Take half an hour to read this moving and superbly written article by Johann Hari in today’s Independent on “Islamic extremists” who recant.
To my surprise, the ex-jihadis said their rage about Western foreign policy – which was real, and burning – emerged only after their identity crises, and as a result of it. They identified with the story of oppressed Muslims abroad because it seemed to mirror the oppressive disorientation they felt in their own minds. Usman Raja, a bluff, buff boxer who begged to become a suicide bomber in the mid-1990s, tells me: “Your inner life is chaotic and you feel under threat the whole time. And then you’re told by Islamists that life for Muslims everywhere is chaotic and under threat. It becomes bigger than you. It’s about the world – and that’s an amazing relief. The answer isn’t inside your confused self. It’s out there in the world.”
But once they had made that leap to identify with the Umma – the global Muslim community – they got angrier the more abusive our foreign policy came. Every one of them said the Bush administration’s response to 9/11 – from Guantanamo to Iraq – made jihadism seem more like an accurate description of the world. Hadiya Masieh, a tiny female former HT organiser, tells me: “You’d see Bush on the television building torture camps and bombing Muslims and you think – anything is justified to stop this. What are we meant to do, just stand still and let him cut our throats?”
But the converse was – they stressed – also true. When they saw ordinary Westerners trying to uphold human rights, their jihadism began to stutter. Almost all of them said that they doubted their Islamism when they saw a million non-Muslims march in London to oppose the Iraq War: “How could we demonise people who obviously opposed aggression against Muslims?” asks Hadiya.
Johan interviewed over 17 ex-Jihadis and recounted some of their stories;
Usama Hassan:
As he watched the news of the Luxor massacre in Egypt or Hamas suicide-bombings of pizzerias in Tel Aviv, “It just became more and more difficult to justify that.” He found himself thinking about the Jewish friends he had made at school. “They were just like me – human beings. And we had a lot in common. The dietary laws, and the identity issues, and the fear of racism.” As he heard the growing Islamist chants at demonstrations – “The Jews are the enemy of God,” they yelled – something, he says, began to sag inside him.
Usman Raja:
Just as their journeys into the jihad were strikingly similar, so were their journeys out. All of them said doubt began to seep in because they couldn’t shake certain basic realities from their minds. The first and plainest was that ordinary Westerners were not the evil, Muslim-hating cardboard kaffir presented by the Wahabis. Usman, for one, finally stopped wanting to be a suicide bomber because of the kindness of an old white man.
Usman’s mother had moved in next door to an elderly man called Tony, who was known in the neighbourhood as a spiteful, nasty grump. One day, Usman was teaching his little brother to box in the garden when he noticed the old man watching him from across the fence. “I used to box when I was in the Navy,” he said. He started to give them tips and before long, he was building a boxing ring in their shed.
Tony died not long before 9/11, and Usman was sent to help clear out his belongings. In Tony’s closet, he found a present wrapped and ready for his little brother’s birthday: a pair of boxing gloves. “And I thought – that is humanity right there. That’s an aspect of the divine that’s in every human being. How can I want to kill people like him? How can I call him kaffir?”
Ed Husain:
Ed Husain insists: “There are a lot of Muslims who agree with us. A lot. But they’re frightened. They see what’s happened to us – the hassle, the slander, the death threats – and they think: it’s not worth it. But you know what? When I first spoke out, I was alone. I had no idea that, a year on, there would be this number of people speaking out, and many more who are just offering resources and support. Once a truth is spoken, it takes on its own life.”
Read the whole article.
22 Comments
You just gotta love Usama Hassan. A top man.
Just read the UH part. Edge of seat stuff!
One point however: he mentioned Jimas as a key contributing factor to his ‘jihadification’. I always thought Jimas were relatively apolitical – can anyone clarify? It also seems odd that Jimas would mention the ’1924′ thing, as that is pretty much trademarked by HT.
Approaching the whole topic with such a condescending sarcastic attitude is not helpful. A poorly written piece in my view. It seems like he didn’t get the ‘gems’ he had hoped for in the interviews and so added silly exaggerated details to make it more interesting.
I had good crack reading this crap. Trust desperate jorno Hari to interview the famous quartet of jest within the community, its most famous pseudo-intellectuals sons who couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery, but have been ordained by the executive to lead the backward and literal Muslim ignorants from the dark depths of practicing Islam in accordance with the Qur’an and the Sunnah, championing the Ummah and preparing for the eternal life, to the light of modernity and all its trappings and exuberances.
Usama Hasan has been watching to many stars over at Greenwich, he changes his views and outlook like the nappies of a baby on dihorea, Ed ‘spy on all’ Hussain is beyond comment now, can’t wait to see this chomp in 5 years time…Usman Raja seems to have returned to the ‘dark-side’ after famously resigning with a sharp and severe resignation letter and spending a wasted 6 months at Quilliam where he found they frown on those who pray. He has been making all kinds of comments on this snake of a reporter and the way he presented his views. Finally Majid ‘no more soverignty to Allah’ Nawaz the poster boy of the Munafiqoon..sorry Spittoon Islamophobes, his shit is about to hit the fan to. HaHaHaHaHaHaHa!
