Radical (14 page)

The one thing I could do was recruit. Our strategy for Muslim-majority countries such as Pakistan was a long-term one. We knew that since Zia's coup in the 1970s, the process of “Islamisizing” Pakistan's institutions had been going on long enough. Islamist groups by this time were dominant on many campuses and were attracting hundreds of thousands to their rallies. The country's intellectual elite feared Islamist intimidation and continued to make concessions to them. Thanks to the way Islamist groups were able to hijack Jinnah's vision, thanks to the Afghan jihad and the policies of Pakistani's Intelligence Service (ISI) and the CIA, thanks to the rise of the Taliban, thanks to historic concessions made by the progressive governments of Pakistan, and thanks to corruption and incompetent governance, our job of injecting Islamism into Pakistan's masses was already well under way.

However, we knew that the two power blocs that really mattered in Pakistan, the two sectors without which change could not come, were the intelligentsia and the army. Instead of wasting our efforts trying to build a mass movement that already existed, we began targeting the upper-middle classes and the armed forces. These groups formed the bulk of people who actually ran the nation. If we could hijack them, the masses would gladly follow our lead.

There was already a special team, coordinated by British-Pakistani HT member Omar Khan, working within the army, focused on recruiting cadets. Our job was to target the elite English colleges such as Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and other places that had previously been bastions of liberal thought. We began visiting posh cafes on Mall Road and yuppie youth clubs, speaking in our perfect English, with our college degrees, our arguments well-honed. Nobody had seen the likes of us before. We were Islamists, but we were clean-shaven, young, wealthy, and mobile. We dressed well, were Western-educated, and yet we were calling for “the
Khilafah.
” We swept such places clean in no time.

I put my head down and got to work in two areas—aiming to build supporters within Punjab University and setting up the organization in Raheem Yar Khan, the town where Rabia's relatives lived. I was traveling to Raheem Yar Khan on weekends, and in a short space of time I had set up three
halaqahs
. These
halaqahs
weren't full of students, but of older and more influential individuals. There was even a local Salafist mosque imam who joined us. Then there was the ever-smiling Uncle Qayyum, the friendly doctor with the huge gray beard. The beard mattered in the Pakistani context: it showed he was a serious and religious man. And he was genuinely devout, in the good, pious sort of way. He would leave his house at dawn, walk to the mosque to pray, and once he'd closed his surgery in the afternoon, he'd be seen in the streets handing out food to the poor.

“Maajid
bhai
—my brother, we are instructed by our Prophet, ‘
alayhi salam,
to be kind to our neighbors. A neighbor is defined as everyone on your street,” he once told me. “That's why I try to distribute food to my whole road, so I can get the full
sawab
—the blessings.”

For his piety, he was loved by his family, friends, and neighbors alike, as he was by me. Uncle Qayyum and I were extremely close; he became the linchpin for all that I was to do for HT in Raheem Yar Khan. I'd recruited his son, his brother, and many of his friends. The people I recruited were all rooted in the local communities; they were exactly the pillars of influence that HT dreamed of bringing on board. With them you could change the culture.

One day, I got a call from an excited Uncle Qayyum: “Maajid, listen,
bhai,
I've been approached by a man whose name is the ‘sincere one.' This ‘sincere one' has been going around doing
tableegh
—advocacy for our cause, for around twelve years now, all alone, and has finally found us again! He heard about our work through some people he tried to recruit in Raheem Yar Khan, and has just arrived at my surgery. You must come and see him,
jaldi ajau,
come fast; he's a gift from Allah to our cause!” Word was surely spreading, and our cells in Raheem Yar Khan were multiplying.

I asked Abdul Wajid to come to Raheem Yar Khan to see what I was doing and ensure the continuity for his work. He was skeptical at first, but when he finally did come, he was clearly surprised. They might not have trusted me, but Imtiaz and the others could no longer deny my success. It helped that Rabia had relatives there—it gave me credibility. HT began to subsidize my weekend flights to Raheem Yar Khan, in the hope of creating a real stronghold. For me, this was vindication.

