The bishop and the Islamist: a cautionary tale

I am a fan of modern British bishops, having never yet met one who I didn’t like. They tend to be good company, especially Tom Butler, the Bishop of Southwark, who has (thank the Lord) survived a controversy involving a drinks party, someone else’s car and a collision with the pavement. Like Tom they all do good works uncomplainingly, and their job is a difficult one.

It is therefore possible, I suppose, that between public appearances and supervising diocesan affairs they don’t get much time for reading. Certainly the evidence of the past week suggests that no one at the Church of England has found the three or four hours necessary to complete a new book called The Islamist by Ed Husain. So, I hope their Right Revs will allow me to present them with this summary.

Husain is now in his early thirties, and was brought up in East London to religious but not doctrinaire parents. His book describes his youthful journey into Islamism – an ideology that sees Islam as being as much a total political force as a religious one – and back. Husain’s account is not sensationalist, tending more to understatement than to hyperbole. It is also a complete eye-opener.

Speccy and nerdish at school the 16-year-old Husain finds an identity in religion, and discovers an organisation – the Young Muslim Organisation UK – that is under the influence of the Jamaat-e-Islami, an organisation founded by a Pakistani journalist Abul Ala Mawdudi, whose many words include the sentiment that “only when power in society is in the hands of the believers and the righteous, can the objectives of Islam be realised”. Mawdudi’s sentiments are widely propagated in mainstream schools through books and projects funded by Saudi Arabia.

In a kind of one-way ideological ratchet, Husain moves through the spectrum from mild zealot to ranting bigot, at each stage being introduced to the next most dangerous organisation. By the age of 17 he leads the Islamic Society in Tower Hamlets College, fully accepts the idea of the kuffar or nonbeliever being a kind of Untermensch, and is organising well-attended and inflammatory meetings. Now he comes across the Muslim Brotherhood and the works of its leaders Said Qutb and Hassan al-Banna, whose words, “Jihad is our way. Martyrdom is our desire”, Husain sticks on his bedroom wall.

It’s 1993-94, the time when Islamism, he tells readers, took off in Britain. Some of this was fashion, much was to do with rebellion, part had to do with events in Bosnia. Husain makes a speech against the holding of a college entertainment, shouting: “While our sisters are raped in Bosnia, our brothers slaughtered, the enemies of Islam organise disco parties here at college.” Jews are loathed, homosexuals reviled and the wet, liberal college administration is derided.

There are ironies. Husain describes how the more zealous Muslim girls don first the hijab (as requested), then the jilbab, then the niqab and then finally stop speaking to men at all. “Their conduct,” recalls Husain, “became increasingly intimidating.”

Finally Husain ends up with David, a Muslim convert and a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir. “The world today,” David tells him, “suffers from the malignant cancers of freedom and democracy.” No Nazi ideologue could have put it more succinctly.

As Husain tells it, organisations like Hizb (then led by Omar Bakri Mohammad) and the several competing Wahhabi outfits were a necessary part of the transmission of naive Muslim men into jihadis, both abroad and eventually in this country. It usually started with Jamat and ended up with 7/7. And one of the techniques used, Husain recalls, was to link all grievances together to give them a common cause. “In years to come the Hizb would argue that every British Muslim difficulty, from terrorism to poor community relations, was the result of British foreign policy. And to this drumbeat other Islamists would march.”

Not just Islamists. At the weekend it was reported that the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee’s inquiry on global security is in receipt of a submission from the Mission and Public Affairs Council of the Church of England, chaired by Dr Butler. The Sunday Telegraph summarised this submission as saying that: “The country is being turned into a hotbed of terrorist recruitment because of the occupation of Iraq and the Government’s pursuit of ‘unfair’ and ‘unjust’ policies in the region.”

“The radicalisation of some sections of European Muslim society,” says Dr Butler’s council, “has been confirmed and intensified by the ongoing occupation of Iraq. The war has given an opportunity to radical Muslims, in Europe and in the Middle East, to attach their own local particular concerns onto a wider global contest.” One example given is the Government’s position on the Israeli response to attacks from Hezbollah last summer. The paper calls for the next prime minister to “recalibrate its foreign policy to the US and Europe as well as to the Middle East”.

