Once Were Radicals

by Irfan Yusuf

  One day I was sitting outside the uni library when a young student of Lebanese background approached me. Hilmi was a science student who occasionally attended Friday prayers at uni. He’d also read some of my articles, and invited me to write for a new magazine he was involved in. The magazine, called Nida’ul Islam, would be in both Arabic and English and was being published by an innocent-sounding group called the Islamic Youth Movement (or Harakat al-Shebab al-Islamiyya in Arabic). He showed me the first edition, which contained articles translated from Arabic by a chap named Keysar Trad. Some articles were sermons by Sheikh Hilaly. After the camp, my opinion of Sheikh Hilaly had improved somewhat.

  I agreed to write, and started writing more hard-edged political pieces. However, as I had no ability to read the Arabic articles, I had no idea who was writing or what was being written in that section.

  Among the articles I wrote was one criticising Muslim responses to a Bangladeshi writer named Taslima Nasrin, who was receiving death threats from some over-excited Muslims in Bangladesh. I argued that Muslims were repeating the same silly errors they had made in the Rushdie case. Their screaming and shouting only resulted in giving these writers greater attention and making them rich.

  Another article concerned media responses to the Oklahoma bombings. I castigated Western media outlets for getting it so wrong in assuming that the bombing had ‘Middle Eastern characteristics’ when those actually responsible were from a conservative paramilitary organisation. If only the media had got it wrong again on September 11, 2001. (Actually, they did. The first photos of September 11 suspects included two Sikhs! I guess the turbans and beards and funny names must have been dead giveaways.)

  I soon fell out with the people from Nida’ul Islam when they edited an article I had written about the French banning of books by two prominent Muslim authors (including my adolescent favourite, Ahmed Deedat). I thought they had made my article sound more radical than it really was. Later, I really fell out with them when I saw them backing one faction in the Afghan civil war. After the Soviets left Afghanistan, the different mujahideen factions began squabbling amongst themselves. The two main factions were the Hizb-i-Islami led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Jamiat-i-Islami led by Ahmed Shah Masud. Both organisations were represented in Australia—Jamiat by the architect Mahmud Saykal (I knew him from the Senior Usrah days) who went on to become Afghanistan’s Ambassador to Australia and then Deputy Foreign Minister, and Hizb by a chap named Dr Abdul Aziz Majidi (who turned up to my last AFIC camp at Hazelbrook and even delivered the Friday sermon). To their credit, I never saw Majidi or Saykal say a single nasty thing about each other or their opponent factions. Indeed, Saykal always refused any of my attempts to enter into a discussion about intra-mujahideen factionalism. He was always a true gentleman.

  Sheikh Fehmi’s prediction at that AFIC camp long ago when he talked us out of joining the mujahideen had been fulfilled. The Afghan factions had turned tribal and were busy killing each other as well as innocent civilians. Hence it made little sense for a tiny group of largely Lebanese Muslim kids in Lakemba fighting a proxy propaganda war on behalf of one faction against the other, and using a small magazine like Nida’ul Islam with barely a few thousand readers to do so.

  Other things Hilmi told me were quite disconcerting to say the least. In 1991, a Sunni country was on the verge of becoming the world’s second fully fledged Islamic state. The Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in Algeria had won a stunning victory in municipal elections, defeating the National Liberation Front (FLN) which had held power since Algeria gained independence from France in 1962. However, the federal elections, which FIS was poised to win, were cancelled at the last minute. The FIS received no support from the usual champions of democracy such as the United States. Its leaders were imprisoned. Algeria was plunged into eleven years of civil war costing over 100 000 civilian lives.

  One splinter faction from the FIS was formed. This group called itself the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), and it was known to murder innocent civilians it deemed to be cooperating with the government. While FIS wanted dialogue, GIA wanted war. So did Hilmi. He supported the GIA and opposed the FIS. I couldn’t understand why Hilmi’s group supported a group which he knew engaged in the killing of civilians; Hilmi explained his position using cold logic.

  ‘The people they kill are not innocent. These people refuse to join the GIA jihad, and they effectively support the government. This means they oppose the establishment of God’s law, and hence become apostates who can be lawfully killed under sharia.’

