Radical

by Maajid Nawaz

  Wassalam,

  Maajid Nawaz

  There is something more compelling than state power, more intimidating than all the bullets, all the torture, and all the chains that a brutal dictatorship can muster. It is fiercer than the iron fist of a despot and stronger than the stench of death. Since time immemorial, kings, rulers, and generals have feared the power of an idea.

  An idea can outlive a demigod, outpace armies, and outlast censorship. And something that’s even leaner, swifter, and more potent than an idea is a narrative. If an idea is a belief, its narrative is the propaganda used to spread that belief. The narrative, the story used to “sell” an idea, is the engine that gives an idea its power and influence. If an idea is nebulous, its narrative acts like a vortex, driving the idea forward. To control a narrative is to frame events and, ultimately, to shape history.

  The Islamist narrative—that “the West” is engaged in a war against Islam—is a quintessential one. It has taken root and gained power. It has done what narratives are supposed to do—give ideas a way to spread. Those who fail to shape narratives face a lose/lose scenario: intervention in foreign countries is spun as “far too little, too late” in the case of Bosnia, yet spun as “illegal invasion” in the case of Syria.

  True mastery over the destiny of nations comes by creating a vehicle that can carry the idea and narrative across time and space: enter the social movement. Social movements bring an idea to life, imbuing entire generations with a sense of emotional attachment to a cause or belief.

  Ideas are like water: they take a while to reach boiling point, but as soon as they do, they erupt. We are still at the heating stage of our ideas; we require patience for our work to embed itself into society. Ever so slowly, we will start to see the boil.

  Soon after the UK version of Radical was released, I was contacted by a stranger. His name was Nick Jode, a self-confessed former racist and supporter of the right-wing British street movement, the English Defence League (EDL). He reached out to me after having read my book and said that it had changed his life. His letter said, in part:

  I started to read lots on the internet about race issues and about the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and 7/7. . . . I looked at the problems the world was facing and saw that they too were caused by Muslims. It’s no wonder then that I started seeing Islam as a destructive force, believing that Muslims were the cause of not only my own but also all the world’s problems. I began shouting for and fighting for anyone who spoke out against Islam, eventually becoming a supporter of the English Defence League (EDL). . . .

  [O]ne night, while I was browsing the web, looking for websites and information against Islam, I happened to come across a link on Twitter to Maajid Nawaz of Quilliam debating with Anjem Choudary of Islam4UK on Newsnight.(Link) As I watched the video, in which Anjem was advocating Islamic law in Britain and Maajid was opposing it, with interest, I found myself mesmerized by how Maajid beat Anjem in the debate.

  At the same time, I began to investigate the future of EDL. Many of the people I met in the EDL were extreme and weren’t interested in seeing another side to their issues, and I started to realize that I had been as closed-minded as the extremist Muslims I was against. Many of my so-called friends who were still EDL supporters stopped contact with me. . . .

  When I came across Maajid’s book Radical, I decided I really needed to read it. I wanted to learn more about Maajid and Quilliam, and I wanted to learn more about how Islam and Islamism are distinct. Over the past month I have seen so many of Maajid’s speeches and have enormous respect for what he has achieved. I can finally say that I too have changed—I think we are all the same and can live alongside each other in peace.

  Feeling proud that I could have a hand in pushing back not only Islamist extremism, but the racism that I spent my teenage years fighting, I tweeted about Nick Jode’s turnaround. Soon after, and to my delight, another former EDL supporter replied saying that he knew of at least five others who had stopped supporting the EDL after being influenced by our work at Quilliam. We were carving out that middle ground, a united nations of democrats opposed to extremism in all its forms. It seemed like our efforts were beginning to find a place, even among British street politics. The vortex pushing our ideas forward was clearly working.

  But, of course, ideas can be bad as well as good, and there is no guarantee that a popular idea will be a good one. In fact, sometimes those two things are diametrically opposed. In the twentieth century, communists realized the potency that is latent in ideas and began planting the seeds for their doctrine across the world through a series of social movements committed to spreading communism. In the Middle East, the communist idea was halted only by another: Islamism.

  Islamists also realized that setting up social movements over generations to spread their idea (and by extension, their narrative) helps to create an unstoppable momentum. And so it was that they comfortably stepped into the vacuum created by young democratic Arabs who so passionately revolted against their dictators, but had failed to organize their own idea over decades. What despots have learned to fear, democrats are yet to master.

  In perceiving the potency of ideas, Islamists vehemently oppose the rise of any intellectual alternative. They realize that if another idea were to take root in Muslim-majority nations, it would spell the beginning of the end for their own ideological stranglehold. This is why in October 2012 the world spun in shock as it woke to the news that the Taliban had shot fourteen-year-old schoolgirl Malala Yusufzai in the head at point-blank range simply for advocating that young girls should have the right to go to school. I went to Pakistan that month, working as usual to spread our own ideas and to build our own social movement, Khudi. We felt the need to respond with urgency.

