Ed Husain

This article is part of the Counter-Terrorism Portal project of Spinwatch.

Ed Husain is the co-director of the Quilliam Foundation, author of The Islamist and a member of the Labour Party. Ed Husain has also worked for the British government's cultural propaganda body, the British Council, in Syria and Saudi Arabia from 2003-2005.

Ed Husain's real name is Mohammed Mahbub Husain. He was born on 25 December 1975 and raised in Tower Hamlets, East London. According to his own account he was formerly involved with political Islamic organisations such as the Jamat-e-Islami, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hizb ut-Tahrir.

In his initial Quilliam Foundation biography that has now been altered, it was stated that Ed Husain was a ‘campus recruiter’ for Hizb ut-Tahrir who ‘laid the ideological seeds for much of the contemporary Islamism’s manifestations in Britain’. According to his own analysis of his own activism, Ed Husain stated that he had ‘radicalized [his] entire college [because] ‘there were Muslim women walking around in veils and face covers [and] Muslim men going around putting up posters’.

Hizb ut-Tahrir has rejected the claim made by Ed Husain that he was a member of the organisation. Taji Mustafa, the Media spokesperson for Hizb ut-Tahrir stated that ‘Ed Husain was never a member of Hizb-ut-Tahrir. We need to have our facts very clear.’ In response to Taji Mustafa’s claims, Ed Husain stated that he had ‘attended cell structure meetings for two years’, but failed to clarify whether he was an official member or not. Despite this though, Ed Husain has continuously claimed that he was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir and went onto write the Islamist, which is based on his experience of being a member of the organisation.

Early life

Ed Husain was born in Mile End, to a father born in India during British rule, and a mother born in what was then East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. the first formative influence described by Husain was his family’s close association with the Muslim scholar Saheb Qiblah Fultali, at whose meetings the young Husain gave Koranic recitations. On Husain’s account he was drawn away from his parent’s brand of traditional Islam by a fellow student with family links to the Young Muslims Organisation (YMO) and the south Asian Jamaat-e-Islami. He subsequently began to attend YMO meetings. As a student at Tower Hamlets College, Husain became president of the Student Islamic Society, a position which, according to The Islamist, he was eventually asked to use to recruit for YMO. However, by this time YMO influence was itself being overtaken by more radical groups, including Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT).

Hizb-ut-Tahrir

Husain himself became interested in HuT because of what he saw as its more active response to the Bosnian conflict in the early 1990s. He attended a lecture by the then HuT leader Omar Bakri Muhammad at the LSE. He became leader of HuT at Tower Hamlets College, losing his position as Islamic Society president as a result, and joined a HuT cell. Husain reports that a fellow HuT activist, ‘Bernie’, told him that MI5 had a modus vivendi with Bakri, stating: ‘Having Omar serves them well for the future. MI5 knows exactly what we’re doing, what we’re about, and yet they have in effect, given us the green light to operate in Britain.’ It is perhaps odd that Husain is able to reproduce a conversation from the early 1990s in direct quotes. That the narrative of The Islamist links the discussion to post-7/7 debates about British security debates should perhaps give pause. Nevertheless, there is evidence to suggest that the account attributed to Bernie may have been essentially accurate. Both security figures and radical activists including Bakri himself have spoken of the existence of some kind of understanding at about this time. In 1994, Husain moved to Newham College where he was joined the by Maajid Nawaz, a HuT member he had previously met during a visit to Southend. Together, they set up a debating society to challenge the college’s Islamic Society. Unlike Nawaz, Husain did not witness the murder of Ayotunde Obanubi. Nawaz told Bakri that the killing occurred in self-defence, and asked him to support the college’s Muslims. Instead, HuT, condemned the killing, stating that it was a non-violent party. In The Islamist, Husain condemns this position as disengenous, arguing that the difference between individual jihadi vigilantism and the HuT vision of a militant Islamic state was a purely tactical one.