  What kind of sharia was this? All the Maududi books I read on sharia made it clear that killing civilians was evil. One of the ahkam (policy purposes or goals) of sharia was preservation of life. Hilmi’s chilling reasoning made me wonder about his sanity. In later years, Hilmi would use the Algeria example to show that the only road forward for the Islamic movement was to wage war on both the West and Muslim regimes. Democratic elections were a waste of time and were in any event a Western invention which Muslims were supposed to avoid like the plague.

  But what especially got up my nose was when Nida’ul Islam ran a cover story attacking the Sufi spiritual traditions of Islam. The article was just so damned simplistic. It accused Sufis of being crazy people who used drugs and magic. My interest in Sufism was increasing greatly. I considered the magazine’s analysis imbecilic to say the least.

  Eventually the magazine ran some rather silly interviews and articles. One interview that particularly stands out in my mind was with a military commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The interviewer kept pressing the military commander to declare the KLA’s struggle as a jihad where foreign fighters could go. The KLA commander kept insisting it wasn’t a religious struggle but rather a struggle for national liberation. The entire interview became bogged down on this one issue, and ended up going nowhere.

  Nida’ul Islam became the target of attacks from various terrorism pundits after the September 11 and the 2002 Bali bombings. Some went overboard with their attacks claiming the magazine was widely read by thousands of Muslims across Australia. Maybe it was, but by now I certainly wasn’t one of its readers. I also never saw evidence of wide readership even amongst more politicised Muslim kids. As far as I know, the magazine is no longer published.

  I spent the remainder of my time at university concen trating on my studies. Dad was most impressed that I was finally getting the grades I was capable of. Mum kept complaining that I should have achieved As and Bs throughout my university and should have received the university medal. I guess there’s no pleasing Indian mums.

  From time to time, our home would receive unannounced visits from small groups of Tabligh Jamaat (‘preaching group’ or TJ) men wearing long robes and sporting turbans wrapped around skullcaps. TJ was an offshoot from one of India’s competing Sunni schools of thought—the Deobandi. We didn’t have a huge number of Barelwis in Sydney (at least no one in our middle-class Indo-Pakistani social circle really cared about such matters).

  The TJ followed a method of spiritual discipline combining methodologies of four major Sufi orders. Islam, like Judaism, is a law-based faith. But as Jesus said, there isn’t much point in following the letter of the law while ignoring the spirit. So I guess you might say Sufism is the spirit of Islamic sacred law.

  Back in the 1920s, an Indian Sufi from the Deobandi sect named Sheikh Muhammad Illyas was rather perturbed at the religious state of the ‘Meo’ Muslim tribe living just outside Delhi. The Meos weren’t terribly interested in religious observance. Sheikh Illyas wasn’t terribly interested in preaching to the unconverted, focusing efforts on turning not-so-good Muslims into better Muslims.

  Illyas tried various techniques. At first he established schools where young children would learn to read the Koran in Arabic. This didn’t seem to make much of a dent in the irreligiosity of the Meo folk. He therefore developed a special charity methodology.

  Illyas didn’t ask for food or money or anything else from these pe
ople. He just wanted time. Meo men would visit mosques in other localities, knocking on doors and inviting locals to the mosque at prayer times. After prayers, a person from the visiting Meo delegation would deliver a short talk which would be strictly limited to spiritual matters.

  This was the beginning of the TJ movement, which quickly spread far and wide. Today, it is the largest and most popular Sufi reform group in the Islamic world.

  Most of the Indo-Pakistani English-language religious books in my library were either from the Islamic movement or were straight-down-the-line devotional books from Deobandi sources. Mum also had her Urdu library which I couldn’t read. It turns out her library is far more general, with books from both the Deobandi and Barelwi sub-branches of the Sunni sect in India, from Shia writers and even completely irreligious (if not anti-religious) poets like the Pakistani socialist Faiz Ahmad Faiz. Mum also had textbooks used by the TJ, whose authors belonged to the Deobandi sub-branch.

