Radical (28 page)

As my doubts grew, I increasingly began to consider my HT brothers as ignorant of Islam, politics, and history. My mind felt as if it was going to implode. One wrong word and I could be unceremoniously suspended from the group as a deviant. Then any legitimacy I would have to make reform arguments would be useless. I had to speak to someone. I turned to Rabia, whom I could trust with my secrets. But although Rabia was the more moderate, she was still an HT member. The reality now hit home to me like a blow to the head: my own wife would be a stranger to who I had become.

Whom was I fooling?
I'd spent most of my life recruiting from her family, I'd been responsible for the recruitment of her Uncle Abdul Rauf, Dr. Qayyum's younger brother, who had been tortured in Pakistan's jails. Rabia's cousin, who had joined HT after my recruitment efforts, had also been arrested in Pakistan, and his mother had died while he was still incarcerated. I had argued a hard-line position to her entire family, bringing nothing but tribulation upon them. And here I was now, after she had just waited five years in the name of this cause, trying to convince her that my new ideas were correct instead. As the Prophet, ‘
alayhi salam,
had advised, “Indeed there is a kind of magic in eloquent speech.” She was right.
Why should she listen to me now?

“You were right then and you are right now,” she scolded, “no one can argue with you, Maajid. You are always right. So what is the point of having this discussion?”

To my dismay, she was unprepared to even entertain the discussion. And so, miserable and lonely, I began seeking solace among new faces at SOAS, overly keen to make friends. I frantically searched for whatever “normality” was meant to feel like. I desperately sought out people, not to recruit, but who could remind me how to live my life again; I simply wanted friends I could call my own. And then, in the junior common room of SOAS, I met her.

Fatima Mullick was the opposite of everything I stood for. (Or was she everything that Abi stood for?) Proudly Pakistani, proudly female, her answer to the face veil was to brazenly wear her beauty, her answer to stoning the adulterers was to cite Rumi's “Let the Lovers Be,” her reply to Qutb was Khayyam, the mystical Persian sage. She embraced life in all its splendor, whereas I had come to embrace the afterlife in all its austerity. She despised the madness of men who cared more about whether their position in prayer was correct than they did about spilling innocent blood.

Fatima was a political science post-graduate, and she approached me one day with the question, “So, are you a PhD student?” She must have seen my salt-and-pepper hair, or perhaps she saw the age in my eyes.

“No, I'm an undergraduate.”

“Oh really, how many years did you fail?” she blurted out, laughing.

My pride was hurt. “None. I was imprisoned in Egypt after 9/11. I served four years. I've just got back.”

Her face changed. “I, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to . . . where are you from in Pakistan?”

“Gujrat,” I replied, smiling at her bluster.

“Oh, you mean Gujarat in India?” she asked, too flustered about whether she'd caused offense to think straight.

“No, there is another Gujrat, in Pakistan.” And after having caused her further embarrassment, and quite enjoying it, I decided to befriend her.

I tried to recruit Fatima. Like the death throes of a dying body, I tried to project all my insecurities about my existential crisis onto her. I showed her my BBC interview and told her about how important it was that we Muslims know our identity properly.

And Fatima just looked at me square in the face as she said, “I may not be able to argue with you, or respond to your points, but I know what you are saying is simply bullshit. And you know what, Maajid? So do you!”

And that was it. My mouth froze as I struggled to speak. Fatima had no idea she had just become the proverbial butterfly that would unleash a hurricane. I had just found my new best friend, my rock of support among the confusion that was my life after leaving HT.

In the end, the timing of my decision was forced. While I had been in prison, Nasim had been in Bangladesh, setting up HT out there. He now needed to get back there to resume this work, which meant that—after Jalaluddin's inevitable fall from grace—HT UK would need a new leader. I had the media profile, the international experience, my Arabic and Islamic learning, I had cut my teeth the hard way, and I had the intellectual ability. For Nasim, I was the ideal candidate.

The ball dropped. I could go no further. It was one thing to be arguing for my views within the organization; it was another to be leading a group whose ideology I was beginning to question. The timing couldn't have been worse. I was in the middle of revising for my final exams, but I had to make a move before anything was formalized. I called Nasim, friend to friend, mentor to protégé, and asked to see him alone at a cafe in London's Brick Lane.

