The Islamist

By Ed Husain
(Published by Penguin)

Review by Benedict Rogers

Ed Husain’s The Islamist deserves to be read by every single person in this country and beyond – and if we fail to read it, we really are even more arrogant, ignorant, self-absorbed and fast asleep as a nation than I had realised.

The book is an absolute goldmine of information and insight into the rise of extremist Islamism in Britain. The author, a British-born Muslim, joined the Islamist movement as a teenager, graduating from the Young Muslim Organisation (YMO) affiliated to Jamat-e-Islami to the even more extreme Hizb ut-Tahrir. Eventually, he woke up to the hatred and violence preached by the organisation when a non-Muslim student was murdered on his campus by a Hizb activist. Husain went on a long journey in search of moderate, spiritual Sufi Islam and rejected his extremist past.

The Islamist is a book one cannot put down. The style is gripping, the story chilling and the conclusions terrifying. Husain sounds the alarm which, despite 9/11, 7/7 and the attempted bombings in the West End and Glasgow this summer still needs sounding. All of us – the Government, the Opposition, the media, the general public – would do very well to hear his message: that multi-culturalism has gone wrong, that political correctness has allowed a monster to develop, that Britain’s binge-drinking materialistic self-absorbed society leaves much to be desired, that our friendship with Saudi Arabia is highly questionable, that the way we have conducted the war on terror so far does us no favours, and most of all that we should be under absolutely no illusions about the agenda of the Islamists. Contrary to popular opinion, it has almost nothing to do with Iraq. “Long before the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, in Britain’s Muslim communities the ideas of a global jihad, an ummah transcending Britain, and preparation for the all-powerful Islamist state were, and still are, accepted as normal and legitimate,” Husain writes.

Born to a moderate Muslim family in the east end of London, Husain begins the book by recalling his childhood memories – of Roald Dahl, the New Forest, Wellington boots on school trips to the countryside. His parents encouraged this – and were horrified when their son’s life changed course.

Multiculturalism gone wrong

The seeds of Husain’s journey into extremism appear to have been sown when he moved schools. His parents favoured single sex education, and so he left his mixed-race, mixed-sex school for a school that was almost entirely Muslim. At his old school, he recalls, “my classmates were Jane, Lisa, Andrew, Mark, Alia, Zak.” In his new school, “everyone was Bangladeshi, Muslim, and male.” By the time he was 16 and had joined the YMO, he says, he had no white friends.

Later in life, he realised what had gone wrong. “The multiculturalism fostered by the Labour government had created mono-cultural outposts in which the politics of race and religion were now being played out before my eyes,” he writes. In 2006, Husain supported a Labour candidate in the local government elections. A Respect Party activist asked him why he was campaigning for “white Christian” candidates. “Was I?,” he asks. “Since when had politics been reduced to this? Do all ‘white Christians’ think the same way? Besides, one of the two councillors in my ward was an atheist.”

Husain bravely questions the insistence of some Muslims on wearing the hijab to school. “I worry when I see young girls, many below the age of eight, wearing hijab to primary schools … When Muslim parents send their young children thus attired it tells me that the hijab is losing its spiritual significance and is instead becoming a marker of separatist identity politics,” he argues.

Literature and propaganda

Islamist literature is distributed widely in Britain. According to Husain, one of the texts used in religious education classes in Britain’s schools is Gulam Sarwar’s Islam: Beliefs and Teachings. It is also promoted in mosques and Muslim homes as an introductory text for young Muslims. But what does it teach? The creation of a truly Islamic state. Sarwar supports organisations such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamat-e-Islami, a group founded in India by Abul Ala Mawdudi which Husain describes as “highly politicised and deeply anti-Western”. Sarwar’s book, Husain argues, “was not the dispassionate educational treatise it purported to be”.

Last year, Husain says, he was able to buy even more extreme publications in a mosque bookshop in Birmingham. An edition of Milestones, by one of Islamism’s founders Syed Qutb, contained articles in the appendices with chapter headings such as “The Virtues of Killing a Non-Believer” and ideas such as “Attacking the non-believers in their territories is a collective and individual duty”. According to Husain, “hundreds of young Muslims are buying these books from Islamist mosques in Britain and imbibing the idea that killing non-believers is not only acceptable, but the duty of a good Muslim … From such messages are suicide bombers born.”