  The TJ in Australia was made up of people from all different nationalities. They had a rather loose and informal structure. There was a shura (consultative committee) which at that time was headed by an Anglo-Aussie Maths teacher we knew of as Brother Muhammad. The TJ would hold regular gatherings at the Imam Ali Mosque in Lakemba on Friday nights. These gatherings were known as itikaaf and were little more than just saying one’s sunset prayers followed by a short talk (called a bayaan) given by an elder who is appointed by the shura. The bayaan was given in whichever language the speaker felt most comfortable with. There were various circles outside the main circle where someone would provide a rough translation. Sometimes the main circle had both a speaker and translator. When not in English, the talks were in either Arabic, Urdu, Bengali or Turkish.

  After staying the night at the mosque, the men (women generally weren’t involved) would divide into delegations. Each delegation was called a jamaat and members of the jamaat would elect their own amir to lead them. Other tasks were delegated, including some brothers doing the cooking. We would then spend the weekend at a particular mosque, often in a more isolated area where few Muslims lived. Such trips were called khurooj (outings). Upon arriving at the mosque, we would have a set routine that revolved around the five daily prayers and reading a set text written originally in Urdu called Fazail-i-Amaal (‘The Virtues and Rewards of Good Deeds’).

  Some people would go on khurooj for longer periods than just a weekend. Others went for forty days or even four months. The TJ were often criticised for encouraging men to go on such long trips and neglect their wives and children and other responsibilities. Mum has a fair few female friends who often complained of their husbands leaving them alone to go on these trips.

  One active TJ brother took me to his house once. He wanted me to talk to his wife, an Anglo-Australian woman who had converted to Islam and who worked as a nurse. He would not allow her to appear before me. I spoke to her from behind a kitchen bench.

  This woman was madly in love with her husband, so in love that she even changed her religion for him. However, her husband was never at home as he was always going on TJ trips. He never worked, and she would work as a nurse and pay all the bills. She wanted to learn more about her new faith from her husband, but he seemed too busy travelling and preaching to others. I asked the brother whether this was true. He confirmed it was. I asked him what the dispute was about.

  ‘I don’t want her to work. I would rather she stay at home. If she really does wish to work, she should wear a niqaab [face veil] and a long dress.’

  ‘But brother, this is completely impractical. How can you expect your wife to go to work in a niqaab?’

  ‘Then she should stop work.’

  ‘And who will pay the bills if she stopped working?’

  ‘She can go on the dole.’

  There were quite a few TJ members whose families were being subsidised by the taxpayer. The TJ earned a very bad reputation, especially from middle-class Indo-Pakistanis. Sometimes one of our more religious uncles would invite us to meet with a visiting TJ jamaat from India or Pakistan. Inevitably there would be a heated discussion between the jamaat members and my less religious uncles. The questions and arguments always revolved around the same issues.

  ‘Why do you jamaat people waste your money coming halfway around the world to preach to us who are already Muslims?’

  ‘Why don’t you preach to non-Muslims?’

  ‘Why don’t you preach to ignorant Muslims who worship saints and visit their graves?’

  ‘Why don’t you spend your money on helping poor people in your country?’

  Sometimes uncles with affiliation to the more political Islamic movement would get into arguments with jamaat members. The TJ had a strained relationship with the Islamic movements. TJ leaders actively discouraged me from reading books by Maududi and Qutb. I couldn’t understand why. After all, these writers were merely quoting and explaining the Koran and ahadith texts. TJ people insisted that we need to focus on educating Muslims, and that writers like Maududi and Qutb were just journalists and not proper Islamic scholars. Indeed, one prominent Indian TJ scholar had even written a pamphlet called Fitnat-i-Maududiyat (literally ‘The Corrupting Influence of Maududi’s Message’).

  Mum had her own beef with the TJ. As usual, it was related to my studies. Like all South Asian mums, mine was obsessed with her children’s academic performance. And as her youngest (and laziest) child, my academic performance—or lack thereof—was of particular concern.

  So there I was, preparing for my Year 12 trial HSC exams. It was mid-1987. I was sitting in my bedroom when I looked out the window and noticed four rather short and skinny brown-skinned dudes in long white robes, some sporting beards with turbans wrapped around skullcaps. They arrived unannounced and uninvited.

