Once Were Radicals

by Irfan Yusuf

  Ittihad was basically an operation almost completely run by Malaysian overseas students. Most were members of the Islamic Youth Movement of Malaysia (ABIM), and would often speak of Malaysian Islamic leaders like Syed Naquib al-Attas and Anwar Ibrahim. They published a national magazine in English called Salam (an Arabic word literally meaning ‘peace’).

  In 1990 I was searching through the archives of my own campus MSA when I discovered some early issues of Salam published in the years before and just after the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. The magazine took a decidedly pro-revolution stand and published articles by and about the revolution’s main figures—Khomeini, Shariati, Bani Sadr (Iran’s first revolutionary president who later fell out with Khomeini and fled to exile in Paris) and Mutaherri. They also published articles by such Islamic movement figures like Maududi of Pakistan and the Qutb brothers of Egypt. There were also articles about the excesses of the Shah of Iran, his torture and murder of political prisoners and his murderous secret police known as SAVAK who had been trained by both the CIA and Mossad. It was the first time I read this kind of reporting, which was generally not available in Australia when the revolution actually happened (or at least if it was, we rarely noticed it).

  By the mid-1980s, with the Iran–Iraq war commencing, there was a split in opinion in the Salam magazine. Some writers supportive of Iran were now writing anti-Shia polemical tracts. Sunni writers of political Islam were still present. However, the Islamic movement as a whole seemed to have split.

  The same rifts occurred among religious elders in Australia. Sheikh Hilaly was genuinely neutral, refusing to support any faction and criticising the leader of any Muslim-majority state he thought was doing the wrong thing. For this, pro-Saudi leaders accused him of being pro-Shia. Anyone who criticised Iran for something was suddenly branded by some as pro-Saudi or pro-Wahhabi.

  Thankfully at my university, we managed to avert this kind of sectarian silliness. A large group of students started attending our usra (study circles), which at one stage were held twice a week. We had students from all ethnic backgrounds attending. We deliberately avoided sectarian issues, and focused on more spiritual matters. I started hanging around with Shaf, who was heavily involved in a spiritual reform and revival movement called the Tabligh Jamaat (TJ), and reading books more related to Sufism. My involvement in the IYA also increased, and was now based less on trying to transplant a confused and confusing and heavily fractured Islamic movement into Australian Muslim religious bodies and more on saving my own soul through serving others. Sufis use the Arabic word khidmah to describe such service.

  After the 1988 Harrietville camp, I attended an IYA state camp at Glenrock, just north of Sydney. The organiser of that camp was Rambo, who had attended various Muslim camps (though none I’d been to). By now, Rufus (the Turkish group supervisor from my first camp) was busy with marriage and kids. Rambo was similar to Rufus in that he was quite informal. Unlike Rufus, Rambo was of Jordanian extraction.

  Rambo was very close to Sheikh Hilaly. He would go completely troppo over even the slightest criticism of the sheikh. Rambo was also not terribly fond of some of the sisters, especially the ones with more feminist views. One thing that I liked about Rambo’s company was that he had no hesitation in keeping matters simple by using four-letter words. It was fun attending camp meetings with someone who didn’t think twice about expressing his displeasure with such time-honoured phrases as ‘fuck that shit’ and ‘he can just go get fucked’. Rambo made Islamic work feel truly Australian.

  The camp imam was Brother Mahmud, the large Turkish guy from Melbourne who attended AFIC camps and had years ago won a Koran recitation competition in Saudi Arabia. By now, we had given Mahmud a nickname—The Kooch—which was a corruption of his surname. The Kooch had very strict views on segregation and hijab, which upset many sisters and pleased Rambo no end.

  The leadership of the IYA became fractured as a result of arguments at the Glenrock camp. On Rambo’s side was Shaf, a Lebanese baker we all called Ken, Ken’s brother, another Lebanese guy nicknamed Modags, the Aussie convert Damien from Senior Usrah and an engineer whose Arabic name rhymed with the nickname (‘Shamir Yahood’) we gave him. It was a significant nickname at the time as the Israeli prime minister’s surname was Shamir. The word ‘Yahoud’ rhymed with his surname and was Arabic (and indeed Hebrew) for ‘the Jew’.