It’s possible that Dr Butler goes into more detail about the “recalibration” of Middle East policy necessary to reduce the threat of terrorism. Until now the Government has bent every sinew to promote a two-state solution along the lines of the road map and the Saudi peace initiative, but maybe if we really want to stop terror we should just call for Israel to magic itself out of existence. They’d certainly like that over in Hizb ut-Tahrir.

In addition to finding time for The Islamist, might I also recommend that Dr Butler looks at the CVs from the Operation Crevice trial. There was Omar Khyam, who – long before 9/11 – went to meetings addressed by Omar Bakri Mohammad, and who was affected by videos of the war in Chechnya. There was the Algerian-born Anthony Garcia, who was partly radicalised by being shown films of atrocities in Kashmir. There was Jawad Akbar, who reacted to seeing movies of antiMuslim riots in Gujarat. If there’s a common theme, it is the total absence of British foreign policy.

One can only speculate on why the bishop seems to get none of this. One possibility is that the Muslims he consults are the same ones who themselves formed an early part of the transmission belt. Another – at a time of struggle with atheists – may be a lack of willingness to confront the implacable nature of an ideology embarrassingly based on faith. The third, more hopefully, is a natural and justified desire to deflect blame from Muslims and Islam in general. That’s the one I’m going for, because I still like bishops.

Comments

[ballymichael]

"One can only speculate on why the bishop seems to get none of this"

possibly because it's outside the scope of a report on current affairs? Certainly islamist recruitment in the 90's would have focused on bosnia or chechnya or india rather than on british foreign policy.

But are you seriously claiming they don't use material from iraq now? I doubt it.

Which presumably was the point the bishop was making. Precisely because islamist recruiters can draw material that blames britain for the misfortunes of muslims, they can now recruit more easily.

This article reminds me of some of the exasperated, somewhat patronising remarks directed against, for example, the Archbishop of Canterbury for describing the invasion of iraq as unjust and immoral. (I do not remember if you, David, participated in such columns. Given your position at the time, it seems quite likely).

I mean really, what would *bishops* know about such a thing? Kind, otherworldly duffers, for the most part, are they not?

They were wiser, it seems, rather more than government ministers of the time, if recent comments by Hoon are accurate.

[BlairSupporter]

Your conclusion as to the reasons for this country's ignoring of the growing threat from Islamist fundamentalism is probably accurate, David. We hope that others are as sensible as we are, or will be inspired to be within our liberal democracy, even when it's clear they're actually driven by a mad ideology ... Kill AND BE
killed.

But it's impossible to argue with the illogical logic of many, when it comes to Iraq and/or terrorism.

The Islamist terrorists have won the battle for the minds of the British, and probably American public, because they knew that we would react illogically to the deaths that such as they, the terrorists and insurgents are inflicting on their own people.

Hizb ut-Tahrir should be banned and should have been banned years ago. It was launched in the year Tony Blair was born, so some might say its lengthy maturing process shows how powerless it actually is.

We should be grateful that these elements in the world are beginning to be recognised NOW and not when such groups/entities/rogue states have their own nuclear weapons. At least today we cannot turn a blind eye to the threats. Saying it is all because of Iraq, as though there would have been no threat without Iraq, is puerile, dangerous nonsense and needs to be dismissed.

To deal with the growing threat within the UK Tony Blair's government's hands were tied, as John Reid memorably said. By public opinion, misinformed as it was by the 'Lippies' (liberal intelligentsia press), and by the Left of Labour, with eyes on their inner-city constituencies. This ignoring of the facts is shameful and needs to be seen for what it was and still is. However, it is a shame which is shared by all three mainstream parties, not just Labour.

Brown must surely know that the problem still lies in the training of martyrdom and jihad in many of our mosques, but won't say until he feels the time is right, i.e. AFTER he has won 5 years at the polls.