her own “authentic” culture. This was a colonial “poverty of expectation,” which inevitably leads to segregation, low aspirations, patronizing expectations, and cultural glass ceilings, practically stalling Muslim social mobility and progress across Europe.
Ed and I wanted to expose all this. We wanted less separation of communities and more involvement of Muslims in every aspect of society: to focus less on the differences and more on the similarities of cultures. Mainstream society, not just Muslims, bore a great deal of the responsibility to make this happen. The state could help here, but it could never drive the process: imposing ideas like democracy and human rights would only lead to resistance. Instead, the change had to come from within communities themselves—the flowering of more liberal ideas through civic debate and discussion. To be successful, our initiative had to be the exact opposite of neo-conservatism: a “ground up,” not a “top down” process.
The shaping of these ideas into what would become Quilliam wasn’t an overnight event. Ed and I had many discussions, and disagreed at times too, while fretting over where and how to begin. We weren’t the first people ever to want to change the world. Coming up with ideas, in a way, was the easy part. The difficult bit was how to take them forward: how to turn our excited talk into action. What would the process actually involve? Where would the money to fund it come from? Where would we even start?
Right from the start we were encouraged by the reaction to our ideas. Ours was the most visible and credible insight mainstream society had ever gleaned from inside Islamist organizations and the prisons that held them. Ed’s book, The Islamist, was published to a lot of media attention and discussion. In the wake of that, when I finally announced my resignation from HT, we went to meet Peter Barron, then editor of the BBC’s flagship news program Newsnight, who agreed to do an extended piece about my departure from HT. In late 2007, my story headlined the program; they were so keen for me to speak that they allowed me to tell my story directly to camera, rather than via an interview with a journalist.
But it wasn’t just the media who were interested in my story; the government was, too. On the day the Newsnight piece was due to air, Ed and I were invited into the Communities and Local Government department to brief them about Islamism. As we entered the room, we realized just how senior the meeting was: as well as Hazel Blears, then Communities secretary, also present were Foreign Secretary David Miliband, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, and Charles Farr, the director general of the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism.
The last time an official had asked me about my political views, I was fingerprinted and had my DNA taken in the interrogation rooms at Heathrow Airport. Here we now were, offering our opinions to three of the UK’s seniormost cabinet members. Later that week, I received a rather bemused call from Abi. “You’ll never guess who came to see me after your story was aired on Newsnight,” she said between laughs. “It was the Essex Police. They came to offer an apology for having arrested you at gunpoint all those years ago when you were fifteen. They saw it on TV and felt bad.” I burst into laughter. This was my “green backpack” moment with the police. My message was reaching people, but this time it was a democratic one, and I was encouraged.
Quilliam was to be the world’s first counter-extremism hub for activism. We would create a platform from which we could directly challenge the dominant discourse of Islamism. We would speak, debate, lobby, brief, mobilize, galvanize, write, publish, and organize in order to spread a counternarrative to Islamism, hoping to inspire the mushrooming of our cause anywhere and everywhere.
The problem was money. Starting up something like this wasn’t a cheap thing to do: there was the expense of running an office and hiring staff, the cost of traveling to conferences and countries to spread our message. We would travel around the country meeting with religious figures, former Islamists, and government officials, trying to create a base for our organization. We wanted to get enough people on board to create a critical mass.
But we still had no idea where the money would come from. We were both still students. Ed was still completing his PhD at SOAS; I—having completed my law degree at SOAS—had now enrolled for an MSc in political theory at the London School of Economics. And so, to begin with, Ed and I simply used our credit cards and student overdrafts to pay for everything, a sure way of accumulating thousands of pounds of debt. But this was our baby, and we desperately wanted it to work.
Eventually, Ed’s book led the way. Someone who had read The Islamist and had been impressed by our ideas gave us an introduction to a Kuwaiti organization called the Babtain Foundation. We met their representatives in London and explained our vision for Quilliam. To our delight, they agreed to give us the seed money to get the organization up and running. We were able to set up an office and to hire a couple of other former Islamists, Dawud and Rashad, who joined us to form Quilliam’s first office team.
In January 2008, right behind Russell Square at the British Museum, to a great deal of media fanfare and public anticipation, Ed Husain and I launched Quilliam, the world’s first counter-extremism organization. I’m still amazed at the speed with which we managed to pull it all off—to go from a discussion in the back of my car, to a full-fledged and funded organization in less than a year. I was most moved by the speech given by 7/7
survivor Rachel North, who stirred the audience to tears recounting her ordeal of being caught up in London’s bombings and the work she has done since to reconcile both herself and communities.
Not everyone from within Muslim communities, however, wanted to congratulate us for our work. Though he had long since left HT, and disagreed with them on many counts, my brother Osman, my childhood friend and protector, completely disagreed with my decision to make our fight against Islamism public. As did my cousin Yasser, who also had left HT by now; he took Osman’s view that challenging the ideology itself was one step too far. Our relationships inevitably suffered.
Very few of my childhood friends who had previously held me in such high regard for my commitment to Islamism agreed with my work. The most vindictive attacks came from Nas, the Greek, who began what seemed a personal campaign against me online, in the mosque that my Nana Abu founded, and in the local community. The only one who stood by me from the old converts to our cause was our British-Kenyan friend Moe, who back in the day had been attacked by skinheads with a hammer. A particularly touching moment was when my non-Muslim school friends, led by Sav and including the likes of Marc, Jamie, Katrina, and others, organized a welcome home gathering for me in Southend. Despite all that I had done during my Islamist years, and the distance I’d tried to place between us, they still cared. Indeed, Sav had continued to write to me in prison, offering me his moral support. Such deep loyalty spurred me on further; faced with a friendship like that, I knew was doing the right thing.
Among Muslim communities across the UK, my name was dragged through the dirt. Ed and I were both targeted in a highly personal and organized smear campaign. Where Islamist rappers had once sampled my voice on their songs, their supporters were now declaring me an apostate. Such declarations are a necessary prelude for any attempt on a Muslim’s life to be “legal.” Islamist teams of agitators toured the UK with information packs about why my colleagues and I were heretics.