  The Khudi team had been preparing the ground for a weekly TV show that eventually aired as the Khudi Debates on Pakistan’s Express TV every Saturday evening. We decided to film an episode of our show in Mingora, Swat, where the Taliban had shot that brave little schoolgirl as a gesture of solidarity with Malala and a protest to the Taliban. Our message to Pakistan was clear: the Taliban does not own Swat, nor does it own Pakistan. That same week Newsweek featured my profile in the global edition of its magazine,(Link) and Newsweek Pakistan placed this story on its cover. I had been worried that such prominent coverage might attract unwelcome attention to Khudi in Swat during a period as tense as this, but any cautionary hesitation I faced was dwarfed by the shame I felt that a schoolgirl had stood where a nation should have. We pressed ahead, and the episode in Mingora, debating who bears responsibility for extremism in Pakistan, became the first episode aired from our weekly series.(Link)

  Since her shooting and her miraculous survival, Malala has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and has fast become an international symbol of courage. In my 2011 TEDGlobal talk(Link), I had argued that any counternarrative to Islamism in Muslim-majority societies needed to generate its own ideas, narratives, leaders, and symbols. Perhaps finally, in the tragedy and shock of Malala’s shooting, democratic activists could find inspiration in a symbol of resistance. Perhaps, at long last, Pakistan could seize the moment and turn the tide of public opinion irreversibly against extremism. Alas, the window of opportunity was there, but it was brief. Again, lacking the machinery of social movements to make their case, democratic activists started off on a huge offensive, only to see their efforts eclipsed by the ubiquitous Islamist messaging machinery. Once again, the Islamist narrative had won.

  Pictures of Malala sitting with the late US diplomat Richard Holbrooke fast began to circulate, first on the Internet and then in Urdu newspapers and on TV. Slowly, and with dread, we watched as the Urdu media of Pakistan started to entertain the despicable notion that, by sitting with Holbrooke, Malala may have been complicit in a US conspiracy to brainwash youngsters. Counteroffensives were launched, drawing attention away from Malala and instead to the innocent victims of for
eign wars and US drone strikes. Without a preexisting and decades-old social movement in place, the basic fact that the Taliban had killed more Pakistanis than the US, Israel, or India simply would not be heard. Those who control the narrative control the nation.

  On that same trip we took our counter-extremism movement to the streets, organizing a protest directly against the Taliban at Liberty roundabout in the city of Lahore.(Link) A few other civil society organizations had also held such protests, but none of us attracted anywhere near the throngs that come out whenever Islamists rallied the masses. More was needed—we had to continue to push the boundaries if our call had any chance of taking root. Our message was clear: the Taliban are child-killers; they can attack us, shoot us, blow us up, but they cannot silence us: our ideas will live on, they will continue to inspire people to stare down Taliban gunmen in defiance. You can’t kill an idea. Ideas are bulletproof.(Link)

  A year and a half before Malala’s shooting, a symbol for a much different cause was also shot in the head at point-blank range. In May 2011 Osama bin Laden was found and executed by US Navy SEALS in Abottabad, Pakistan. Scenes of jubilation erupted in cities all over the United States. President Obama addressed the nation in what looked to me like a repeat of Bush’s “mission accomplished” faux pas. Analysts clamored to hail the demise of al-Qaeda in sheer glee. I looked on anxiously. In this case, it was time for the Islamist idea to assert its own buoyancy beyond the life of any one person.

  I knew that al-Qaeda would continue to grow long after bin Laden. With nothing but narratives as ammunition to hold the ideological frontlines against groups that believe in summary execution as a means for change, I couldn’t help but feel that execution, as a method, had just received a huge boost from the United States itself. An inconvenient fact, often overlooked by we who presume to fight the “good fight,” is that bad ideas are just as bulletproof as good ones. They wear the same flak jackets, dodge the same bullets, and erect the same blast shields. You can’t kill an idea.

  In December 2012 I was invited to Orange County, California, by some of Quilliam’s supporters to celebrate Christmas as their guest. During my stay another of their guests turned up, and I was excitedly ushered forward by my hosts to meet the man. I soon realized why. The question pervaded the air without anyone needing to utter the words: How would this former Islamist greet one of the Navy SEALS team who had gone into Abbottabad that night to kill bin Laden? Back straight, eyes firm, I suddenly found myself face to face with this elite soldier, over a surreal brunch at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Beach.

  I felt my body becoming unreasonably tense. I had spent years of my life evading men such as this, and I had no idea he was going to be there that day. In a past life, we would have been mortal enemies. In any life, he could kill me in a split second. And though we were now essentially working for the same overall goals, I didn’t believe in executing my enemies and felt uneasy about meeting someone who had just done so.

  He greeted me with a gentle demeanor befitting a true professional. “I’ve heard a lot about you and was told we should meet,” he said, smiling. “Your work on the ground is crucial.” With this endorsement, a hardened soldier had ironically disarmed me with his words before I could even fire a shot. I quickly checked myself. My disagreement is with those who give the orders, not with a soldier who risks his life to carry them out. I let this be just a brunch at the Ritz with my American friends.