  The other faction was led by another (though much more sensitive new-agey) Lebanese guy whose given name was often mispronounced as Salim. On Salim’s side were a fair few sisters (including some hardened feminists who were often at loggerheads with Rambo and The Kooch). Salim also had the support of Imran the Malaysian who was originally from Canberra. Imran and Damien were flatmates in Lakemba, and we’d often hang out at their flat until the wee hours of the morning discussing and arguing about sectarian and other frivolous matters.

  The annual elections of the IYA were to be a real showdown. They were held in the prayer hall adjacent to the IYA office in Zetland. Salim had been nominated for president, and his campaign had proven quite effective. Rambo had his forces there, but he was short of numbers. He was also absent himself, and we wondered what was delaying him. Just as the returning officer was about to start the ballot, we heard the screech of brakes outside and a van door opening. Then a line of around seven or eight guys with huge beards walked in, with Rambo behind them wearing a huge smile on his face and a stack of membership forms in his hand. It looked like ZZ Top had just shown up to perform with some additional members and with Rambo as their manager.

  Needless to say, Rambo won that election. He was delayed picking up these boys from the other side of Sydney. One of the guys, a member of the pro-Saudi faction of Sheikh Abdussalam Zoud, told me he’d turned up after hearing the IYA was about to be overrun by Iranians. Zoud later had a huge fight with Sheikh Hilaly. As Rambo was a Hilaly loyalist, we never saw these guys set foot at an IYA meeting or function again.

  It was the very first time I witnessed a stacked election. I saw many such stacks in future IYA ballots, including when I managed to take and then lose control of the IYA.

  Rambo’s term in office was characterised by petty infighting and even pettier politics. He presided over an executive of eleven people, almost all of whom had parents and relatives in the Islamic establishment. Disputes among IYA executive members were often reflective of broader rivalries between various Muslim organisations. IYA exec meetings were marathon events, often lasting over six hours with arguments on petty issues such as whether to recite a certain prayer at each meeting. There wasn’t any problem with the prayer as such, just that it was associated with Sunni–Shia unity and therefore somehow related to Iran.

  There was a huge falling out between Damien and Imran. It had something to do with Imran getting a job in some Muslim religious body that Damien once had but was dismissed from after a dispute with the Chairman who had held that position for at least a decade. I was friends with both of them, though this didn’t last too long as they followed the George W. Bush mantra of, ‘You’re either with me or against me’. Eventually the executive committee became completely dysfunctional. An interim committee was appointed, on which I sat. We organised a few picnics, including a cricket match against a team of complete cricket fanatics from a South African mosque on the edges of Sydney. I am not sure if Hashim Amla was there (he’s the South African champion batsman who sports a beard and is a devout Muslim), but if he was then his presence didn’t help the team who we easily demolished.

  It was around this time that Shaf and I approached Rambo to arrange a coup and take over the IYA. It was agreed that I’d be president, Shaf treasurer and a Lebanese guy I met at Jindabyne named Carter would be secretary. We needed one more exec member to make it five. Shaf insisted on an odd-numbered executive as it was sunna (i.e. consistent with the example of the Prophet Muhammad. Shaf often gave us his expert opinion and became our resident theological adviser, a position he assumed having spent lots of time with the
Tabligh Jamaat (TJ). More on this mob later.

  The fifth person of our plot was to be a young prankster of Acehnese background. Bambang’s dad was involved in an Indonesian mosque, and Bambang himself had attended the last IYA camp at Glenrock. He had a wicked sense of humour, making him very popular with the sisters.

  The five of us decided to stack out the next AGM with our cronies. Shaf, Carter and I engineered the date, time and place of the AGM in a manner that suited our numbers. Rambo insisted he didn’t want the feminist sisters anywhere near the AGM, though Bambang wanted their younger sisters and cousins to be present. We agreed that AGM notices wouldn’t be sent to any women we deemed feminist. Bambang was given the task of ringing their younger sisters to tip them off about the AGM, a task we knew he’d complete with utmost efficiency.

