PRINT
EMAILPenguin, 2009, 320 pp.
“Where is your Allah then now, eh? Where is he? Can’t he help you?” taunted Ed Husain’s primary school teacher, Mr. Coppin. Struck speechless in the moment, Husain spent many years searching for an answer to that question. Struggling to find his place growing up in East London, Husain was just like millions of other young people from immigrant families living in the West. Husain’s journey through Islamism, a politicized version of Islam, is the subject of his memoir The Islamist: Why I Became an Islamic Fundamentalist, What I Saw Inside, and Why I Left. His story underlines the need for Western countries to seriously investigate homegrown terrorism and to take swift action to combat this escalating threat.
Faisal Shahzad, the recent would-be Times Square bomber, is a naturalized citizen of the United States. Najibullah Zazi, the central figure of a plot to bomb the New York subway last September, is a legal permanent resident. Nidal Hasan (the Fort Hood shooter), Colleen LaRose, (a.k.a. “Jihad Jane” who was involved in a terrorist plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist), and David Headley (a conspirator of the Mumbai bombings of 2008), are all U.S. citizens. Radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki conversed with Hasan and was an inspiration for Shahzad. President Obama recently authorized the targeted killing of al-Awlaki, who is an American citizen born in New Mexico. With an increasing number of terrorist plots surfacing within the United States, it is personal accounts such as Husain’s The Islamist that help us better understand the psychology behind homegrown terrorism. As Bruce Hoffman recently wrote in The National Interest, “Without knowing our enemy and its environment… we cannot break the cycle of radicalization and recruitment that replenishes terrorists’ ranks and prolongs this debilitating war.”1 What can we learn from Husain? For one, the teenage mind is especially vulnerable to extremism, and the strategy of Islamic extremists is the cultivation of prejudice.
A child of immigrant parents, Husain was regularly taunted and threatened by his schoolmates; as a result, Husain searched for many years for acceptance in British society. A spiritual master he called “Grandpa” became a major figure in Husain’s youth by introducing him to Muslim circles and teaching him tajwid, the art of Quranic recital. Grandpa was a master of five Muslim mystical orders and served as a spiritual guide to Husain’s father. In Grandpa’s spiritual circles, fundamentalist Muslims and political organizations like Jamat-e-Islami were criticized and refuted based on theological arguments. However, when sixteen year-old Husain heard the teachings of the fundamentalist Muslim philosopher Abul Ala Mawdudi, a thought was planted in the young man’s mind: “Perhaps Grandpa was wrong.” He befriended Brother Falik, a member of the Youth Muslim Organization U.K. (Y.M.O.) and soon joined the organization as well. Husain believed that he had finally concluded his spiritual quest:“After five years, I had found both a friend and a cause to which I belonged.” The author hid his burgeoning interest in Islamism and his membership in the Y.M.O. from his family; sure that should they find out their reaction would be far from positive. Eventually his father discovered his involvement and gave him a strict ultimatum: either leave Islamism or leave his house. Husain chose the Y.M.O. Husain’s involvement in the Y.M.O. would prove to be the vital first step away from the Islam practiced by Grandpa and his parents and toward that of a fundamentalist world.
Husain quickly became a passionate leader of Y.M.O., but just as quickly grew impatient with the small-scale goals of the organization. He states, “I was disgruntled with Y.M.O.’s obsession with the Bangladeshi community, lack of intellectual vigor, and complete failure to provide an answer to the Bosnia issue,” referring to the ethnic cleansing of Balkan Muslims in the early Nineties. Ironically, it was ultimately a Brit who introduced Husain to another group, the Hizb ut-Tahrir (or “the Hizb” as its members call it), a radical political organization that began in Jerusalem and eventually spread to the United Kingdom, along with almost 40 other countries.2 As this “recruiter” put it, the Hizb had “a clear methodology for dealing with all of the problems of the world.” Hizb ut-Tahrir filled the political and personal gaps left unfulfilled by the Y.M.O. “Looking back,” he recalls, “I am still astonished by how I became so confident so quickly following my affiliation with the Hizb… I was now part of an ummah [a single global Muslim community] transcending color, nationality, and language.”
But love and murder would lead to Husain’s gradual dissociation from the organization. The brutal murder of a college student following a clash involving the Hizb, combined with falling in love with his future wife, meant he could no longer tolerate the hateful teachings of the Hizb. Most important to his de-radicalization was the murder, which demonstrated to Husain the Hizb’s belief that the death of a non-Muslim was inconsequential in the fight for the global supremacy of Islam.
