In recent months, two British groups representing moderate or liberal Islam—British Muslims for Secular Democracy and the Quilliam Foundation—have been launched to considerable media fanfare. The Quilliam Foundation in particular has caught the eye. Partly because it is the work of two ex-Islamists—Mohammed “Ed” Husain and Maajid Nawaz, deputy director and director respectively—Quilliam is being seen as a major new development in the battle against extremist Islam in Britain.
Quilliam’s profile has been boosted by the success of The Islamist (Penguin), Husain’s book about his years in London as a member of the radical Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. The Islamist was one of the publishing sensations of 2007, selling over 50,000 copies. The paperback comes garlanded with praise from some of Britain’s leading opinion-formers. And the book’s influence has reached into government. The BBC reported that “one government official emailed scores of colleagues inside Whitehall… instructing them to read it.” Given that Quilliam’s agenda has been substantially shaped by Ed Husain, it is worth taking a closer look at the account of political Islam in Britain found in The Islamist.
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Husain’s active involvement in Islamism—the modern, politicised form of Islam which seeks to impose an Islamic state and sharia law—seems to have begun in 1990 and lasted roughly a decade and a half. His early devotion to an elderly Bengali Sufi mystic whom his Indian Muslim father had introduced him to, and whom he called “Grandpa,” made him eager to learn more about Islam at school.
“The first book I read about Islam in English was Islam: Beliefs and Teachings by Ghulam Sarwar,” Husain writes. Sarwar was “the brains behind the… Muslim Educational Trust (MET). What seemed like an innocuous body was, in fact, an organisation with an agenda… It all seemed harmless but the personnel all belonged to Jamat-e-Islami [a Pakistan-based Islamist party] front organisations in Britain.”
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