I was very nervous; this was to be one of the most stressful conversations of my life. I had been a member of Hizb al-Tahrir for over a decade. I had known Nasim since I was fifteen years old, and through that time he had been a friend and mentor to me through so much. But I owed it to him to tell him my decision, face to face.

“I know you are preparing me to take over the leadership of the group, but it's something I'm going to have to turn down. In fact, I'm . . . I no longer believe in HT and I need to leave the group immediately. Please consider this my resignation.” I just blurted it out.

Nasim was completely astonished.

“We can work this out,” he argued. “You have so much to give. Come to Bangladesh with me, we have a real chance of getting into power over there,” he said. “We can run the country together, you and I.”

We sat in the cafe, going back and forth. It never got heated. It was more about sadness, and regret, and resignation. Nasim knew that I wouldn't have come to this decision lightly. He knew that I'd thought through the consequences, and that it would be unlikely we'd see each other again. In the end, as a favor to him, I agreed that I wouldn't announce my resignation for two weeks. Maybe it was to give him the opportunity to tell the rest of the group himself, or maybe he wanted time to have another go at persuading me. If it was the latter, I didn't give him the chance. I had my phone switched off throughout those two weeks.

When the deadline had passed, I released an email to the media, rather than leaving it to the group to announce—and twist—the reasons for my departure. “
In the name of God the Compassionate, the Merciful,
”
I began
. “Assalaamu alaykum.
”
I tried to keep my resignation as brief and as dignified as I could:

I have deemed it necessary to announce that, after serving in Hizb al-Tahrir for twelve years and since I was seventeen years old, I have decided to leave the party and resign my membership effective immediately. I humbly request that I do not discuss the reasons for my decision at this moment in time, and ask that I be left to complete my much delayed final examinations. Forgive me for any offense caused.

I hit “send” and a dozen years of my life came to a close.

I called Osman during this time. I somehow felt that I needed his support. All those years earlier we had started on this journey together; he had left HT long before I did. “Good,” he said. “Don't worry, Islam is more important than HT.” He didn't yet know that it was precisely the modern
politicized
interpretation of Islam that I actually had a problem with. I didn't have the heart to tell him.

I then immediately called Abi. As I told her my news, she broke down in tears of joy right there on the phone. “Finally, finally, my son, I knew you would make the right decision. In my gut I could sense this was happening to you. I'm so proud of you, thank God, thank God!” She cried, “All these years I've waited to hear this news coming from your lips, I knew you would eventually see the truth. How could you not? You're my son, it was my womb that bore you, I'm so proud of you!”

But my situation with Rabia was deteriorating day by day. I desperately needed the space to learn who I was, to construct myself anew, piece by piece. Every time she asked me to spend more time indoors, I felt suffocated; I tried to remove myself from everything associated with HT and their ideology. It was a terrible situation to be in. Guilt riddled my insides, and I felt as cruel as Aman al-Dawlah, if not more so. But I needed to define myself again before letting anyone else in.

As much as my wife struggled to find the Maajid who was so suddenly taken from her that night in our Alexandria flat, there was no turning back for me. I had seen too much, learned too much to ever again be that same Maajid she had married. In many ways I think I was a nicer person then, and like so many nice people who seek power, I wanted to force everyone else to be nice. It's a form of totalitarianism.

Now I felt like a horrible person, full of guilt for what I could see was happening to my marriage; yet I no longer wanted the world to be nice. I just wanted everyone to leave everyone else alone. I just wanted to be left alone. And I began to stay at home less and less because I was desperate to escape the claustrophobia of Islamism, my new prison.

But I had nowhere to go, nowhere to sleep. I slept wrapped in a blanket, in the backseat of my beat-up Renault Clio, parked outside the university in Russell Square, while my final exams were going on. If those last days in Newham were my lowest, and if those spent in solitary confinement my darkest, then these were my loneliest days. Sad and confused, I needed help to find myself again but couldn't rely on anyone to help me; the only people who were there now saw me as a traitor. I needed Abi, I needed home. While sleeping in that car I became certain: I would not be able to purge myself of Islamism while living with Rabia.

I didn't have the heart to tell her face to face I was leaving her, as I had with Nasim. I knew it would only result in more futile debate. Instead, I left her a letter announcing my decision, and just left. After one of my final exams, Rabia turned up at SOAS with her two sisters and brother-in-law, trying urgently to reconcile. But I wouldn't speak to them. I didn't know who I was anymore, how could I speak to them?