Yet leaving was on my mind. In the midst of all this work Rabia had become pregnant. I was overjoyed, but here was something precious that the group would have no part of. I knew that my wife wanted to have our baby back in the UK and to be near her parents for support. That set a clock ticking for our return. I continued to recruit with the knowledge that we were thinking of returning to Britain. I wrote to SOAS and to my relief, it was possible to extend your leave of absence to two years. I could return to continue my course as though nothing had happened.

It was a remarkable time to be living in Pakistan. This was around 1999, when the democratic government of Nawaz Sharif was removed in a military coup, and General Musharraf took over. The next time I returned to Pakistan, almost a decade later, the country would be democratically ruled again, and I would be campaigning to entrench democratic culture within the country. In a strange parallel, Pakistan's story would echo my own.

It is difficult not to see that period now as the run-up to 9/11. Nobody could have foreseen what was coming, but we all felt the strength of the movement: the way that the ideas of Islamism and Jihadism were spreading and taking root. It definitely felt as though we were part of something big, that we were almost on the verge of taking over. The Taliban in Afghanistan, the Sudanese government, these seemed to be just the start of something that the West was yet to pick up on. In those days the Taliban believed Pakistan was an Islamic state already and had no gripe with the country. I remember meeting a senior Taliban commander in Raheem Yar Khan, in an effort to convince him that Pakistan was an illegitimate colonial entity. It didn't take long for the Pakistani Taliban to adopt our more revolutionary mantra.

Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the group that would commit the Mumbai attacks in 2008, was another fledgling organization that was working to garner support. Although they were Salafist in creed and jihadist in their methodology, their ideology was similar to HT's. In fact, LeT was using HT's own literature as part of their recruitment drive. Because all of this was so new, the authorities were slow to recognize the threat we all posed.

In the same way that before the Newham murder, no one took the warnings seriously, so the Pakistani authorities did little to stop the spread of these organizations. For example, in those early days LeT was holding their annual conferences—their
ijtima—
out in the open in their stronghold town of Muridke, which I attended. I remember seeing some of Omar Bakri's followers, from the now-banned al-Muhajiroun, in attendance there too. I think I caught a glimpse of the fiery Abdur Rahman, from the heady Newham days. (Abdur Rahman would later go on to be convicted under the terrorism law for an offense in the UK.) It said everything then that the keynote speaker at the conference was General Hamid Gul, the former head of the ISI, Pakistan's military intelligence.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Caliphs in Copenhagen

When I returned to the UK, it was like nothing had changed. I had my place to get my degree back at college. My father was under the impression I'd come to my senses and come back to continue my studies, and so welcomed me upon my return. As for my position in Hizb al-Tahrir, my troubles with Imtiaz followed me. They sent an excoriating report to the UK leadership about the likelihood that I was “an agent” and how I was not to be trusted.

By this time Nasim had gone off to set up HT in Bangladesh, and the new UK leader was a British-Indian called Jalaluddin Patel. Unlike Nasim, Jalaluddin hadn't known me; he hadn't witnessed that passionate sixteen-year-old B-boy transform into a global Islamist recruiter. Jalaluddin had been raised under Abdul Wajid and was shaped in that mold. I was given a local university role and had one of my former
dariseen,
Amir, placed in charge over me with strict instructions not to trust me. I didn't envy Amir; by now my
da'wah
antics were known throughout HT, and here was one of my former students in the embarrassing position of having to pretend to lead me
. No problem,
I thought,
I managed this in Pakistan, and I can manage it here.
Amir, to his credit, was an intelligent brother, and he dealt with me sensibly. It didn't take him long to be expelled from HT for his independence.