Weakness and political correctness

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, political correctness crippled resolve in Britain to stand up to extremism. One small example – but one which shows how giving in to Islamists encourages them – was when Husain and his friends, active members of the YMO, demanded a Muslim prayer room at Tower Hamlets College. Initially the management refused. So the YMO organised a prayer event during lunchtime in the centre of the Tower Hamlets College campus. A prayer meeting sounds harmless – but it caused total disruption. College management demanded to meet the organisers and negotiations took place. Husain recalls:

“I knew I held the whip hand: with prayers under attack at Tower Hamlets College we could mobilise the wider Muslim community, rally East London mosque and YMO behind us, and cause major embarrassment for the college. In the event, management backed down, provided us with a larger room, and even agreed to clear the furniture for us before Friday prayers. We had won. Exultant at how easily we had cowed the sensitive, liberal establishment of the college, we grew from strength to strength.”

Later on in the book, Husain returns to the theme of liberals in higher education. His warnings to university and student union officials about Hizb ut-Tahrir’s activities on campuses “were repeatedly met with arguments defending the right to freedom of speech”. There is, he observes, a British “willingness to turn a blind eye, avoid a fuss, and hope that somehow it will work out in the end.” Policy makers in Britain, he adds, seem “content to tolerate intolerance, and give a platform to those who are committed to destroying democracy and advocate religion-based separatism”. If that is the attitude of non-Muslims in Britain, Husain asks, why should moderate Muslims be expected to act against extremism?

Hizb ut-Tahrir

David Cameron asked Gordon Brown at Prime Minister’s Questions recently why the Government had not banned Hizb ut-Tahrir. That is the question at the heart of Husain’s book.

According to Husain, “the Hizb” - as he calls it - is an organisation which believes that democracy is forbidden in Islam and that “the West will shake and crumble” and “the flag of Islam will rise above Downing Street”. It believes that no Muslim country, not even Saudi Arabia or Iran, is a true Islamic state because none has fully implemented Shariah law. One of its former leaders in the UK, Omar Bakri Mohammad, apparently declared during the Bosnian war that it was permissible for Bosnian Muslims to eat Serbs because they were at war. “Our foreign policy was to conquer and convert,” Husain reports. Jihad, according to the Hizb’s founder Taqiuddin al-Nabhani, was “a war against anybody who opposes the Islamist call.” The Hizb believes that “the only meeting place between a Muslim and a Jew is the battlefield”. When the police were called to a fight between two Muslim groups in east London, the response from Hizb was: “You go to the kafir police against your own brothers. Shame on you.”

Hizb ut-Tahrir is banned in almost every Arab state, and in Britain, according to Husain, Arab asylum seekers “had heard Islamist rhetoric in their home countries and did not have much time for Hizb ut-Tahrir”. Watch out, one person told Husain in 2004 prophetically – “they will turn on Britain.” Husain says that “more than any other group, Hizb ut-Tahrir introduced the notion of jihad to the streets of Britain .... Home-grown British suicide bombers are a direct result of Hizb ut-Tahrir disseminating ideas of jihad, martyrdom, confrontation, and anti-Americanism, and nurturing a sense of separation among Britain’s Muslims.”

So what did Britain do? “Britain breathed new life into the Hizb”, writes Husain. We gave Hizb members asylum, which enabled them to recruit second-generation British Muslims as their followers. Its international headquarters are in London. Two central players in the Hizb, according to Husain, were a JP Morgan accountant working in the City and an Islington Borough Council town planner. We allowed the Hizb to hold rallies in Wembley stadium. “Britain offered the Hizb the freedom to express its ideas freely and recruit uninhibitedly. The Hizb was legal in Britain, but illegal in the Arab world … In the absence of governmental disapproval, the Hizb would continue to recruit and campaign unmolested for another decade.” Moderates were silenced – “there were very few Muslims who could stand up to the might of the Hizb, pioneered by its young, articulate, British-educated followers … We knew how to deny, lie, and deflect.”

