THE ISLAMIST: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left by Ed Husain

Penguin £8.99 pp300

Made in England is the first chapter of Ed Husain’s memoir of his voyage into and out of Islamist militancy in the East End of London. But what does he mean by made? Like many Britons of similar background, Husain may have been “made” in England but he was born of Indian parents with a commitment to an alien creed and a vague sense of identity with peoples and causes far from England’s shore.

To a sensitive, intelligent boy, these tangled roots brought confusion and near disaster. Living in Limehouse (where he loved his integrated primary school), Husain went on to Stepney Green school, exclusively male and Muslim. Here he sought refuge from Bangladeshi gangland mores in a few kindly teachers and the imams of his mosque. He studied Islam, first under his parents and then, as he advanced through his teens, through radical groups who seem to have free access to London’s school system. The standard text for Muslim religious education was (and apparently still is) Ghulam Sarwar’s Islam: Beliefs and Teachings. This declares that “religion and politics are one and the same in Islam . . . it teaches us how to run a state, form a government, elect councillors and members of parliament”. Husain, used to the hierarchical paternalism of his father’s mosque, was exhilarated.

The story is that of many an insecure youth taken up by a fundamentalist sect, of seduction from family and community into a rigid discipline that answers every question and replaces teenage doubt with mental rigour. Husain would slip out at night to visit study groups across east London. Front organisations cascade past his excited eyes, in particular Jamaat-e-Islami, fighting for control of the East London Mosque, and the Young Muslim Organisation, for which he became school organiser. Moving from school to Tower Hamlets college for his A-levels, Husain became a pain in the neck to the authorities. He organised prayer rooms, demonstrations for Muslims in Bosnia, campaigns against discos and for hijabs, rooms, demonstrations for muslims in Bosnia, campaigns against discos and for hijabs and invitations to an inexhaustible supply of rabble-rousing imams. For militancy, the Islamists pushed the socialist workers into the shade. Terrified of being thought racist, the college authorities capitulated to their every demand.

Soon Husain is swimming in a wider sea. His nocturnal visits stray to Islington, Hounslow, Regent’s Park mosque and the LSE. He is assigned a cell and finds his associates include a Tower Hamlets planner, a doctor from the Royal London and a JP Morgan banker. He hangs on the words of the radical, Omar Bakri, reads Sayyid Qutb (Osama bin Laden’s mentor) and eventually graduates to TaqiTaqiuddin al-Nabhani’s militant Hizb ut-Tahrir, for which democracy is idolatry and all other groups are traitors to the cause of the Prophet.

The true Islamist, he is told, should fight for a global caliphate, an “ummah”. All who disagree “were swiftly branded as lackeys, lap dogs or puppets of the British government.”. Every institution in Tower Hamlets is targeted for infiltration, not least George Galloway’s Respect Pparty. The talk is of struggle and jihad. Friends disappear for “training” abroad. Sinister groups offer “protection”, in one case leading to a murder over the occupation of a pool hall. The relative moderates at the East London mosque are terrified.

Husain is rescued partly, it seems, by the shock of the murder and partly by his own dedicated scholarship. Now approaching university, he finds his associates seem not to know the Koran, or at least their politicised interpretation is at odds with his own. The breach with his parents has become painful. He falls in love with a devout (and clearly more sensible) fellow student whom he eventually marries. Above all, the fanaticism of Hizb ut-Tahrir clashes with his new interest in Sufism and with what he most values about Britain, its political tolerance. His initial reaction to 9/11 was that of most of his former colleagues, that “any attack on the bully-boy of the world, ardent supporter of Israel, puppet-master of Arab dictators and exporter of McDonald’s-style globalisation was certainly good news for the rest of us.”. Yet he is soon appalled at that response. Finally, “filled with remorse, I turned to God for forgiveness and prayed for world peace.”. He is no less shocked that Hizb members should be siding with Saddam Hussein.

Two years spent studying Arabic in Damascus — awash with jihadists but open to all faiths — and a visit to Wahhabist Saudi Arabia are enough. The latter leaves Husain devastated by such authoritarianism, racism, sexism and slavery committed in the name of Islam. “What has happened to the Muslims?” he wails: “Once producers of great thinkers, grammarians, theologians, scientists, innovators, poets, jurists and architects, today’s Muslim schools and universities are producing government-fearing sycophants or extremist zealots.” He returns to London renouncing the Hizb and political iIslam and pleading with British mMuslims “to stand up and reclaim our faith” as a spiritual not a political journey. He tries to warn various college authorities of various snakes in their midst, but nobody listens.

All who glibly generalise about the no-man’s-land between terrorism and multi-culturalism should read this articulate and impassioned book. It is a plea not only for tolerance, but also for recognising that freedom requires guardianship. Husain has two villains, Islamist fanaticism and its appeasers among the British Establishment. The government demands that Syria and Pakistan expel radical British students and suppress madrasas deemed “a training ground for terrorists”, yet is “content to allow a sophisticated extremist organisation [the Hizb] to operate and recruit in Britain”. Asif Hanif, Britain’s first suicide bomber (in Israel), was recruited not in Syria but in London at Hounslow mosque.

Husain is appalled by the liberty given to the groups with whom he was involved and by the media space afforded to those claiming to speak for “British Islam”, such as the Muslim Council of Britain. Nobody seems to have a clue which Muslims these people purport to represent, how they are elected or what is their agenda. Thanks to Husain, they will have less excuse in future, except that, inexcusably published without an index, this book is unusable for reference.

Available at the Sunday Times Books First price of £8.54 (inc p&p) on 0870 165 8585

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

Times Recommends

• Avro Lancaster: Owner's Workshop Manual
• iD: The Quest for Identity in the 21st Century by Susan Greenfield
• Fatal Misconception by Matthew Connelly