The most significant change in my life was the birth of my son, Ammar, which means “the one who will build great things.” We named him after the famous companion of the Prophet, loved by the Sunni and Shia—a son to the first martyrs of Islam, Yasir and Sumayyah, who were tortured to death by their slave master. Our son was similarly born to parents who were going to sacrifice everything for the cause, and in turn, that is what I envisioned him doing as well. The original Ammar, a general to the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law, Ali, may Allah honor his countenance, was eventually killed in Islam's first civil war against the rebel forces of Mu'awaiya. Things always return to the romanticism of struggle.

Back in the UK, as Rabia and I settled into our new life, the first cracks in our relationship began to show. As any new parent knows, the experience of looking after a newborn baby is an exhausting one. The endless sleepless nights can take their toll on the best of relationships. It was a period when Rabia really needed me to dig deep and support her. Yet she now perceived how there were three of us in the relationship: me, her, and our ideology. I was so committed to the cause that stepping back to help her cope with bringing up our son would have felt like a dereliction of duty. If anything, to ward off the temptation of staying at home in the comforting embrace of my wife and newly born son, I
increased
my campaign work during this period.

These were cruel, selfish things easy to do under the delusion of self-righteousness; I crushed that woman's dreams pursuing an elusive “
Khilafah
.” Having denied her a honeymoon, I was now denying her my support during her most difficult time. But we were both incredibly young, only just into our twenties, and still full of this heady mixture of self-confidence and ideological certainty. She wanted to settle more into married life, but she knew who I was when I married her. “If I become the person you are asking me to become, then you would not have loved me in the first place,” I argued
.
And with those words I'd leave the house, questioning whether an ideological bond alone was sufficient for a lasting marriage.

My work felt more crucial than ever. Though Salafi-Jihadism tipped over into international prominence in 2001 because of 9/11, the peak of the movement's support and momentum was the year before. I did my best to take advantage of this surge of interest in Islamism. Back at SOAS I found another brother to tag-team on the
da'wah
with: Ashraf ul-Haque. Ashraf told me he had turned down an offer from Oxford to attend SOAS so he could follow in my footsteps. Together we re-created the glory of those early days right there in SOAS, recruiting another three
halaqahs
of followers. As I guided and protected him through HT's machinery, we became inseparable, bonding in our shared disdain for incompetent HT administrators. Although we didn't advocate Jihadism in any of our teachings, we set a number of students on this path through our politics. One of my recruits that year was Zeeshan Siddiqui, who was later arrested and detained in Afghanistan by US forces, having gone there to join the “Jihad.”

I was also given the opportunity to help recruit Pakistani soldiers. There was a group of army officers who had been sent over on a scholarship to train at Sandhurst. This was a goldmine for HT: as I said, their method of taking a country was to infiltrate the military and instigate a coup. It turned out that one of these soldiers had links to HT through his relatives. Someone in his family ran the garage I used to take my car to. The garage owner's son, Aftab, was an HT
daris
, and although not a natural recruiter, had managed to raise the interest of this soldier. The officers were about to return to Pakistan, and so I was brought in for an introduction. My task was to give them a final send-off, with encouragement about how they should recruit within Pakistan's army.

I talked to them about HT and explained how they could be central to our plans of taking control there. Rather than them becoming HT members openly, I said their responsibility was to go back to Pakistan and support the group clandestinely and begin building cells inside the army. They should then wait, and prepare to take part in a military coup.

This was a high-stakes plan, with severe consequences if it wasn't successful. In 2003, journalist Ahmed Rashid reported that General Musharraf had led a purge inside Pakistan's army, rooting out what he described as al-Qaeda–sympathizing cells. He was right about the cells, but wrong about the affiliation: these were the same HT supporters I had met in that dingy London flat and incited to rise up. When I heard the news, I felt stricken: the “War on Terror” was in full swing and I knew that these soldiers were tortured in interrogation.
*

In 2000 HT would regularly hold rallies, and I quickly became one of the key speakers at these events. We held events outside the US Embassy and in Trafalgar Square, led marches and ran speaker events in Hyde Park. The rallies would regularly attract audiences of around three thousand people. This was a different skill from the careful analysis of leading a
halaqah,
but I loved it. I enjoyed pumping up a crowd, and relished the chance to get our message across to so many people. The size of these gatherings only reinforced our perception that the movement was on the cusp of a major breakthrough.