Islamist infiltration

We like to think of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) as the moderate voice of Islam. Formed in 1997 at the request of then Tory Home Secretary Michael Howard, it was led for some years by Sir Iqbal Sacranie who – after all – has been knighted, and its spokesman is Inayat Bunglawala who, according to Husain, is a Conservative Party member. But – and it is a big but – Husain claims the MCB consists of supporters of Jamat-e-Islami, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. Sacranie supported the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. “British Muslim leadership,” Husain says, is “firmly in the hands of the Islamists at the Muslim Council of Britain”.

Despite known involvement in Islamist activities, the British Government subsidised the East London mosque’s expansion and the creation of the London Muslim Centre – scheduled to be officially opened by the Prince of Wales and described by Husain as  “Britain’s largest Islamist hub”.  The mosque’s chairman, Dr Abdul Bari, who according to Husain is a lifelong admirer of Jamat-e-Islami and its founder Mawdudi, now heads the MCB.

Respect, the party established by George Galloway, is largely a vehicle for Islamists too.  Jamat-e-Islami and other Islamists are active members.

And we have allowed it to happen. In 2006, Salman al-Audah, a cleric once jailed by the Saudi government and known for his support for jihad against Britain, addressed 20,000 people in London’s Docklands. “Why are such people granted a platform in Britain?”, Husain asks.  “When the British government is content to allow a sophisticated extremist organisation to operate and recruit in Britain, why should Syria or Pakistan do their job for them? …. Why was Britain home to Abu Hamza, Abu Qatada, and Omar Bakri, rejects of the Middle East?”

“An anger-ridden ideology”

Husain eventually rejected Islamism, “an anger-ridden ideology”. In his search for moderate Sufi Islam, he spent time in Syria and Saudi Arabia. The book unveils extraordinary insights into the moderation of Syria, and the bigoted extremism of Saudi Arabia. “The hallmark of a civilisation is, I believe, how it treats its minorities,” he writes – and on that score Saudi Arabia falls very very short. Saudi Arabia is also not the pure nation it likes people to believe – sexual perversion is rife in conservative Muslim circles, as Husain explains.

Ultimately, what Islamists excel at, according to Husain, is blaming others. “Islamists of various shades … are masters at blaming the Zionists, the Jews, the British, the French, and Italian imperialists, the Turks and the Freemasons, but never themselves,” he writes. Yet while they focus ceaselessly on Palestine and Kashmir, “the fact that hundreds of children die in Africa every day would be of no relevance to a committed Islamist,” according to Husain. “In the extremist mind, the plight of the tiny Palestinian nation is more important than the deaths of millions of black Africans. Who in the Arab world cares that some 6,000 people die each day in Africa from AIDS? Let them die, they’re not Muslims, would be the unspoken line of argument.”

Danger signs

Just before the last election, when I was standing as Conservative Party Parliamentary Candidate for the City of Durham, I had a very very strange vision. I have never shared this publicly before but I feel now is the time to do so. I am not normally given to pictures and dreams. I am not mad. But I was with my friend James Mawdsley one evening, and we went to a Catholic Mass in Lancashire. In the middle of the Mass, I closed my eyes to pray. To my astonishment, I saw very clearly a picture of what Husain describes as “the green, serene English countryside”. A man was sleeping peacefully in a field in the sunshine. Suddenly, the picture filled with darkness. A figure clad all in black came walking across the fields towards the sleeping man. The fields became red with blood. I had a feeling that it was still not too late, and that if he awoke in time he could rescue the situation – but that if he stayed in his slumber, he would face unimaginable danger and destruction. I was filled with a sense that the figure represented extremist Islamism, and the sleeping man was Britain.

Ed Husain is a brave man. To have left Islamism is risky enough. To write a book exposing it will have put his life in danger. It is in our own interests, and as a mark of respect for him, that we should read The Islamist. Better than reading accounts by journalists, politicians or academics, The Islamist offers a first-hand account from someone who has been one. But I would recommend readers read it alongside Michael Gove’s Celsius 7/7, Melanie Phillips’ Londonistan, Paul Marshall’s Radical Islam’s Rules, Yossef Bodansky’s Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America, and Caroline Cox and John Marks’ The West, Islam and Islamism. Taken together, these and other works open the curtains on a painful truth which we have chosen to ignore for too long. It is time to wake up.