It goes without saying of course, that Usama Hassan has more dignity, courage and integrity in his toenails than most pathetic “village Islam” mullahs will ever know, such as the likes of pond scum like “Mustapha”.
I have noticed that Mustapha has dared not criticise Sheikh ul Islam Grand Qadi of Islamic court of England Andy ‘I don’t know arabic but used to love woodpecker cider’ Choudary. So I take it you think he is the true representative of practisicing and pure Islam in the UK. Let me guess you live on state benefits, dress in a nightie and demand Sharia law too.
Ah ha! The Men in Nighties!
Tremble, O ye of low moral fibre and broad opinion! For lo, cometh the Men in Nighties who do follow the Sunnah, once mightily championed industrial cider and soft porn and presently celebrate the Dole!
Be scared, be very scared.
Mustapha:
“”to lead the backward and literal Muslim ignorants from the dark depths of practicing Islam in accordance with the Qur’an and the Sunnah, championing the Ummah and preparing for the eternal life”"
Are you seriously suggesting that mass murdering jihadists are somehow practising the ‘true islam’?? Are you insane??
I enjoyed the Independent article, thanks. However, you overstate its quality.
Its by-line is quite telling, no? “A generation of British Islamists have been trained in Afghanistan to fight a global jihad…” This correctly ‘places’ these human interest stories at the corners of the much more significant narrative of imperial misadventure and blowback. This has its analogues throughout modern history and into the current day in parts of the world some of you will never see first hand.
I haven’t checked the UK media much this week, but it would be interesting to see how much coverage is being given to the news that Jack Straw, now Justice Minister, has been all but proven to have condoned the use of torture to extract information from detainees when he was Foreign Secretary. The FCO under his leadership went to considerable lengths to cover this up–or at least obfuscate–till now. See Craig Murray’s latest posts at: http://craigmurray.org.uk/
Worth, at all times, to continue placing effects in the context of causes.
hannah – Jihadism has a life of it’s own and always has had a life of it’s own. To suggest that it is merely a minor symptom of the odd deviant or ill advised western policy is simplistic and naive, not to mention Anglocentric.
Hannan. I’m afriad that your analysis doesn’t stand up to basic scrutiny.
If jihadist violence is ‘blowback’ and the result of ‘imperial misadventure’, then why exactly are Yemen, Saudi, and the tribal regions of Pakistan the centre of modern jihadist activity? None of these areas was EVER colonised in any meaningful way by any European imperial powers.
Likewise, could you also possibly explain why Islamist governments in countries such as Sudan have launched jihadist wars against ethnic and religious minorities?
Sorry. I should have said ‘solely’ the result of ‘imperial misadventure’. It is self-evident that Iraq, Afghanistan etc do help create recruits for Islamist and jihadist movements.
Eh? Pakistan, not the product of colonial history? The Al Saud family not instated by the British? Kitchener never in The Sudan? Folks, Most of these states are the products of imperial carve ups of territory that have locked up within them tendencies towards religious extremism. Pakistan drifted into Islamic ways throughout the 1950s and 1960s partly as a way to cement state legitimacy; as far as the tribal areas are concerned, consider the 1893 Durand Line Agreement between the Afghan monarchy, Afghan Baluchistan and British India, and come back when you’ve figured how that region became a vortex of religious and tribal reaction. The Al Sauds were the proxies of British interests in Arab oil and were the preferred client rulers after formal British withdrawal from the peninsula. The Al Sauds went on to trade control over political and economic institutions with the Wahhabists who controlled social and cultural life, and exported it. Islamic fundamentalism in Yemen was supported by the West up to the 1990s as it locked horns with communism in the then divided territory. That is to say, Islamic fundamentalism in Yemen was patronized by the West as an opposite to Communist influence in the same way as the West bankrolled the Muhajeddin in Afghanistan in the 1990s. And then walked away after the collapse of the Soviet empire, allowing Islamic extremism to blossom in the dysfunction that followed. Sudanese chauvinism is Arabist/racist as much as it is Islamic, and is steeped in a history of repelling British intrusion. I am not sure how any of this counts as Anglocentric, unless we are suggesting that this reading of comparative histories overstates the influence of the British. I agree that Islamic chauvinists have been on a roll for centuries in some of these places, but so has modern western intervention, which for the last one hundred years has been predominantly Anglo-American. It is also true that Islamic extremism would exist without western extremism, but that’s because extremism in all forms is essentialist anyway, duh…. Let’s not state the obvious here please. My point was that the reach and energy of Islamic nutters has benefited from past and present western forays into what they, rightly or wrongly, consider Muslim heartlands. Today its mojo is enhanced because it is viewed by some to be a response to a militant West.
Utter tosh. If you were not so blinded by your instrumentalist desire to fit facts to a preconceived Leninist format you would not dream of making such an ill-informed and generalised statement.
The Al Sauds were the proxies of British interests in Arab oil and were the preferred client rulers after formal British withdrawal from the peninsula.
Um, oil wasn’t found in Saudi territory until March 1938, long after all relevant political disputes had been settled. By force of arms, of course.