After HuT

According to Husain, the killing was the beginning of his disillusionment with HuT. He subsequently attended the University of North London, where he was able to avoid HuT influence. He came to see HuT’s ideas as a product of what might be called the European counter-enlightenment. While at University, he began to attend meetings of the Islamic Society of Britain, where he met activists including Inayat Bunglawala, who he described as ‘a democrat’ who was ‘committed to Muslim integration'. He nevertheless criticised the ISB’s support for Hamas and its conservative social values. In The Islamist, he presents a picture of an organisation whose different currents mirrored his own confusion at the time: “Were they Islamists, or British Muslims, looking to lead an ordinary life? Or both?” Husain joined the Labour Party in 1997. He began working for HSBC, where by 1999, he was working in its private banking arm. By 2001 Husain regarded himself as committed to the Sufi spiritual tradition within Islam. He nevertheless portrays his political reaction to 9/11 as shaped by a residual Islamism. In The Islamist, he writes:

Even among western liberals, there were those who ‘understood’ how and why suicide bombings occurred. As long as it was in Palestine and Israel, we could intellectualize the problem, philosophize about the psychology of suicide bombers. Even many non-Islamist Muslims called such crimes ‘martyrdom operations’. The barbaric events of 11 September 2001 changed all that. The global political climate altered irrevocably’.

In the aftermath of 9/11, Husain supported the American Islamic scholar Hamza Yusuf, and his decision to meet President Bush, though he said that Bush ‘made a grave mistake in not heeding the advice of religious scholars and instead forcing the world into a ‘with us or against us’ polarization’. In 2002, Husain began part-time Arabic classes at the School of Oriental and African Studies.

Syria

The following year, he moved to Syria to learn Arabic. He supported himself by teaching English, initially at the University of Damascus and later at the British Council. During 2004, he recognised two British HuT members and reported them to the university authorities. He was interviewed by Syrian intelligence, and saw a later wave of arrests as vindication of his suspicions. The consequences for anyone identified by the Assad regime as a HuT member at this time were potentially serious. In 2006, Amnesty reported that HUT was among banned political parties whose members were brought before the state security and military courts, tribunals characterised by a ‘gross lack of independence and impartiality’. Torture and ill-treatment of such political prisoners was widely reported, particularly at pre-trial detention. The report also noted a large number of arrests in Syria linked to the insurgency in Iraq during this period. In The Islamist Husain notes that one of his initial flatmates in Damascus had attempted to join the insurgency only to be turned back at the border by the Syrian authorities. Husain himself took the view that Saddam Hussein had effectively invited invasion ‘by playing cat and mouse games with United Nations arms inspectors.’ Of his time at the British Council, Husain stated that he took ‘more seriously than most other teachers’ his obligation to promote British culture, and that he founded a debating society where Syrian and western students could interact despite the lack of freedom of speech in Syria.

Saudi Arabia

After two years in Syria, Husain and his wife applied for jobs with the British Council in Riyadh. They remained there for seven months.

Return to England

On his return to England, Husain became a postgraduate student at the University of London. He met with Maajid Nawaz, informing him of his plans for the book that became The Islamist. Their discussions led Husain to conclude that there were now two strands within HuT, a cautious leadership and a more radical grassroots.

Ed Husain & Neo-Cons

Ed Husain has been repeatedly accused of being a neo-conservative and a Zionist sympathiser. In response to these claims, Ed Husain and Maajid Nawaz co-authored an article entitled 'Putting the Record Straight' on the Guardian's Comment is Free blog and argued that they were being accused by Islamists for being neo-conservatives and Zionists, whilst they were being accused by Zionists for being ‘Islamists’ and ‘soft-Jihadists’. In order to prove the pair were not neo-cons or zionist sympathsisers, they argued:

We have...spoken out publicly and privately against the government's 42-days detention of terrorist suspects...We also criticised the government when it hesitated to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. We condemned Israel's disproportionate reaction when it was unfashionable to do so in Westminster. We are not afraid to speak our minds, even if that means upsetting allies and foes alike. In our personal capacities, we signed a letter to the PM, with other prominent Muslim individuals, highlighting the failures of current UK foreign policy towards the Middle East, and the lack of a clear stance in Israel's offensive.