Benedict Rogers is Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, and stood as Conservative Party Parliamentary Candidate in the City of Durham in 2005.  A selection of Ben's other articles for ConservativeHome can be read here.

Comments

[Simon Newman]

A powerful review.

"Policy makers in Britain, he adds, seem “content to tolerate intolerance, and give a platform to those who are committed to destroying democracy and advocate religion-based separatism”. If that is the attitude of non-Muslims in Britain, Husain asks, why should moderate Muslims be expected to act against extremism?"

I think this is a critical point. The Labour government has made a fetish of demanding that moderate Muslims deal with the Islamists, while at the same time the government consistently protects and promotes those very Islamists, demoralising both moderate Muslims and the non-Muslim population. All in the name of 'sensitivity' and 'tolerance'.

[ACT]

I'll be honest with you - reviews by men who admit to having had 'very strange visions', which then inform their political stances, strike me as being Barmy. If one wasn't Catholic, for example, one could just as easily see, in traditional literature, an English vision of a black robed figure stalking the land and bringing doom in his wake as being symbolic of historic fear of the Roman Catholic church seeking to 'reconquer Mary's Dowry' etc etc. Somehow I don't see anyone admitting to 'visions' like that today being treated with anything other than entirely contempt for holding them. Ben Rogers discredits everything else he writes with nonsense like this, and offers an open goal to any and every Labour opponent he ever faces in future.

[ACT]

'... entirely justified ...'

[Ben Rogers]

Dear ACT,

I am sorry you feel this way. In fact, I am not Catholic - and yes, I can see how one might view that 'vision' in the way you describe. However, I do not think that should discredit everything else in the review. Read the extracts I quote from Husain's book. Or better still, read the book itself, before making a judgment.

Warm regards,
Ben

[Ben Rogers]

Incidentally, ACT, you have taken my one 'vision' and exagerrated it considerably. I do not make a habit of having visions; nor do they 'inform' my political position. In this one instance - the only time it has ever happened to me - I felt that it confirmed, rather than informed, what I was already beginning to understand. I assure you, my political positions are developed from proper research, exploration, discussion, dialogue, thought and understanding.

[Ben Rogers]

Dear ACT, I rather think it's a pity that you lack the courage of your convictions and choose not to use your real name here. It would be interesting to know more about who you are. But I repeat, if that paragraph was the only thing that made you doubt the book, then please ignore it. Re-read the rest of the review, and better still read the book, and make up your own mind based on Husain's evidence, not my 'barmy' vision which was, as I say, a one-off.

[ACT]

I haven't 'exagerrated' your 'vision' (i.e. fantasy) one jot: I've simply repeated it. You are, I think, on your way to being ashamed of writing such self-discrediting nonsense. But let's repeat the absurd passage, sorry, 'vision', in full and unaltered:

I had a very very strange vision. I have never shared this publicly before but I feel now is the time to do so. I am not normally given to pictures and dreams. I am not mad. But I was with my friend James Mawdsley one evening, and we went to a Catholic Mass in Lancashire. In the middle of the Mass, I closed my eyes to pray. To my astonishment, I saw very clearly a picture of what Husain describes as “the green, serene English countryside”. A man was sleeping peacefully in a field in the sunshine. Suddenly, the picture filled with darkness. A figure clad all in black came walking across the fields towards the sleeping man. The fields became red with blood. I had a feeling that it was still not too late, and that if he awoke in time he could rescue the situation – but that if he stayed in his slumber, he would face unimaginable danger and destruction. I was filled with a sense that the figure represented extremist Islamism, and the sleeping man was Britain.

These are not the words of a man who has established his own seriousness. Unfortunately they are, as I said, the words of a man who has needlessly handed a gift on a plate to any future Labour candidate he stands against. That's why ignoring them is impossible. It's much like being told by an Islamicist loon, 'please ignore my ravings about the need to establish a universal caplihate in order that we might put an end to the sin of female secondary education, but instead concentrate on my otherwise sane words about e.g. the need to build up civic society in the Middle East'. You really can't have it both ways - you wrote this piece, you're obliged to stand by what you put in it. *You* shared your 'vision' with us, and it was an extraordinarily foolish thing to do.

