Ed Husain

Ed Husain (real name Mohammed Mahbub Husain & born on 25 Dec. 1975) is the co-director of the Quilliam Foundation and the author of the Islamist.

Ed Husain was born and raised in East London and was involved with organisations such as the Jamat-e-Islami, the Muslim Brotherhood, and most famously Hizb ut-Tahrir. His most recent biography on the Quilliam Foundation website alleges, that he 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, he ‘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 outright 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 in a CNN interview with Christina Amanpour 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, Ed Husain has continuously claimed that he was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir and went onto write a his book the Islamist, which is based on his experience of being an alleged member of Hizb ut-Tahrir.

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.