Ed Husain

Ed Husain is co-director of the Quilliam Foundation.

Born and raised in London, Ed has been involved in an array of Islamist groups in Britain and their front organisations, including Jamat-e-Islami, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Hizb ut-Tahrir. In the early 90's, when these groups were first emerging, Ed was a highly effective strategist and campus recruiter who laid the ideological seeds for much of contemporary Islamism's manifestations in Britain. Some of Ed's recruits remain senior activists till this day. His eventual rejection of this ideology, documented in his book 'The Islamist', led him to a path of discovering pluralistic, normative Islam.

Ed has travelled widely across the Middle East. He studied history at university and then went on to learn Arabic at the University of Damascus during 2003-2005. He relocated to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, before returning home to England in 2006. Ed holds an MA in Middle-East studies from SOAS, University of London. He is now pursuing doctoral studies in Arab experiences of post-colonial secularism.

On Islam and Muslims

Ed Husain's concerns and approach appear to ape many neoconservative memes and despite his extremist past, and peculiar present, the British media has been remarkably welcoming.

On anti-Terror Legislation

When in 2008 Hazel Blears announced the widely criticized Contest 2 strategy for countering extremism, Husain was one of the rare voices of support. After describing 'extremism' in the most expansive terms possible in an article for the Daily Telegraph, lumping in the Muslim Council of Britain also as extremist, Husain went on to quote with approval a chief counsel to Richard Nixon:

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".

On Darfur

On August 10 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 what claims is the death of 400,000 Darfuris. (The most reliable estimate of the number of deaths for all sides before the violence subsided is 118,142, according to a US Government Accountability Office report. of which less than 30 percent were due to violence). Bizarrely, 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', Husain goes on to 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'.

Supporters

Melanie Phillips

Earlier a key backer of Ed Husain, Phillips went on to denounce him after he wrote an article critical of the Israeli assault on Gaza. She called Husain's piece 'stupid and ignorant' and 'poisonous' which placed him on the wrong side 'in the great battle to defend civilisation against barbarism'. In turn Ed Husain writes he is frightened of Phillips's 'zealotry and ignorance'. He adds: '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 against Phillips's attacks. He adds:

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.