There were three separate branches of HM government interested in Arabia during the last years of the Ottomans: the Foreign Office, the Colonial Office and the India Office. They each backed, and duly subsidized, different horses: the Foreign Office (via Egypt), the Al-Hashem (the Sharif of Mecca – remember Lawrence of Arabia?); the Colonial Office, the Al-Sauds; and the India Office, the Al-Rashids. As it turned out, Abdul Aziz wiped out all of his rivals by the mid 1920s. But he was not the “preferred client”. No one was and the British didn’t really care as long someone clearly won.
The Colonial Office’s man on point with the Al-Sauds was one Captain William Shakespear, who was killed whilst participating in one of the desultory and perpetual pitch-battles fought between the al-Sauds and al-Rashids in 1915.
The Arabist and Saudi-supporter, St. John Philby (who knew and did not appreciate much T.H. Lawrence) held Shakespear in the highest regard. Philby was, incidentally, the father of a certainly more infamous son, Kim Philby.
I once read that St John Philby was very pro-Nazi, both before and during ww2 – although I haven’t been able to find any info online to support this. Abu Faris – does this ring any bells with you?
And Hannan, I actually agree with a large amount of what you write. I may have been a bit too strident last night. That was probably the shisha talking!
Hannan is from the John Rees school of thought where every evil in the world must somehow be traced back to Whitehall or Capital Hill. It is actually a bit like saying the Ottomans radicalised the Europeans by constantly attacking them and hence are responsible for European colonialism.
“Harry” St John Philby was a quite strident pro-Nazi before WWII. He was a member, along with Colin Jordan (a notorious British Nazi) of the British People’s Party, a spin off from Mosley’s British Union of Fascists.
Certainly, Philby’s open anti-Semitism was well received in the Saudi court.
Qidniz, you are right re the discovery of oil in the Arab peninsula. But I’d be interested to learn why you think the British were completely hands off by the time the Al Saud family took over the territory. If it’s a useful analogy, one could argue that nationalist histories of Indian independence have tended to understate the exhaustion of the British Raj and bankrupsy of he British Government after WW2, both of which tilted the Atlee government to offload India, and Mountbatten to fast track that project even further. None of this helps the heroic narrative of national liberation, but it was certainly a feature. In the case of India, the British left with their preferred successors lined up to take over. My understanding is that this was the case in Arabia too, although you make helpful points about differences between different offices of government. It seems very unlikely that the British didn’t care who won. It’s never been the way they worked. It still isn’t today. Thanks.
I’d be interested to learn why you think the British were completely hands off by the time the Al Saud family took over the territory.
Because they didn’t care, and eventually couldn’t do anything about it.
The Najd was a sideshow, a backwater, a useless expanse of rock and desert: the Ottomans relied on clients (such as the Al-Rashids) to “control” the area, where the only real concern was Bedouin raiding of settled communities in the coastal provinces. The British followed suit.
The Al-Rashids had clawed their way to the top of the precarious heap that was the old line aristocracy of the central plateau and desert. The Al-Sauds (with the Wahhabi Ikhwan) were insurrectionist upstarts and revolutionaries challenging them. But this was a strictly local struggle, conducted in complete disregard of what was going on around them.
The power politics were elsewhere. For the post-Ottoman settlement of the Middle East (eventually decided at the Cairo Conference 1921 and then the Treaty of Lausanne to supersede that of Sevres), the British sponsored the Al-Hashem for four suzerainties: the Sharif of Mecca (and his son Ali) for the Hijaz, his son Abdallah for the Governorship/Emirate of Transjordan, and his son Faisal (of Lawrence of Arabia fame – go Alec Guinness!) first for the kingship of Syria (rejected by the Syrians in 1920) and then for that of Iraq (which actually lasted until the Ba’athist coup). So, in a sense, you could say the Al-Hashem were the “preferred client” of the British, but it wasn’t for the peninsula!
The only significant interaction with the Najd in all this was the separate condominium negotiated in 1921 between Sir Percy Cox (High Commissioner in Mesopotamia) and Abdul Aziz Al-Saud for the borders between the Najd and the Ottoman areas proper: Hijaz, Transjordan and Iraq (and, as a package deal, the British clients along the Gulf such as Kuwait and the Trucial States. By that time the Al-Rashids were crushed and out of the picture. )
And that was how it all was until 1925 when Abdul Aziz annexed the Hijaz in a lightning campaign and deposed Ali Al-Hashem. There was a fat lot the British could do about such a fait accompli, and in the event they did nothing.
The notion that it all worked out according to some devious imperialist plan of the perfidious British is a complete myth. True to form, the British merely bungled their way out of a situation they had stumbled onto.
However, still a source of concern to the Ibn Sa’uds – as their serial marrying into the al-Rashid clan in latter years proves. With some odd effects:
One of the daughters of Mohammad bin Talal (who surrendered to Ibn Sa’ud in 1921), Watfa, married Prince Musa’id bin Abdul Aziz, the fifteenth son of Ibn Sa’ud. Prince Musa’id and Watfa became the parents of Prince Faisal bin Musa’id, the assassin of King Faisal.