umm hussain
Junior Member
Three terrorism suspects on the run. One man tells of what it is like to think like a terror suspect - a man who spent his teenage years as an Islamist extremist.
Ed Husain is studying for his PhD. But as a teenager he became embroiled in the emerging Islamist political scene in East London and he says he became a leading activist opposing Western and British values.
The 32-year-old quit 10 years ago, and after spending years thinking about religion, society and his own past, has written a book of his experiences as a warning.
The world has moved on. One of the men he was closest to, self-styled cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed, fled the UK after the July 2005 suicide bombings. Some of the organisations he says he was directly involved in say they have changed.
But he says the absconding of three men subjected to control orders means the authorities have not yet learned how to understand the jihadi mindset - and the Islamist ideology that underpins it.
"We face a new form of home-grown terrorism and our pussyfooting around issues in the name of not offending ethnic minorities will only compound the problem," Mr Husain says.
"The absconding of these three potential terrorists is only a symptom of a deeper problem: an unbridled ideology of lawlessness and vigilantism which continues to fester in our midst."
Ideological birth
So what makes a young man get involved? For Mr Husain, the journey began with a teenage awakening of identity, politics and religion.
He came from a well-to-do South Asian background, his father a committed BBC radio man and their family's Islamic faith drawn from Sufi traditions of personal spirituality.
During his teenage years, he became involved in Hizb ut-Tahrir, a global political movement that calls for a single Islamic state across the Middle East. At the time it was headed by Omar Bakri Mohammed, before he formed Al Muhajiroun, a banned radical group whose name has featured heavily in recent terror trials.
While the movement's leaders now talk of intellectual persuasion, Mr Husain claims the ultimate logic remains the same: violence is at the heart of its revolutionary message.
Mr Husain saw a succession of young men like himself become radicalised by that message. Some travelled to Pakistan or elsewhere for paramilitary training. Young British men who fought and died, particularly in Bosnia, were lauded as martyrs.
One man he met in London was Asif Hanif, a quietly spoken young man who later blew himself up as the first British suicide bomber in Israel.
It was only after seeing a stabbing at college involving fellow Islamists that Mr Husain says he began to look deeper into what he believed.
"Here we tend to get a Pakistan-Arab version of Islam that is literalist, political and basically incompatible with British ideas. I now know that is not Islam. True religion is about coming to the service of all of God's creation."
What worries him most is that while we focus on counter-terrorism operations, neither government nor wider society have worked out how to address the street ideology.
"All these kids we are dealing with now, the ones who are going to jail, we are seeing the same thing that I saw when I was a teenager.
"Even if the government thinks that it has got on top of one problem, such as banning Al Muhajiroun, there will be other factions that will split. People break away and take up arms - that is exactly what the 7 July bombers did.
"Until we start dealing with the underlying Islamist ideology - challenging it head on with a well-thought out defence of both British values and the real messages of Islam - then we will not deal with the jihadis."
Accusations denied
Hizb ut-Tahrir is at the centre of that storm. It organises legally and holds both open public meetings and private study circles. It denies Mr Husain was ever a real member.
Omar Bakri Mohammed: Ed Husain was a follower
"While he may have attended our study circles and lectures in the early 1990s as he claims, like tens of thousands of others, he never joined Hizb ut-Tahrir," says spokesman Taji Mustafa.
"There are matters [Mr Husain describes] that we would not consider acceptable in Hizb ut-Tahrir and we certainly do not condone anything that he may say about himself or allege against others."
The organisation claims Ed Husain's accounts of the route that young men take are ancient history and partial. In particular, it cites opinion polls that suggest many Muslims around the world want Islamic law and governance at the centre of their states.
Ed has also been criticised by some Muslims and community groups who believe he has over-simplified the issues. Some of the people he has named as members of the broader Islamist family feel their views have changed from the days of student politics - but they have not been allowed to escape being labelled a potential threat.
One organisation he names, the Leicester-based Islamic Foundation, is today well-know among policymakers for its radical thinking on how Islam should fit into modern multicultural Britain.
So is his account dated? Mr Husain says not.
"We are dealing in 2007 with problems that were around but not recognised in 1997. We have allowed the creation of an Islamist underworld where these ideas go unchallenged.
"These people were not indoctrinated abroad. They were exposed to a Jihadi ideology here in the UK, here in London. This is why I believe addressing the 'conveyor belt' from ideology to terrorism is vital. We need to deal with this ideology."
