Press Office

Aired: Sunday, 13 May, 2007 10:00
Sunday Live with Adam Boulton

Boulton:          Tell us a little bit about your story.  You, an ordinary British Muslim, went to a Muslim secondary school and ended up more or less on a one way track to becoming an extremist.  How did that happen?

 

Husain:           It was in fact an ordinary state secondary school but the predominant population there was Asian, Muslim and male and I think to a large extent that made me more receptive to the call of extremists when I was sixteen that we were Muslims first and foremost, we had no sense of belonging to British culture or British identity and it was our responsibility to try to create an Islamist state in the Middle East that would then declare Jihad as a foreign policy.

 

Boulton:          Were you particularly unhappy?  Was your life not going well?  Did you feel alienated?

 

Husain:           On a social and psychological level looking back perhaps yes and I think that is part of the problem today that many, many young Muslims lack that sense of belonging that I lacked when I was 16, 17, 18 and so on.

 

Boulton:          And why was that?

 

Husain:           Let’s be honest about this.  I was born here, I was raised here and I was always told that I was British but really in the area I was living in there was nothing particularly British about it.  To this day, to be completely candid, we have failed to define Britishness and when Britishness, Englishness, convoluted nations of identity, class structure, accent, dress, food – all of those things are put together and it is not clearly defined children of immigrants, in my case, find it difficult to understand where is it we are meant to fit in to this complex class structure and all the rest of it.  That’s part of the problem today that there is a serious sense of lack of belonging for children of immigrants, therefore when extremists come with this clear message of you belong to a global number, you’re a Muslim full stop that message is extremely attractive.

 

Boulton:          So at school there was a black group and a white group and -

 

Husain:           - A very small white group I hasten to add, hardly an existence -

 

Boulton:          - and a Muslim group and people there actively tried to radicalize you?

 

Husain:           Initially it was very sinister, it was very slow but I think – and this was in the late 1980’s / early 1990’s so it wasn’t so direct but by the mid 1990’s onwards it was very direct, very blunt, very radical, no punches held and the British government was quite content to let this happen.

 

Boulton:          Was this being directed from outside the school?

 

Husain:           Yes, and inside the school as well and later on at college and at University.

 

Boulton:          Eventually some of your friends did end up becoming Jihadist fighters?

 

Husain:           They did but that is part of the trajectory you see.  There is not a single Jihadi in the world, and I defy anyone to prove me wrong on this, that wakes up in the morning and says right I am going off for a Jihad.  It is part of a trajectory where they start off with less extreme organizations and as time goes by they become more and more radical.  Eventually just calling for a Jihad isn’t enough, which is going on now, radical Jihadists are functioning in our Universities, on our Mosque door entrances but some will always be prepared to not just be content to talk the talk but walk the walk and that’s what al-Muhajiroun and others is about.  It is important we remember that these organization didn’t come out of nowhere, they cam out of an organisation called Hizb ut Tahrir.

 

Boulton:          Hizb ut Tahrir has been proposed to be banned.  Do you think it should be banned?

 

Husain:           Absolutely.  It should be banned, it should be banned without any doubt.

 

Boulton:          Why?

 

Husain:           Because it is part and parcel of a conveyer belt to terrorism, it breeds this ‘them and us’ mentality, it is against democracy and it is actively plotting and financing and Islamist state in the Middle East dedicated to a Jihad.  If I may say so, if we think 9/11 and 07/07 were disasters and they were, if you look at the manifesto that Hizb ut Tahrir is proposing for the Middle East what happened on 07/07 is small compared to what they’re planning.

 

Boulton:          But wouldn’t people, not necessarily aligned with Hizb ut Tahrir, wouldn’t they say well this just simply shows that we have been repressed, that the truth is being repressed in Britain and therefore wouldn’t it actually enflame what you are trying to douse down?

 

Husain:           Not necessarily.  The good news is that there are people within Hizb ut Tahrir who are law obedient and as long as the law is as it is; that it is quite acceptable for young radicals to call from an Islamist state dedicated to a violent Jihad and destroying the state of Israel and confronting the west, as long as that is permissible then they are law abiding and there isn’t a problem.  When you stop then I think that would create a break in Hizb ut Tahrir and extremists will be flushed out from the more moderate ones.

 

Boulton:          What happened to you?  Having got on this conveyer belt why did you get off?

 

Husain:           Three things.  Firstly I recognized that among not ordinary Islamists but Islamist leaders, and I make no apology for using the word Islamist despite what David Cameron has being trying to put out today by the way, it is a deep issue and we need to understand it.  Islamist leaders were only shedding crocodile tears for genuine Muslim pain, secondly I noticed that within these groups there was very little in the way of genuine spirituality.  I was fortunate in that I was raised in an observant Muslim household so I had an alternative Muslim experience -  

 

Boulton:          - So it wasn’t a true interpretation -

 

Husain:           - Absolutely not, far from it.  Thirdly I saw the effect of my own ideas of calling for a Jihad, dividing Muslims from the rest of society and seeing that lead eventually to a murder on my college campus.  So, eventually I withdrew but just because I left the organization it didn’t mean that my mind had become free.  It took me six years of travel, study, mixing with people of different faiths or no faith to decontaminate my mind.

 

Boulton:          Martin Amis has written about your book and he suggests that one of the things which fuels, amongst young Muslim men, this desire is sexual frustration.  The fact that other people express themselves sexually and for them it is not possible.  

 

Husain:           I think Martin has probably taken that point a bit too far but there is some truth in that.  When you see young Muslims interacting more with people from the opposite sex it does bring in more of a compassion in life and is a positive point but I wouldn’t read too much into it.

 

Boulton:          You are very clearly, as I understand it, sounding a warning saying at the present moment we are on the course to very troubling outcomes.  What do we need to do?  Presumably when you say that you grew up in a community where you didn’t really feel particularly British it is has to start right at the beginning with integration?

Husain:           Absolutely and defining what it mean to be British.  Are we British? Are we English?  Which are we?  Where do the children of immigrants fit in?  Is it legal for us to continue to call for the things that the extremists are calling for?  What can more moderate Muslim organizations do?  It is a joint responsibility for mainstream Britain and Muslims to wake up and realize this is a cancer in our midst and we can’t tolerate it.

 

Boulton:          Perhaps you have been but if were called in by Gordon Brown or the government and they said they wanted some advice, do you have any policy prescriptions?

 

Husain:           The first thing to realize is that there are no quick fixes to this problem.  07/07 happened as a result of fifteen years of radicalization prior to that, Iraq was just an excuse.  Banning Hizb ut Tahrir is an excellent start.  Empowering young Muslims to take on extremist organizations by making them illegal would be a second step.  There are lots of things we can do and they need to be thought out, I think it is dangerous to sit here and put quick fix solutions because there aren’t any but banning organizations is a good place to start.

Boulton:          Has writing this book been dangerous for you?  Have you been threatened?

 

Husain:           To some extent, yes. Yes but it is about understanding that it is not about me personally being threatened but 07/07 and the discourse that led to it is still at large in the country and unless people like myself who have had that background speak out then we are not being good humans, good Brits or good Muslims and therefore it is a responsibility on me at three levels to speak out.  I am compelled to speak out.