Perhaps if I ask you, 'can you imagine any serious, mainstream politician sharing a similar vision with us?' you will reflect on what the undoubted answer - 'No! Never, not in a million years' - tells us about the fact that you did.

[Paul Oakley]

Fight! Fight! Fight!

[ACT]

I slightly hope not. I know nothing about Ben Rogers, having been too lazy even to google him. So all I know is that he's once upon a time candidate, and, odds on keen on being a future candidate (or Scriptor OptimateDomus to give them their technical name). Being boringly keen on Conservaties winning elections, I'd on the whole prefer our would-be candidates not to have a penchant for publishing flagrant guff of the rankest sort. It really doesn't help.

[Ben Rogers]

Dear ACT, you really have got your knickers in a twist, haven't you - and you still insist on using a pseudonym. Your latest response is most peculiar - I do stand by what I wrote, I was simply trying to put it in context. You paint me as someone whose political stand is regularly informed by such experiences, while I tried, patiently and calmly, to respond to your over-the-top rant by explaining that first of all my opinion on this subject is informed by a wide range of reading, thinking and conversation, and that this vision simply confirmed rather than informed my thoughts, and secondly that this is the only time it has ever happened. As I said in the article, it is the first time I have ever shared it publicly. I regret the fact that it has sent you doo-lally, and has obscured the rest of the article - and Ed Husain's powerful story - in your mind. That I do regret. But you are clearly rather intellectually lazy, since you leap to a judgment on me and on the book without considering the rest of the article or, as you say yourself, without doing any research on me. I don't know who you are, but any person involved in politics who leaps to such judgment without drawing on a range of research and information is really rather shallow - and dangerous. If you are not willing to consider the much much more serious issue of extremist Islamism and the threat it poses, and would prefer to be engaged in narrow, irrational, unbalanced and judgmental remarks, then I feel very sorry for you.

[Simon Newman]

I expect such anxiety dreams are pretty widepread in times of national anxiety, such as currently, and quite normal. I don't think this review was a good place to mention it, since it distracts attention from the substance of the review.

[ACT]

Ben, stop digging. Better yet, stop dreaming. And if you can't do that, at the very least, stop telling the rest of us about them.

[mark]

Well done Ben excellent piece, I am going to order the book today and lend it to as many people as possible. This great danger that we face has been ignored for too long and the country as you put it has been asleep. These Islamists may be fanatical but they should also wake up to the fact that when one looks at the history of these islands, we are not a nation to attack lightly.

[Andrew Ian Dodge]

Nice review...just ordered the book from Amazon. Seems like a fascinating read.

[The Beard]

Sounds like an important book...and thanks Ben for raising its profile.

As Mohammed relied on murderous violence, led with violence, and as he is the model for Islam, then how can Islam separate itself from violence?

Christ, the Lamb of God, is the model of peace.

[Hmmm]

But how can we fight Islamic extremism without attacking civil liberties, e.g. freedom of speech?

One option is to withdraw citizenship and residency rights granted to extremists who arrived here in recent years. We could then deport them.

It is unlikely any pary has the guts to do it for fear of losing votes and being accused of racism.

Enoch Powell was right. The rivers of Britain will be foaming with the blood of the victims of Islamofascism unless action is taken now.

[Simon Newman]

"But how can we fight Islamic extremism without attacking civil liberties, e.g. freedom of speech?"

We have done it before, by enacting specific targetted measures against the threat (eg Nazism, here Islamism) rather than general measures that attack the liberty of everyone. My impression though is that it's seen as being more 'liberal' to reduce the liberty of everyone than to discriminate against a particular group, no matter how threatening.

[Christina]

Excellent review, Ben!

There's nothing wrong with sharing your vision, and it was brave of you to do so. Whether it was psychological or spiritual, only a die-hard materialist would object.

I'm sure many people would relate to the vision, and how it pictures potential dangers today, whatever they think of the source of the vision.