  We planned a huge surprise to be announced before the AGM. We wanted to organise another IYA camp for the last week of December 1990. The problem was that our AGM wasn’t until late October. Hence we had to secretly arrange the camp before the AGM without anyone on the interim caretaker committee getting wind of our plans.

  One day Rambo borrowed someone’s minibus and the five of us co-conspirators drove up to a campsite in Tiona Park, just near Forster and some five hours’ drive north of Sydney. We booked the campsite there and then after a thirty-minute inspection we drove the long five hours back. I got home at around midnight, and Mum was furious. My exams were only a few months away.

  We prepared brochures and had them printed. We had our numbers ready and easily swept to power. We then handed out the brochures. Members of the outgoing caretaker committee who weren’t aware of the camp preparations were livid.

  We had a tight budget, and all of us had to pay to attend the camp. This was unlike AFIC camps where supervisors and organisers went for free.

  Although I was elected IYA president, the five of us had agreed to do things according to what we thought was the sunna. Our understanding of what the sunna actually was turned out to be simplistic and disastrous. For Shaf and I, the sunna basically meant whatever we could extract from his (and to a lesser extent, my) TJ experiences. It also meant whatever we could extract from terrible translations of various religious texts.

  So what was the sunna way of managing a committee? It meant using shura and having an amir. The idea of shura came straight out of the Koran. It meant that the leader (or amir) always consulted with people. There was plenty of guidance on the importance of shura and its benefit, but there wasn’t much guidance on exactly how decisions should be made and how the shura should be structured.

  We hoped that by using the sunna method, we could avoid the sorts of political battles that plagued more senior organisations. In the end, and in the absence of a clear model of shura, the IYA turned into a virtual dictatorship. In the weeks leading up to and at the camp, our amir made huge decisions without consulting us, and we made our own decisions without talking to him. Some more experienced Malaysian overseas students who joined us at the Tiona Park camp couldn’t help but shake their heads and wonder what half our arguments were about.

  One such decision made by the amir was to have Sheikh Hilaly as camp imam. Shaf and I argued strenuously against this, as we knew Sheikh Hilaly was controversial and because he simply couldn’t communicate with the kids, at least not in English. On the second matter, we were completely wrong.

  I always expected Sheikh Hilaly to be some firebrand preacher who would shout on for hours. I’d rarely met him since the controversial Intifada seminar. I’d been at the Imam Ali ben Abi Taleb Mosque in Lakemba on some occasions when he had led the prayers. But I never actually spent much time with him until this camp. The first thing that struck me was that he wasn’t wearing imam gear most of the time but rather a tracksuit and sandshoes. The sheikh had dark skin and a very short afro, and it made me wonder just how a senior Egyptian imam could so much resemble champion West-Indian batsman Viv Richards.

  Hilaly also had a wicked sense of humour. He especially became a favourite with the sisters, insisting that they always ate first at meal times and that no activity be allowed to take place unless participants of both genders were able to partake. At many previous camps, the guys would go swimming while the girls would miss out. Our Tiona Park campsite was across the road from a nine-mile beach. Sheikh Hilaly insisted that no boy could swim until he found a spot private enough for girls to swim. One morning he was late to a camp supervisors’ meeting. We became a bit worried, and Rambo went for a walk around the campsite to find him. While Rambo was gone, Sheikh Hilaly suddenly walked in with sand all over his feet. It turned out he had walked up and down a huge chunk of the beach to find a spot private enough for the sisters to swim at.

  It’s true that Hilaly couldn’t speak much English at the time. However, his presence turned out to be a saving grace and ended up saving this ten-day camp from turning into an administrative bunfight. Hilaly led the prayers and also gave short talks after prayers on historical and ceremonial matters. One of these was a talk on marriage and the rights of husband and wife. Some of the more chauvinistic crowd were shocked to hear Hilaly say things like women didn’t have to do housework and could demand that their husbands hire a maid, failing which the wife could ask for a religious divorce. Hilaly also spoke about his own work as an imam and how he’s had to resolve numerous domestic disputes.

