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The Islamist : Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left Pdf, Epub, Ebook THE ISLAMIST : WHY I JOINED RADICAL ISLAM IN BRITAIN, WHAT I SAW INSIDE AND WHY I LEFT PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Ed Husain | 304 pages | 09 Apr 2008 | Penguin Books Ltd | 9780141030432 | English | London, United Kingdom The Islamist : Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left PDF Book For permissions please e-mail: journals. He is not Arab. Friends who disappear to training camps later become key figures in al-Qaeda. Syria is full of surprises. Under the Olive Tree. He found an antidote to extremism by digging deeper into Islamic spirituality itself. Democracy, or people's rule, is anathema to fundamentalist Muslims since only Allah should govern and the Koran contains Allah's words and will. Whatever it is, that mind-set needs to be opened up and explored and rejected. Joining and Leaving the Muslim Brotherhood in the West , you recall how you first become interested in the movement. He describes his journey towards fanaticism as gradual, first coming across Islamism in the school textbook Islam: Beliefs and Teachings by Ghulam Sarwar, which says: 'Religion and politics are one and the same in Islam. It fascinated me. The first part focuses on how each individual joined the Brotherhood, with particular attention both to the recruitment methods employed by the organization and the psychological impulses that drove the individual to join. Not all agree, however, on the exact details of the complete code, or at least who should be in charge, and factional infighting results. His travels in Turkey and Syria - that member of "the axis of evil" - were more redemptive than a million demands for assimilation. Ghulam Sarwar, was not a scholar of religion but a business management lecturer, and never mentioned in his book his activism in the organization -- Jamaat-e-Islami —he praised. According to Pierre this ignorance goes hand in hand with two other elements of Swedish society: its emphasis on trust and its embrace of political correctness. The Islamist Author: Ed Husain. He votes in the general elections for Labour and Tony Blair despite a Hizb injunction that democratic elections are haram. But all of that said, we must be honest about this, that there is a sense of real persecution and powerlessness on the part of people who go and become suicide bombers. You do not currently have access to this article. Essentially, it tells the story of how he developed certain views, and then had the courage to change his mind. Husain does not detail the courtship, but we are given to understand that after a period of cold-shouldering by Faye, Husain manages to win her heart. All formers I interviewed agree that while the secrecy was understandable in the Middle East for the organization to survive the harsh repression of local regimes, it is absolutely unnecessary in the West, particularly in the extreme form adopted. Despite other reviews finding this book dry or difficult to follow, I found it a riveting read from start to finish. Where is Islam? He cannot understand why Arabs hate Jews. This is to the chagrin of the many activists of activists of North African background and converts, who feel discriminated against. Despite Saudi separation of the genders, the lack of respect for women is far worse than in the UK or "secular" Muslim Syria according to Husain ,. In your latest book The Closed Circle. His father, a devout Muslim opposed to Islamist views, ignores the advice of Husain's teachers not to send his son to Stepney Green, an all-boy, all-Muslim secondary school, a decision he will later regret. From inside the book. But in order to do so, it has inevitably been forced to compromise some of its principles and smooth some of its rough edges. I read this book and followed the education of the author. Anushka Asthana. The Daily Mail columnist and author of Londonistan , Melanie Phillips says Husain "should be applauded for his courage" and displayed "intellectual honesty and guts". Looking back, Husain also complains of feeling Islamists often misrepresented themselves or important facts. They go to Turkey for their honeymoon. And Brotherhood networks in the West invested enormous resources to try to support fellow Islamists in the MENA by lobbying Western governments and providing them with financial support. Husain is all of 20 years old when this happens. Irrespective of these developments, it appears clear that, for years to come, the Brotherhood will remain a crucial actor in the future of Islam in the West. Husain, Ed Subscribe to Posts Atom. At the same time, many Western-born Muslims are increasingly finding alternative platforms for mobilizing on the basis of their Muslim identity. Husain describes his progressive radicalization beginning at age 16 from an initial curiosity to the exhilaration of jockeying over ideology and power with other student groups and then helping lead a Muslim students association to what he calls an Islamization of the public space at an east London college. I mean, take, for example, the large conferences you have in America among American Muslims. Many Saudis support Osama bin Laden, condone attacks on western targets and hate Israel. I know different people use different English words to translate it. Try suggesting something like that to the British Muslim Council here. The Islamist : Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left Writer The Islamist is a fascinating autobiographical account of one person's descent into Islamic extremism and gradual return to more moderate views. Host Krista Tippett speaks at length with Iraqi-American professor and advisor, Ahmed al-Rahim, for insight into the unfolding new relationship between mosque and state in Iraq. Here, he begins to believe in a divided world in which the only side that matters is the Muslims. By now, Husain is a student at the Tower Hamlets College. TIPPETT: And my sense is that although you were deeply involved and more and more involved and eventually completely estranged from your family because of this, it was when you came very, very close to terror — when you in fact were kind of on the periphery of a murder — that you personally began to shrink back from this. For permissions please e-mail: journals. Their text, Islam: Beliefs and Teachings , by Ghulam Sarwar -- "the first book I read about Islam in English" [5] —tells him that, contrary to his father's teaching, 'religion and politics are one and the same in Islam'. How he became radicalized in England is no different than how seemingly ordinary Muslims world-wide get radicalized. And I think his power lay in the fact that he even argued that the vast majority of Muslim governments were non- Muslim, that they came from what he called jahiliyyah. This position would also allow them to be the de facto official Muslim voice in public debates and in the media, overshadowing competing forces. Husain is slightly troubled by the fact that Hizb activists are not spiritual at all. In mosques, after prayers, many of my Muslim friends rightly ask what we are supposed to integrate into. My third novel High Rises, a crime thriller, is being serialised on a weekly basis and published on the Delhi Defence Review. He laments that, after the Abu Ghraib scandal, "no serious democrat can proudly hold up Western democracy as an example in the Middle East". View all newsletter. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy. Husain speaks approvingly of Tony Blair in a couple of places. Students at the British Council download pornography from the computers there, something not possible outside the British council. He came to feel most powerfully part of the ummah as an active member of Hizb ut-Tahrir an organization with a prominent presence in British mosques and universities. He is happy to reinforce stereotypes and justifies this by saying he knows what inspires terrorists—the likely inference being that his book is an educational tool. Yes you need to reread the odd phrase and definition a couple of times to One of his companions came up to him and said that, in the past, I buried my daughter and, as I was burying her, she was wiping off the soil from my clothes and, looking back, I feel extremely bad about what I did. He did so by rediscovering what he describes as 'classical, traditional Islam', which includes Sufi mysticism [1]. It is common to refer to these networks in each country as Muslim Brotherhood branches, even though the term should not imply an authority of the Egyptian mother group over them. When I was sixteen I became an Islamic fundamentalist. Advance article alerts. They go to Turkey for their honeymoon. Not just Muslims but you have a vanguard Muslim group over and above everybody else, who leads the Muslim community into confronting the West, into confronting the nonbelieving world. While perceived flaws in the organization have been cited by all as crucial in their decision to leave, in most cases deep concerns about the ideology of the Brotherhood had even more weight. These are strong, perhaps left-leaning words. She has rejected Islam as fundamentally incompatible with Western culture and democracy. It should be read critically, but The Islamist is an important artefact of our age, carrying a valuable testimony. Why are young British Muslims becoming extremists? Full Menu Search On Being. Ed Husain's memoir exposes some of the mind games that led them there. Soon, Husain identifies himself not as British or Asian, only Muslim. He switches to the Hizb-ut-Tahir, an even more virulent organisation run by the notorious Omar Bakir.
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