It took all the willpower I've ever known to turn away and run from her that day. But run I did. I got into a friend's car to leave, and pulling away, I could see Rabia running after me in the middle of the road, calling out my name, pleading for me to stop. As we sped off, I caught the look of anguish on her face. I hated myself for what I had to do.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Civil-Democratic Intimidation

I spent thirteen years of my life supporting Hizb al-Tahrir. Thirteen years as a deeply committed Islamist ideologue totally prepared to sacrifice all for my cause. My journey from prison to my departure from the group was not an easy one to make. Rage was a powerful factor blurring my judgment. Pulling myself away from the anger at what was done to us in prison was mentally exhausting.
How could Tony Blair vacation in Egypt, paid for by the Egyptian State, while British citizens were being tortured there? How could the world protest at the atrocities of terrorists while governments behaved in a similar way?

Wives had been stripped bare, tortured in front of husbands. Children had been electrocuted. People would occasionally drop dead in our prison, succumbing to wounds from torture. Thousands of men had been interned for over fifteen years without charge. From those interned, some had in desperation doused themselves in kerosene to set themselves on fire. I witnessed this all. Yet Egypt was the second-largest recipient of American aid, and an ally.

Thus, the Islamist narrative of a clash of civilizations—
kuffar
against Muslims—echoed ever stronger in my mind. This was a war with no rules. Neo-conservatives had sent the message out loud and clear. The only voice heard was the voice of power, all the more reason for Islamists to seize the reins of such power.
Abandon Islamism? And join what? Where was that counternarrative?
As an Islamist I enjoyed the backing of thousands of hardened men, many who had died for my cause. Where were the Muslim martyrs of pluralism? Why were the few who spoke out ridiculed or ignored?

I had married into Islamism; all my friends and many family members were Islamists. I would leave a global movement, having been a hero, to become an outcast. What would I say to Rabia? What would I say to her Uncle Abdul Rauf who—after I recruited him to HT—had his spine dislocated in Pakistan's jails? How would I face her cousin, whose mother died from shock because he was not released from prison at the end of his sentence? I would have to look at these people in the eyes and say:
It was all so wrong. I was so wrong.

But so what? Why should I be the only one to admit his mistakes? Is not winning the war more important than truth? This maxim, I knew, was also subscribed to by some on the left, the regressive left. For them, winning against capitalism was far more important than it was to their allies. I watched as our ideology gained acceptance and we were granted airtime as Muslim political commentators. I watched as we were ignorantly pandered to by well-meaning liberals and ideologically driven leftists. How we Islamists laughed at their naïveté.

I was horrified to realize that I was abusing my faith for a mere political project. After learning in prison that Islamism was not the religion of Islam, but rather a political ideology dressed up as Islam, I no longer felt guilty for criticizing a political system inspired by modern European constructs, justified by seventh-century norms. And despite what was holding me back, my desire for justice spurred me on. Ever since I had been a child, I had found unfairness, injustice, and oppression intolerable. I now saw how we had used these grievances as a means of perpetrating our own injustice, not only against non-Muslims but against other Muslims too.

We had used, even abused, people's grievances to suit our ideological agenda. What did the invasion and occupation of lands have to do with enforcing dress codes upon Muslims? Why should the solution to secular Arab dictators be
Islamist
Arab dictators? Why did foreign intervention mean that we needed to silence critical thinking and open debate by labeling it as heresy and blasphemy? In reaction to our own insecurities about our identity and position in the world,
we
—not anyone else but us—had become the real obstacle to progress for our own people.

But what was the problem with Islamism so long as it remained nonviolent? Was it not the right of Muslims to adopt whatever ideology they chose? Of course, it was the right of Muslims to believe that one version of Islam must be imposed as law over their societies, just as it was the right of racists to believe that all non-white people should be deported from Europe. But the spread of either of these ideas would achieve nothing but division. If the dangers of racism are apparent, even in a nonviolent form, then it was the same for Islamism. Communalist identity politics, self-segregation, and groupthink are far more damaging to societies in the long run than the odd bomb going off here or there; it is such a milieu that keeps breeding bomb-makers. It's odd that Hizb al-Tahrir in Arabic means the Liberation Party. We had hijacked the minds of the Muslim masses, and those minds needed to be liberated.