  In my humble view, it would have been far more consistent to bring bin Laden to justice, as had been attempted with Saddam Hussein, who, due to fears that he was able and willing to unleash chemical warfare, was certainly deemed no less dangerous. Except there was an election on the horizon for an already embattled president, and President Obama would not take the risk of anything going wrong. Forgive me for being cynical, but I found myself agreeing with the sentiments of schoolteacher Jessica Dovey:

  I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.(Link)

  In light of Jessica’s words, which spread around the world and were erroneously attributed to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the street celebrations after bin Laden’s execution seemed to me rather brash. As I had expected, al-Qaeda continued to go from strength to strength. Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian who, like me, had spent time in Egypt’s jails, was quickly appointed the head of al-Qaeda. Even George W. Bush, despite all the mistakes of his militarized neo-conservatism, had come to realize the importance of inverting his model and working to bolster grassroots initiatives during the last two years of his administration. Frustratingly, the Obama administration took its eye completely off this crucial ideas debate. Amid a policy of targeted drone killings at a frequency far higher than Bush’s—including the controversial targeted killing of an American citizen, al-Awlaki, in Yemen—Obama’s administration turned toward a crude, results-driven desire to secure body bags.

  When tactics become the strategy, you lose sight of the overall aim. And this is how the heirs of Osama bin Laden strategically blindsided the Obama administration. Al-Qaeda deftly utilized the security vacuum created in North Africa after the Arab uprisings and moved in with the dexterity of a surgeon’s hand. Soon, under their new Egyptian leader’s command, the group had achieved what it had never done under bin Laden himself: control of a territory the size of France directly by al-Qaeda in sub-Saharan Mali, as the ancient city of Timbuktu was seized and razed by jihadist militants. In Yemen, the Abyan province and then chunks of land in the southwest of the country came under direct al-Qaeda control as well. In Syria, the uprising to remove that country’s brutal dictator was all but hijacked by Jabhat al-Nusra, a group formed of al-Qaeda veterans who descended upon this new battlefield from neighboring Iraq.

  By April 2013 al-Qaeda in Iraq had announced its merger with Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, under orders from Zawahiri himself. The simple fact was that since bin Laden’s death, al-Qaeda had gone from being a terrorist group to a full-blown insurgency in at least Mali, Yemen, and the Levant. You can’t kill an idea. Ideas are bulletproof.

  And then there was Libya. In September 2012, Noman and I were sitting in the Quilliam office in London gaping at our news screens. An unknown had uploaded a “film” to YouTube that was gratuitously insulting to the Prophet of Islam. Some hooligans across various Muslim-majority countries seized on this event to incite riots and looting. The Islamist narrative that there was a full-blown war against Islam had just received a huge boost.

  Symbiotically, the right-wing narrative that Muslims were uncivilized, ungovernable thugs had also just received reaffirmation. But that was not what we were gaping at. The news was reporting that US ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens had just been killed amid mob riots in the city of Benghazi. The accepted view across all media outlets was that this death was a result of the film, and the US government confirmed this version of events.

  After some brief and tense calls to our network on the ground in Benghazi, Noman turned to me and said grimly, “Maajid, this was not a spontaneous attack.”

  “What are you saying, Noman?” I asked.

  The reply came with Noman’s characteristic confidence: “It is my belief, from the information that I have gathered, that Ambassador Chris Stevens was assassinated in a preplanned al-Qaeda terrorist attack in revenge for the US drone killing of al-Qaeda’s number two, abu Yahya al-Libi.”

  I stared blankly at Noman, taking in what he had just said.

  “I think we should make a statement,” he continued.

  “But, Noman, the entire world, the US government, CNN, the BBC, everyone is saying this was a spontaneous attack. Are they all wrong? How can we be so sure?”

  Noman looked at me with steely determination and the sigh of someone who has seen too much in life. “This attack was timed to coincide with the anniversary of 9/11, and a warning had already been given by al-Zawahiri in a pre-releas
ed video. The attack was orchestrated with military precision in two waves, using RPGs, which are not found randomly among mere angry mobs. Let me draft something, and you can see if you agree.”

  Instinctively knowing he was right, I let him put something together.

  By the next day, while the world was still focused on the “film” and the deaths resulting from the furor surrounding it, the obvious seemed to be staring at me from a piece of paper on my desk. No doubt about it, the killing of Stevens was an al-Qaeda operation.

  “Noman, if we release this, you do realize that we’re putting our reputation on the line? If we’re wrong, governments, the media, and especially Muslims will ridicule us.” I continued, “They’ll say, ‘Here’s Quilliam trying to resurrect the terrorism debate after terrorism is dead along with bin Laden.’”

  Noman looked me square in the eyes. “But we’re right, Maajid.”

  “And if we’re right, we severely embarrass the Obama administration and people lose their jobs. No one is saying what we are about to claim,” I said.

  “It’s the right thing to do,” he said simply. He was correct, of course.

  What was happening was nothing short of a scandal. Whether deliberately contrived or negligently missed, the world’s greatest power had turned away from the terrorism agenda. It was as if with a killing here or a drone strike there—all the while seeing no evil, hearing no evil—Obama had hoped that the problem would simply cease to exist. But al-Qaeda continued to spread, maturing into an insurrection with deep roots in some of the world’s most troubled countries. You can’t kill an idea. Somebody needed to shake things up.