  The door bell rang. Mum opened the door. The four men immediately lowered their gaze, not wishing to be aroused by the seductive charms of a well-fed Indian woman in her late forties. Knowing her religious and cultural duty to be hospitable to men of God, Mum left it to me and called out: ‘IrfaaaAAAn, you have guest. Come sit wid dhem. I mek cupppo tee.’

  I entered the lounge room and greeted the TJ brothers. The TJ have a very simple message built around six points, all of which are about as political as a song from The Wiggles. These guys cared little for political Islam and more for reciting the names of God, performing five daily prayers with full concentration and being nice to your neighbours. Despite resenting their apolitical message, I was quite keen to join with them. Heck, anything to get away from doing electromagnetism problems in physics!

  Mum had other ideas. ‘Hee have igzam nekss week. He must is-studee.’ The spokesman for our visiting delegation used his well-rehearsed line. ‘Sister, insh’Allah [God-willing] he will do well in his exams. We only want him to give an hour or so. Just so that he can say his prayers with us at the mosque and listen to a short talk.’

  Mum wasn’t happy. She wanted to teach these dudes a lesson. She sent me to my room. She then spoke to the delegation. ‘I vaaz vondereeng if yoo could help me pliz. Come widh me.’

  The men walked outside behind Mum. Within a few minutes, these skinny dudes struggled lifting and carrying extremely heavy furniture—bookshelves, sofas etc—from the garage to various awkward spaces in our home. This also involved re-arranging furniture already inside the house.

  The poor TJers performed all this heavy lifting without any complaint. Not only did they end up with sore backs, they also missed the prayers and talk at the local mosque to which they had come to invite me.

  ‘Dhaat vill teech dhem! Dhey not come to bodhar you is-studee,’ Mum said with some satisfaction. She was right. The next time a TJ delegation turned up at her house was in 2006.

  Like Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, TJs always turn up unannounced. They’re always polite, only knocking on your door three times. If you don’t answer, they walk off even if they can hear AC/DC playing full blast from your bedroom.

  You can always tell it�
�s them. They stick out like sore thumbs in their long robes and skullcaps wrapped with turbans. Many sport long beards. The Punjabi ones look almost like Sikhs. Many of their people aren’t in the group full time—in fact, most are part-timers. Others join them occasionally.

  Some newspapers have recently started running stories linking the TJ to Saudi terror cells and Wahhabi infiltrators. Which makes little sense to me since virtually the entire Saudi Wahhabi religious establishment has condemned the TJ for being a deviant group. One Australian newspaper even claimed the 9/11 shoe-bomber Richard Reid and two of the 7/7 London bombers sat in TJ meetings. But I doubt you could stick around after a prayer service at any mosque (apart from a hardcore pro-Wahhabi anti-TJ mosque) and not hear a TJ talk.

  Among those known to have frequented TJ talks and gatherings include former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, former Indian President Dr Zakir Hussain, a host of Pakistani cricketers, the lead singer of a Pakistani pop band and members of an Indonesian rock band.

  Muslims have every reason to believe they are being unfairly singled out when even groups like the TJ are being linked to al-Qaeda. How long will it be before declaring even the most nominal Muslims ‘terrorists’ becomes normal journalistic parlance?

  A strict rule of TJ was that we were never allowed to talk about politics. This included areas of politics where there was complete consensus among most people within and outside the Muslim communities. I saw this rule strictly enforced during the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union. Just before the Soviets had withdrawn, the TJ had held their large annual gathering in Melbourne. It was attended by thousands of Muslims from across Australia. Dr Abdul Aziz Majidi, the representative of the Hizb-i-Islami Afghan faction in Australia, wanted to address the crowd. The TJ elders refused, citing their strict rule against any political discussion at the gathering. This was regarded as so scandalous that it was discussed in the magazine of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC). One AFIC executive member wrote that it was unfair that TJ could preach whatever they liked in the mosques of other people, but wouldn’t allow a jihad leader to speak at their gathering.