[Ben Rogers]

Thank you very much Christina. I was certainly reluctant to share the 'vision', but I felt it was so important that I should, and this seemed the best context. I understand that it sounds strange to people. It sounds strange to me too. But I don't believe one can just dismiss such things as 'psychological' or the result of 'anxiety'. I am not a terribly anxious person, and even the issue of terrorism, while a big cause of concern, does not make me 'anxious'. I believe there is a spiritual dimension to life, and it's a shame that people like ACT can't see that. I don't believe one should take 'visions' and 'pictures' on their own, but one should weigh them up against other, more 'rational' proven evidence. If there is no complementary more 'rational' evidence, then maybe others are justified in thinking that a person might be a bit of a fruitcake - though not necessarily. But if, as in the case of Islamism, there is masses of well-researched documentary evidence, then I think one can take a vision of this kind as a valuable spiritual insight.

[Derek]

I found this article very persuasive. The book it summarises reveals some important truths. The vision can be considered separately, according to one's take on such things, but I do not think it can take away from the gravity of the situation we are facing.

It appears that we have been very badly let down by our government. The enemy is within and we can only ready ourselves for the dreadful prospects to come.

How we deal with it I do not know. I can only hazard a guess that society will fracture and vigilantes will come to the fore. It is much more difficult than rounding up a few Germans and Nazi sympathisers was in 1939. I doubt that the government has the will or the courage to try to deal with them, or even to repeal the Human Rights legislation which prevents them. With today's open borders extremists are still pouring in and there is nothing we can do about it.

An excellent article, but I suspect the government will sit on their hands until much more blood has been spilt.

[Sally Roberts]

Ben this is a fascinating review and I have just ordered the book from Amazon to read it and make up my own mind! I think the scenario is frightening - very frightening indeed! The problem of course is not Islam itself but "Islam-ISM" - in other words,a perverse, anti-democratic fundamentalism that regards all other forms of Islam as heresy and moderate Muslims as "unbelievers". Britain has slept and has sleepwalked its way to disaster. How we find the way out is anyone's guess!

[Niallster]

Dude,

My name is Niall yours is Benedict so no hiding and as you can guess we're both Catholic.

You had a VISION IN A CHURCH and you shared it with the world!

As ACT pointed out politely you have given any selection committe member or political opponent all they need to destroy you.

You are a prospective Tory candidate your words have been copied by Labour for use for all eternity.

It was not brave it was stupid. The nuance will be ignored all that will be shouted out is that you see visions. Visions of nasty muslims at that.

Let me be blunt. You might as well have said 'I see dead people'.

Stick a fork in yourself your done.

[Graham]

Excellent review Ben, at last some one who understands what is happening, that it is spiritual as well as material.

As this country has become more selfish and materialistic, we have become fixed on the short term, (We want it now at what ever cost to the future.) we have lost sight of the long term. It does not matter to Fundamental Islam if it takes 5 or 50 years to take over it will. Unless we take heed and do what is required it could come to pass. If we act now the cost will be relatively low, leave it and the cost increase, to the point were a major war will happen. No more appeasement as we did with the Nazis. Do we have the moral strength for the sacafice required?

There are some people out there how will not understand what is happened even when they are forced to their knee’s with the alternative ‘Convert or Die.’ Most of these will be from the PC / Liberal types who have done nothing to stop Fundamental Islam, they will look for others to protect them but they would have gone before. (They came for the....)

Final Point : Britain has always acted as the bulwark of democracy, if we fall to Islam, Europe will follow and a new Dark age will come in.

[Christina]

Well, the Pope's aide recently warned about the decrease of Christian births and increase of Muslim births in Europe. I guess Niallster will have to fall out with the Pope now.

I think if God does give a vision like that, then it probably is for sharing, as it isn't a vision of the future, but a warning about what could happen.

This doesn't mean I think it was from God definitely, and I think Ben it would be best to talk with a Priest who has experience of Spiritual Directorship. I have stories of monks who have been led astray with this kind of thing, as well as visions which have actually happened, and have been good ones.

[Ben Rogers]

Sally Roberts is absolutely correct - what we are talking about here is Islamism, not Islam - and indeed Ed Husain demonstrates in his book that it is very possible to find a moderate, peaceful, spiritual, tolerant form of Islam in Sufi-ism.

Niallster, I am actually not Catholic, despite my name! I was accompanying a Catholic friend to Mass. I don't actually agree with the rest of your entry, but I think that is clear from my responses to ACT so no need to repeat myself.