Slowly and alone, I began to unpick the last thirteen years of my indoctrination, concept by concept. Ideas that I had once held sacrosanct were unraveling in my mind, revealed as crude political deceptions. My whole character would have to change. Every moral frame of reference that I had built up in my mind required reevaluation. I was not merely questioning jihadist terrorism as the Gama'a had done in their
muraja'aat
recantations. That was easy. No one really deserves a thank-you for promising not to randomly kill you. No, I needed to go further. I needed to question the very basis of the ideology itself. The idea that an interpretation of Islam must be imposed as state law now seemed to me un-Islamic, counterproductive, and anathema to what was fundamentally just.

This ideology of victimhood had taken the responsibility for reform away from our people, and taken satisfaction in blaming everyone else for our ills. My political grievances were still there, but I saw now that we no longer required Islamism in order to campaign against them.
Islamism itself had in fact become one of the grievances that needed challenging.

As I began to formulate this idea, the sheer scale of what we needed to do hit me. By now, Western governments, Muslim-majority governments, media outlets, and hundreds of thousands of Muslim youth worldwide had all come to assume that Islamism was Islam. Leaving Islamism was one thing, but outrightly challenging it was another. Who better to do it than someone who knew the ideology inside out?

My head felt heavy as I took in the enormity of the task ahead. Most Muslims are not Islamists; yet the organized minority dominates the discourse. Islamism had been creeping upon Muslims for over eighty years now, and little had been organized to directly challenge it. Yes, certain Muslim associations have been stressing a tolerant Islam, but this was not sufficient. The good Islamist will merely co-opt that message into his political ideology, as we did. We tolerated the different strands of Muslim theology, and we were well-disciplined when engaging with non-Muslims. By doing this, our aim was to co-opt everyone into our political goal.

Unless Muslim communities stood together to reclaim the faith, we would have no chance of challenging this ideology that had grown among us. It also meant that certain leftists and well-meaning liberals needed to stop pandering to a global totalitarian project. It meant, crucially, that normal Muslims needed to take a stand by closing their doors to Islamism.

Most importantly, Muslim leaders and theologians needed to be firm in the face of this ideological onslaught against our faith. And while theologians are especially responsible for leading the Muslim resistance against Islamism, Muslims could not be expected to do this if Islamism's twin, Islamophobia, was not also challenged. There are those out there who harbor an irrational fear of Islam. Islamophobes and Islamists have this much in common: both groups insist that Islam is a totalitarian political ideology at odds with liberal democracy, and hence both insist that the two will inevitably clash. One extreme calls for the Qur'an to be banned, the other calls to ban everything but the Qur'an. Together, they form the negative and the positive of a bomb fuse.

A counternarrative needed to be created out of these ideals: a respect for basic human rights, pluralism, individual freedoms, faith, and democracy had to be reconciled with Islam not in the ivory towers of academics but out there in the hearts of the masses. To do that, we needed to permeate all elements of society with the counternarrative: politics and policy, media, the arts, social media, academia, and public opinion. We needed the backing of states, parties, coalitions, and movements, and we needed ideas, narratives, leaders, and symbols, all pooled together, just as Islamism had been doing since the 1920s.

For decades Islamists had spread their ideology at the grassroots, while Muslim liberals either detached themselves in their mansions or embroiled themselves in the corrupt politics of their regimes. As Islamists, we would look upon these elite Muslim liberals as completely out of touch and detached from the sentiments of their people.

Was it any wonder then that Islamism had become the most effective social phenomenon among Muslims in the world, in dictatorships and democracies alike? Dictators would either try to co-opt it or brutally suppress it. Both tactics inevitably aided its growth. In democracies, electoral politics could only react to votes, and if the most organized bloc is the Islamist bloc, they will have their way, intimidating government after government with their opportunistic use of Islam to influence policy. Why were governments everywhere scared of upsetting the sleeping giant of Islamism? Why had they gradually succumbed to the Islamisation of their societies? Why did they not fear a similar internal democratic lobby?
Where was the democratic intimidation?

What I saw clearly now was the need for a radical new social movement, a Muslim Brotherhood equivalent, sitting above short-term party-political goals. It would advocate the democratic culture among Muslim grass roots: a civic-democratic intimidation pushing for democratization. Sitting in the seclusion of Abi's home in Southend, I realized that my quest for justice that began here was far from over.

I knew now what had to be done, and I knew the cost of doing it.