But the questions relating to Ed Husain’s alleged links with a Neoconservativism have emerged from the fact that the Quilliam Foundation had close associations with author of ‘Neo-Conservativism: Why we Need it’ and Director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, Douglas Murray and on the Quilliam's advisory board is Michael Gove. Moreover, the members of the Quilliam Foundation have been jointly working on the attack blog, the Spittoon in trying to discredit and smear any individual that has attempted to expose any such links or connections.

Ed Husain, until a recent falling out and public display of personal attacks, earned acclaim from Melanie Phillips the right-wing columnist and staunch Zionist. In her review of the Islamist, she stated:

Ed Hussain should be applauded for his courage in writing this. It should also serve to wake people up to a truth they are continuing to deny, that fanatical ideas can kill — and that if we in Britain are serious about halting the scourge of Islamist terrorism, the government must ban the fanatics of Hizb ut Tahrir who do so much to propel impressionable young people towards mass murder. Ed Hussain displays intellectual honesty and guts. The British government displays neither.

Fall out with Melanie Phillips

Earlier a key backer of Ed Husain, Melanie Phillips went on to denounce him after he wrote an article critical of the Israeli assault on Gaza (Operation Cast Lead). She called Ed Husain's article 'stupid and ignorant' and 'poisonous' which placed him on the wrong side 'in the great battle to defend civilisation against barbarism'.

In response to Melanie Phillips', Ed Husain wrote that he was frightened of Phillips's 'zealotry and ignorance' and asked the question 'how did we produce a public commentator filled with such anger, venom and hatred?'

Interestingly, in the article Husain defends the Islamic Society of Britain and the Muslim Council of Britain and its spokesman Inayat Bunglawala (whom he has previously tarnished as an extremist) against Phillips's attacks. He added:

'The Israel First test, which she seeks to impose on British Muslims (as well as an American president), reeks of racism. Why is Israel more important than any other country in the world? With leading British Muslims increasingly supporting a secular state, democracy, women's rights, gay rights and liberal pluralism, and opposing Islamist extremism – then still be attacked as "extremists" or "Islamist" because they don't support Likud's plans for Israel is bullying and uncompromising in the extreme [...] But do fairness and humanity matter to Phillips? [...] To that demented mindset, whatever Muslims do, right or wrong, principled or otherwise, we will always be subject to Robert Spencer's brigade of trolls who will shout "taqiyya" to our supposed hiding of Islamist loyalties.

Opinions on Contest & Counter-Terrorism

When the widely controversial and wide-sweeping Contest 2 British counter-terrorism strategy was announced, Ed Husain in a Telegraph article stated:

Hazel Blears, the gutsy Communities Secretary, supports a tough approach. But she is being undermined repeatedly by the Muslim advisers who surround her and who have a major stake in ensuring the new strategy goes in a different direction. Let us be clear: Contest 2 is about ensuring Britain's security, uprooting terrorism and creating a proud, pluralist nation at home with liberal, secular democracy. It is about shifting the current lethargic thinking that surrounds Islamist extremism. It is not about appeasing activist Muslim men who lobby for Hamas. The Contest 2 White Paper must be more courageous than what we have seen from this Government to date. It should disregard the findings of focus groups, the self-serving advice of "community experts", and name the monster that we face: Islamist extremism.

In the same article, he continued his calling of the Muslim Council of Britain 'extremists'. he concluded by stating - 'We cannot defeat terrorism by hugging extremists. As Charles Colson, chief counsel to President Nixon, once said, if you grab them by the balls, the hearts and minds will follow'.

Preventing Violent Extremism

In October 2009, when a report produced by the Institute of Race Relations suggested that the Preventing Violent Extremism programme was being used as a cover by the Police and Intelligence Services for collating intelligence and information on the Muslim community in Britain, Ed Husain argued that if the intelligence being collated was for the purpose of stopping 'people getting killed and committing terrorism, it is good and it is right'. He also added that 'It would be morally wrong of a taxpayer-funded programme designed to prevent terrorism if it was not designed to gather intelligence in order to stop that terrorism from happening'. He also suggested that any individual who gave the impression, or did put forth extremist views should not only be challenged in a civic way, but also handed over to the Police and investigated. Ed Husain also beleives that the gathering of intelligence outweighs civil liberty concerns - 'That's the name of the game. It's not about doing the right thing by Islamists or by liberal do-gooders, it's about creating a society where liberal do-gooders survive freely.'