The Islamist, by Ed Husain, is published by Penguin.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6687851.stm
Ed Husain is studying for his PhD. But as a teenager he became embroiled in the emerging Islamist political scene in East London and he says he became a leading activist opposing Western and British values.
The 32-year-old quit 10 years ago, and after spending years thinking about religion, society and his own past, has written a book of his experiences as a warning.
The world has moved on. One of the men he was closest to, self-styled cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed, fled the UK after the July 2005 suicide bombings. Some of the organisations he says he was directly involved in say they have changed.
But he says the absconding of three men subjected to control orders means the authorities have not yet learned how to understand the jihadi mindset - and the Islamist ideology that underpins it.
"We face a new form of home-grown terrorism and our pussyfooting around issues in the name of not offending ethnic minorities will only compound the problem," Mr Husain says.
"The absconding of these three potential terrorists is only a symptom of a deeper problem: an unbridled ideology of lawlessness and vigilantism which continues to fester in our midst."
Ideological birth
So what makes a young man get involved? For Mr Husain, the journey began with a teenage awakening of identity, politics and religion.
He came from a well-to-do South Asian background, his father a committed BBC radio man and their family's Islamic faith drawn from Sufi traditions of personal spirituality.
During his teenage years, he became involved in Hizb ut-Tahrir, a global political movement that calls for a single Islamic state across the Middle East. At the time it was headed by Omar Bakri Mohammed, before he formed Al Muhajiroun, a banned radical group whose name has featured heavily in recent terror trials.
While the movement's leaders now talk of intellectual persuasion, Mr Husain claims the ultimate logic remains the same: violence is at the heart of its revolutionary message.
Mr Husain saw a succession of young men like himself become radicalised by that message. Some travelled to Pakistan or elsewhere for paramilitary training. Young British men who fought and died, particularly in Bosnia, were lauded as martyrs.
One man he met in London was Asif Hanif, a quietly spoken young man who later blew himself up as the first British suicide bomber in Israel.
It was only after seeing a stabbing at college involving fellow Islamists that Mr Husain says he began to look deeper into what he believed.
"Here we tend to get a Pakistan-Arab version of Islam that is literalist, political and basically incompatible with British ideas. I now know that is not Islam. True religion is about coming to the service of all of God's creation."
What worries him most is that while we focus on counter-terrorism operations, neither government nor wider society have worked out how to address the street ideology.
"All these kids we are dealing with now, the ones who are going to jail, we are seeing the same thing that I saw when I was a teenager.
"Even if the government thinks that it has got on top of one problem, such as banning Al Muhajiroun, there will be other factions that will split. People break away and take up arms - that is exactly what the 7 July bombers did.
"Until we start dealing with the underlying Islamist ideology - challenging it head on with a well-thought out defence of both British values and the real messages of Islam - then we will not deal with the jihadis."
Accusations denied
Hizb ut-Tahrir is at the centre of that storm. It organises legally and holds both open public meetings and private study circles. It denies Mr Husain was ever a real member.
Omar Bakri Mohammed: Ed Husain was a follower
"While he may have attended our study circles and lectures in the early 1990s as he claims, like tens of thousands of others, he never joined Hizb ut-Tahrir," says spokesman Taji Mustafa.
"There are matters [Mr Husain describes] that we would not consider acceptable in Hizb ut-Tahrir and we certainly do not condone anything that he may say about himself or allege against others."
The organisation claims Ed Husain's accounts of the route that young men take are ancient history and partial. In particular, it cites opinion polls that suggest many Muslims around the world want Islamic law and governance at the centre of their states.
Ed has also been criticised by some Muslims and community groups who believe he has over-simplified the issues. Some of the people he has named as members of the broader Islamist family feel their views have changed from the days of student politics - but they have not been allowed to escape being labelled a potential threat.
One organisation he names, the Leicester-based Islamic Foundation, is today well-know among policymakers for its radical thinking on how Islam should fit into modern multicultural Britain.
So is his account dated? Mr Husain says not.
"We are dealing in 2007 with problems that were around but not recognised in 1997. We have allowed the creation of an Islamist underworld where these ideas go unchallenged.
"These people were not indoctrinated abroad. They were exposed to a Jihadi ideology here in the UK, here in London. This is why I believe addressing the 'conveyor belt' from ideology to terrorism is vital. We need to deal with this ideology."
The Islamist, by Ed Husain, is published by Penguin.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6687851.stm