Although disillusioned with the radical Islamic arena, Husain still carried a desire to better understand Islam “at its core.” He explored Sufism, a form of Islam known for its mystical and peaceful nature. He later spent two years in Syria and seven months in Saudi Arabia. His awe of the religious acceptance he encountered in Damascus was eclipsed in Saudi Arabia by extreme societal feelings of homophobia, anti-Americanism, and religious intolerance. In time, he came to feel that the longer he was away from Britain, the more British he became, prompting he and his wife to return to London. Upon his return, Husain befriended another former Hizb member, Maajid Nawaz. Nawaz was imprisoned in Egypt for belonging to Hizb ut-Tahrir, which led him to leave the organization.Husain and Nawaz founded a think tank, Quilliam, devoted to explaining and countering Islamist ideology. Last year the British government awarded one million pounds to Quilliam as part of a plan to counter the radicalization of British Muslims.3
At one point in The Islamist Husain explains, “My nascent conviction and increasing commitment to Hizb ut-Tahrir was not based on mere teenage naivety, although that played a role.” As a reader, however, it is difficult to not attribute most of Husain’s behavior to a certain kind of childish vulnerability. Martin Amis wrote in his review of the book,
Amis makes a very good point, although ideology should not be equated to “shared illusion.”There is no question of the power of an ideology, but what we should learn from The Islamist is that ideology becomes much more potent to those predisposed to its illusion. When searching for a way to belong, one is willing to suspend disbelief in order to fit in.
While The Islamist was first published in 2007, the latest edition includes a new afterword, written in 2009. Although written recently, several exposed terrorist plots and attempted attacks in the U.S. within the past year have shed some new light on Husain’s arguments. He poses the questions “Can America be harboring enemies without knowing it?” and “Are American-born Islamists capable of a similar monstrosity?” His answer is yes and no. While he does outline the clear domestic threats in the U.S. and also concedes that the U.S. may contain a substantial number of families where first generations are preventing American-born second generations from integrating into American society, he claims the U.S. is in a very different position than Europe. Husain believes that the U.S. not only accepts but even encourages public displays of religiosity, which therefore allows Muslims to fit in with the society and feel at home in the U.S. However, a 2010 survey finds that 53 percent of Americans view Islam negatively.5 The ridicule that Husain experienced growing up in Britain is not unthinkable in the United States.
Husain also purports that the socio-economic situation of most American Muslims is much better than their European counterparts. While this may be accurate, it underestimates the importance of other factors leading to extremism, such as psychological, cultural, and of course, religious and political motivations. Additionally, the view that poverty causes terrorism still remains a debatable issue amongst sociologists, economists, and experts on 
terrorism studies.In fact, many experts believe that there is no direct causal relationship or even a significant correlation between the two.6 In his afterword, what Husain prescribes to the reader is not altogether new or different in scope or presentation, as many experts have analyzed the patterns of terrorism and tried to predict the likelihood of its occurrence. However, it is Husain’s experience gleaned from being on the “inside” of the Islamist movement, coupled with his ability to clearly describe his personal downward spiral, that makes The Islamist a rare and indispensable book.
Last year at least ten jihadi terrorist plots or related events were discovered within the United States.7 It is becoming apparent that the U.S. cannot afford to give priority to terrorist threats developing abroad over those growing at home. The conveyor belt that created Husain’s extremism in Europe is more productive than ever in the United States, and the starting point may be as seemingly insignificant as a schoolteacher teasing a little boy.
May 28, 2010
frontispiece and illustration by Loujoe
1. Bruce Hoffman. “American Jihad,” The National Interest (April 20, 2010): http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=23200.
2. Ariel Cohen. “Hizb ut-Tahrir: An Emerging Threat to U.S. Interests in Central Asia,” The Heritage Foundation (May 30, 2003): http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2003/05/Hizb-ut-Tahrir-An-Emerg....
3. Richard Kerbaj. “Government gives £1m to anti-extremist think-tank Quilliam Foundation,” Times Online (January 20, 2009): http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5549138.ece.
4. Martin Amis. “Martin Amis reviews The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left by Ed Hussain,” Times Online (May 5, 2007): http://www.martinamisweb.com/commentary_files/ma_hussain_islamist.pdf.
5. Bloomberg News.“Poll: Americans have negative view of Islam,” (January 22, 2010): http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2010/01/22/poll_am....
6. Yonah Alexander, David Carlton, and Paul Wilkinson, eds. Terrorism: Theory and Practice (New York: Westview Press, 1979).
7. Bruce Hoffman. “American Jihad,” The National Interest (April 20, 2010): http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=23200.
