The first paragraph of the preface to the American version of Radical tells us that Americans misunderstand Islam and Muslims misunderstand America. Consequently Maajid Nawaz feels that his book is an act of diplomacy, disguised as the story of his life.
Indeed we learn from his story things very important for us to know. First and vitally interesting is the fact that he was radicalized by the personal experience of discrimination, simply because he was a brown boy, a Pakistani in London. Angry, violent and defiant of the police, who appeared to participate in the discrimination against “the Pakis,” he was also influenced by American hip-hop music.
Secondly he was impacted by a world event that never should have happened. A film about the war in Bosnia opened his eyes to the violence perpetrated against Muslims, not even brown people, but people with blond hair and blue eyes. This gave him and his brown-boy gang another, broader way to characterize themselves. They were Muslims; the oppressed people of Bosnia were Muslims. In fact the war in Bosnia, according to Nawaz, was crucial to the radicalization of European Muslims and then this radicalization spread across the Middle East and Asia!
This was in the 1990s when the Western powers were still concerned with the response of Russia about everything and this caused them to be very slow to intervene in any conflict just for humanitarian reasons. He thinks that maybe the end result would have been different if the US had acted sooner in the Balkans, because this would have revealed an ability to be concerned for the lives of Muslims.
These two things made him open to the appeal of an extremist Muslim ideology, the third and final factor in his radicalization. Hizb al-Tahrir (Freedom Party), the movement Nawaz joined, used films about Bosnia to recruit young men. They believed and taught that the Khalifah (Caliphate), a Muslim superstate, was the solution to injustices against Muslims. In a very short time he became passionate about the work of Hizb al-Tahrir and was chosen for leadership positions. He studied, without finishing his college degree, married Rabia, a woman who was part of the movement, traveled to Pakistan to recruit members, had a little boy Ammar and then went to Egypt to do recruiting. He and several fellow party members were arrested there and sent to an infamous prison where they were brutally tortured.
The beginning of a profound change in the opposite direction might be even more surprising and more instructional to us than the beginning of Nawaz’ radicalization.
He and his comrades had been convicted by the Egyptians for their beliefs, rather than for any violent behavior, and because of this they were adopted by Amnesty International as prisoners of conscience. Being treated like a human being, simply because he was a human being, without any political consideration, had a profound effect on Nawaz. The lawyer sent to him by Amnesty did not agree with him but defended him anyway. Such action, he realized rehumanized people, instead of dehumanizing them. It did not see or treat them as enemies but as people with rights.
Nawaz began to rethink his positions because, as he explains, “where the heart leads the mind will follow.” Throughout his several years in the Egyptian prison he thought and studied and identified one by one the flaws in the whole ideology to which he had dedicated himself. He saw the ethical issues and began to want to connect with life instead of being fascinated with death and the afterlife.
There were other prisoners with liberal ideas who influenced him, and he read a lot of books. (I am a bit surprised that he could do this and by what he had access to in a prison run by Egyptian security.) He questioned everything he had believed, began to realize that words like “law,” “state,” and “constitution” do not appear in the Quran and shari’ah law (a highly redundant term, because “shari’ah” is simply an Arabic word for law) had never been a “codified law.” All of these were modern political concepts, which did not exist when the Quran was written.
The best example he knew of Muslim government was the Ottoman Empire which had never had a unified legal system but rather left the interpretation of shari’ah to local community tribunals. Throughout most of Islamic history there had never been a single interpretation of the law. This led to his understanding that the goals of Hizb al-Tahrir were based on Western constructs. It meant, he realized, Islamism was depending on Western concepts of justice as the basis of their own ideas.
None of this thinking turned Nawaz away from Islam but away from Muslim radicalism, which he calls Islamism. On page 212 of his book, Nawaz gives the reader a lucid explanation of how Islamophobia actually adds to a dangerous world situation. “Islamophobes and Islamists have much in common: both groups insist that Islam is a totalitarian political ideology at odds with liberal democracy, and hence both insist that the two will inevitably clash. One extreme calls for the Qur’an to be banned, the other calls for banning everything but the Qur’an. Together they form the negative and the positive of a bomb fuse.”
Realizing that violence in response to violence will never succeed, because “ideas are bullet proof,” the author declares that the way to win is to create a more appealing narrative. This counter narrative must be created out of the ideals of respect for human rights, pluralism, individual freedoms, and faith. Because Islamist ideology has been spread through the grassroots, so the new narrative must permeate all elements of society: politics, media, the arts, social media, academia and public opinion. Democracy has to be reconciled with Islam in the hearts of the masses.
He established the Quilliam Foundation as a way to create this narrative. It is a think tank which has become a recognized authority on Islam, on the conflict within Islam and between others and Islam.
All of this makes Radical a work of major importance for those who are trying to make sense of world events and would like to participate in a positive way to peace on earth. I find that its clarity has wiped clean the foggy window through which I look at the threat of violent extremism. My hope is that you will read it for yourself. There is so much more in it than I have told. Get your book club to read and discuss it. Make sure your public library has it. However, having read a borrowed copy, I intend to get my own so that I can underline information and ideas that I need to remember. I recommend that you do the same and spread what you learn in your own circles of influence. You might start by just sharing this blog.
Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with you and me.