  Apart from prayers, Hilaly’s main involvement in the camp was to keep people from fighting and arguing with each other. In the case of our shura, this meant mediating disputes. Outside the shura, it meant refereeing soccer matches. Hilaly was a soccer fanatic and an enthusiastic referee who often took it upon himself to suddenly turn striker for an underdog team. It was a classy display of cheating.

  Shaf and I wondered if Hilaly was any good at cricket. We set up some stumps and invited him and a few other boys and girls to join us. Shaf had to teach Hilaly how to hold the bat, and I confidently came in to bowl my tennis ball. I expected to have Hilaly out for a duck. Instead, he hit me for six. It seemed the sheikh didn’t just resemble Viv Richards. Either that, or he really did have God on his side.

  Halfway through the camp, a few private couples began using the campsite. This upset us organisers greatly as we specifically insisted the campsite managers give us exclusive access to the campsite free of any people walking around in bikinis or swimsuits. What we didn’t envisage was that the camp managers couldn’t do much about the owners’ relatives turning up.

  On one occasion we were saying our afternoon prayers when a woman in a bikini accidentally walked into our prayer hall. Sheikh Hilaly was giving us a religious talk. Some of the boys expressed their disapproval of the woman’s presence by muttering Arabic phrases like Astaghfirullah (‘God have mercy on me’). The sheikh did nothing of the sort. He called out to the lady, ‘Can I helb you?’

  The woman then asked for directions to a certain part of the fishing lake, and the sheikh stood up and walked towards her. Here was this sheikh in his full religious robes calmly chatting to a woman in a bikini. After instructing her on directions to the best fishing location, the sheikh returned to his young Muslim audience and castigated us for being so judgmental in his broken English: ‘Zis zayr contree too. You should respect all Ostraalian beebul.’

  On another occasion, Shaf and I went fishing by the lake with Sheikh Hilaly. Shaf and I got into a rather heated argument about whether Maududi or the TJ were more representative of true Islam. We referred the matter to Hilaly who was in the process of advising us of the relative merits and problems with both when the woman in the bikini showed up to have a swim. She immediately recognised the sheikh, and struck up a brief conversation with him.

  ‘G’day, mate.’

  ‘Goodhay luv.’

  ‘Howya goin’?’

  ‘Brittee goodh. How you go-in?’

  ‘Ah, pretty good. Listen, thanks for showin’ me the fishin’ place the other day.’

  ‘No broblem, dearr. You have goodh Christmas.’
>
  ‘Yeah, thanks mate. You have yourselves a good Christmas as well.’

  She then walked off about ten metres and jumped into the water. The sheikh turned to us and said: ‘Ostraalyan beebul goodh, nice friendhly beebul. Vee Muslim fighth thoo mush. Vee should lurrn from za Ostraalyan beebul how show rrespect.’

  This was the first, last and only camp where I saw an imam conversing with a woman in a bikini, let alone teaching us how to learn respect from her.

  Sheikh Hilaly continued mediating in the theological dispute between Shaf and myself. He told us that overseas Islamic movements had their advantages and disadvantages. Our task wasn’t to replicate overseas struggles in Australia. Instead, we should try to figure out how to understand and practise our religion in an Australian context.

  Sheikh Hilaly often used his talks to show how there was no single right or wrong answer to a religious question. He showed instances from the lives of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions where people often agreed to disagree on religious questions. Hilaly gave the kind of contextual approach to Islam that I hadn’t heard for years.

  12

  Final flirtations with political Islam

  I left the camp early along with my Indonesian buddy, Bambang and my old friend, Abdullah. After a few false starts, the IYA had a final election before dissolving. Many of the new kids from the camp went off doing their own things, occasionally keeping in touch. I went back to my university studies and my MSA for one last flirtation with political Islam.

  I started writing for the Salam magazine of the national Muslim student body. The vast majority of my articles were about simple administrative matters such as advising MSAs on how they could secure funding from their student unions and what sort of activities would attract local undergrads and not just the usual array of fifty-something PhD international students.