Darfur

On August 10 2009, Ed Husain wrote an article in the Independent entitled 'Where is the Muslim anger over Darfur?' in which he accused Muslims of being silent over the death of 400,000 Darfuris. But the 400,000 figure is an exaggerated figure and used by proponents of military intervention despite the fact that a panel of 12 experts convened in 2006 by the US Government Accountability Office unanimously found it least credible after evaluating six separate mortality figures. The most reliable estimate according to the panel was by a WHO-linked Belgian research lab Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) which put the mortality figure at 118,142, of which less than 30 percent were due to violence. . After admitting that 'pollster James Zogby found 80 per cent of those questioned in four Arab countries were concerned about Darfur and felt it should have more media attention' and that 'some commentators in Muslim-majority countries are questioning their leaders' support for Bashir', Ed Husain went onto denounce 'Muslims' amnesia about Darfur', which according to him, is 'symptomatic of the malaise affecting the public face of a faith that lacks the confidence to engage in constructive debate or renewal'.

Criticisms

Ed Husain has faced a vast array of criticisms from a range of individuals. Here are some excerpts which indicate how critics perceive Ed Husain and his efforts:

Yvonne Ridley:

When his phone stops ringing and he’s no longer invited as the token Muslim to cocktail parties by the Notting Hill set or the even more fickle Islington crowd, maybe then he will have time to reflect on the damage he’s done to the Muslim community. And I’m not talking about Muslims like myself who can usually stand up for themselves. I’m talking about those quiet, timid brothers and sisters who are afraid as they turn every street corner for fear of being confronted by some Islamophobic thug with hate in his eyes … a hate inadvertently fuelled by the likes of Ed Hussain and his ilk.

Seumas Milne:

Rarely a TV debate goes by without Ed Husain, one-time member of Hizb ut-Tahrir and now a British neocon pinup boy, or Hassan Butt, formerly of the banned al-Muhajiroun group, insisting that this is all about people with identity crises who are "hell-bent on destroying the west", denouncing Ken Livingstone for engaging in dialogue with Islamists, or calling for a harsher crackdown on their former fellow enthusiasts for the restoration of the caliphate. They are championed by politicians like the Tory Michael Gove and New Labour's Denis MacShane, who this week argued that all Islamists, from the liberal Muslim academic Tariq Ramadan to al-Qaida terrorists, had to be confronted without exception.

Ziauddin Sardar:

When he finally realises his folly, and bids farewell to Hizb, Husain continues to be a reductive extremist. Now, the entire blame for the radicalisation of Muslim youth is placed on multiculturalism - the very idea that gave Husain all the opportunities he had in life! Terrorists, he tells us, are a product of sexual frustration. So we ought to provide them with generous doses of sex to usher them towards peaceful directions. Hizb ut-Tahir should be banned so that they can take their nefarious activities underground and become even more difficult to tackle. Muslim organisations are secret terrorist sympathisers. Husain doesn't tell us what we should do with them. But I suspect he wants everyone locked up, leaving the terrain open for his brand of neocons to run amok.

Riazat Butt:

By diligently charting his involvement with Hizb ut-Tahrir, Hussain has employed a simplistic and back-pedalling narrative that will be seen by many as the definitive portrait of fundamentalist Muslims. 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. But Husain was not a terrorist and his account is dated and misleading. The groups he mentions, and their modus operandi, are more fluid and sophisticated now. Husain provides no new answers and no fresh information. The activities of Hizb ut-Tahrir and their ilk have been well documented already. I have to ask why, when his experiences are firmly based in the 1990s, this book is being published now and is being greeted with an adulation that is both embarrassing and unwarranted.

Affiliations

• Adviser to the Tony Blair Faith Foundation
• Adjunct senior fellow at Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)

Contact details

Twitter @Ed_Husain

Publications

Articles

• West must not intervene militarily in Syria, CNN, 9 February 2012.