I also answered the call to kick-start the branch of HT in Denmark. This was like the jet-setting version of my work in Pakistan. I would spend the week in London, doing my studies at SOAS during the day and the
halaqahs
in the evening, and then on a Friday evening, I would fly out to Copenhagen and spend the weekend in Denmark. This made my work for HT a seven-day-a-week affair and created a schedule that put even further strain on my marriage.

The
qiyadah
were desperate to develop Denmark in order to help establish HT's roots on the European continent. For various reasons, the European chapters had not developed as they should have. The original HT chapter in Denmark had come under the authority of the European leadership in Germany and had followed their recruitment strategy of targeting first-generation immigrants, who had gone to the country for economic reasons. The result was that the European branches were almost entirely formed of North African and Turkish people. In the UK, by contrast, the focus had always been on those born and raised there, the angry younger generation: students at the universities and disaffected youth. The German strategy had never included these people, who were considered “slackers.” Our brothers in Denmark had now decided to follow the UK model, and HT was fast expanding there. But they were yet to see penetration of the young Danish-Pakistani community, which could have offered the organization another bridge into Pakistan, as we had done from the UK.

Given my background and experience in both universities and abroad, HT felt I was the ideal person to turn this situation around. I quickly made inroads into the community, setting up study circles and even meeting some Pakistani army recruits willing to support the cause.

What was striking about Denmark was how markedly worse it was from the UK in terms of racism. It felt as if I'd stepped back in time to my teenage years in Essex. In Britain, the issue had to some extent died down and society had moved on, whereas everywhere I went in Denmark people complained about racism. The lines on the continent were drawn differently. Third-generation Turks born and raised in Germany were still only classed as guest workers, seriously affecting how they saw themselves.

The response of the minority communities in Denmark to racism had been exactly the same as mine had been in Southend: violence. The potential recruits I met all had stories of serious criminal activity: these were former gangsters, former drug dealers. While Southend had been all about knife culture, here everyone had grown up around guns. I was told many tales of shoot-outs with police, attempted armed robberies, and on more than one occasion a shirt was lifted up and I was proudly shown a bullet wound or two.

Because of my background I was able to relate to these recruits in a way that the other recruiters couldn't. The potential recruits were interested in my journey, and how I'd gone from spewing anger to teaching revolutionary Islamism. I was in Denmark at the height of the Islamist fervor, which certainly made recruiting easier. I succeeded in seeding the growth of the Danish-Pakistani branch; it's sad, but the HT branch in Denmark is known as one of the organization's more extreme chapters to this day. Eventually, the German government would impose a ban on HT activities, and in 2006 the Danish chapter's spokesman, Fadi Abdul Latif, was convicted for hate speech and inciting violence.

Given all this commitment to HT, it is perhaps not surprising that my studies suffered as a result. When the results came in for my exams, I had passed the sections on law but failed my Arabic grammar, which is actually much harder. Without passing Arabic, I couldn't go on to the next part of my course: a year studying Arabic in Egypt's beautiful city of Alexandria.

I re-took the Arabic class at the beginning of September 2001 and passed. I could take up my place at the University of Alexandria, at their College of Literature's Centre for the Study of Arabic Language for Foreigners. Once again, Rabia and I packed our family belongings, by this time quite disillusioned with our relationship; she was again following me to another country.

As our flight left, I watched London disappear beneath our plane, Ammar in my arms, and thought:
Twelve months and I'm back here, I really need to work on my marriage, for little Ammar's sake.
Little did I know that it would be many years before I would set foot on British soil again, and then, as an irreversibly changed man. Or that by the time I arrived in Alexandria, events on the other side of the Atlantic, on four different US passenger flights, were about to irrevocably change the world.