Ed Husain

Ed Husain
Born	Mohammed Mahbub Husain December 25, 1974 (1974-12-25) Mile End, East London, United Kingdom
Residence	Washington, D.C., United States
Nationality	British
Ethnicity	Bangladeshi
Education	MA Middle Eastern Studies
Alma mater	Newham College School of Oriental and African Studies University of London University of Damascus
Occupation	Senior Fellow
Employer	Council on Foreign Relations
Known for	Author of The Islamist
Religion	Sunni Islam (Sufism)
Spouse	Fatima Husain (2000-present)
Website
Quilliam Foundation Council on Foreign Relations - Bio Page

Mohammed Mahbub Husain (born 25 December 1974) is a British writer and activist.

Husain is the author of The Islamist, a book about Islamic fundamentalism, and an account of his five years as an Islamist activist. Husain also helped to create, with Maajid Nawaz, the counter-extremism organisation the Quilliam Foundation. He is currently a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He writes a blog titled The Arab Street and is active on Twitter.

Biography

Early life

Husain was born and brought up in the East End of London, in a Bangladeshi Muslim family. A descendent of the Shah family from north west India, he is also the uncle of a highly controversial figure, Naseem/Patrick Ghani, leader of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Britain and Bangladesh. Husain's father was born in British India and his mother in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), from the region of Sylhet. His father arrived to the United Kingdom in 1961, and started a small Indian takeaway business in Limehouse. Husain's parents followed a spiritual form of Islam based on Sufi traditions, led by Sheikh Abdul Latif Chowdhury 'Fultali Saheb' (whom he called 'Grandpa'), a renowned Islamic spiritual guru from Sylhet.

In his early years, Husain was brought up in Limehouse and attended a local primary school called the Sir William Borough School, and he attended a predominantly Bangladeshi and Muslim secondary school called Stepney Green School. During his years in secondary school Husain was an outsider. He rejected the Bengali gang culture present in the school, and was sometimes oppressed by other students. Husain attended the Brick Lane Mosque in his early years (the mosque follows a movement belonging to a Sufi order). He later drifted away from his parents teachings, and, at the age of sixteen, was encouraged by a student to attend classes at the East London Mosque, and later joined the Young Muslim Organisation (YMO) part of the Islamic Forum Europe.

Islamism and Sufism

A few months later he was influenced to join a circle of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamic group which calls for the Caliphate, in whose activities he participated for around five years. Husain attended Tower Hamlets College in Poplar, and it was during his studies at Newham College in 1995 that he decided to leave the group. Later he joined the Islamic Society of Britain (ISB) and attended a family camp in Worcester in 1996. It was there that he was influenced by the spiritual side of Islam and later by scholars who helped convince him to leave the Islamist groups. He was further influenced by Sufism while visiting mosques in Turkey and meeting Sufis of the Naqshbandi order in Istanbul. After returning to London, he spent much of his time learning and memorizing the Qur'an.

Husain now strongly criticizes these groups, although Hizb ut-Tahrir categorically denied that he was ever given membership in the party. A few years later, he created an organisation together with Maajid Nawaz and Rashad Ali called the Quilliam Foundation, the first counter-extremism organisation to be formed by former radical Islamists. The aim of this organisation is to confront groups which promote at is alleged to be dangerous and extremist interpretations of Islam, and in particular to confront Hizb ut-Tahrir. The Quilliam Foundation describes itself as "the world’s first counter-extremism think tank set up to address the unique challenges of citizenship, identity, and belonging in a globalised world. Quilliam stands for religious freedom, equality, human rights and democracy." He was also a visiting fellow at the think-tank Civitas.

Personal life

Husain studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, where he completed an MA in Middle Eastern Studies. He later joined the Labour Party. He is married to a British Bengali woman, Faye (Fatima) since August 2000. Both moved to Syria to study Arabic at the University of Damascus. They later they moved to Saudi Arabia, where Ed worked for the British Council. During his studies he was nicknamed 'Ed' because students preferred this to Mohamed or Mahbub. He eventually returned to the U.K. and moved outside Tower Hamlets, living in Redbridge, and then in Essex. He now lives in New York City.

The Islamist

Main article: The Islamist

"The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, what I Saw Inside and why I Left."

In The Islamist, Husain describes how he became an Islamic fundamentalist at the age of 16. He explains that,

Five years later, after much emotional turmoil, I rejected fundamentalist teachings and returned to normal life and my family.

Husain says that his book explains

the appeal of extremist thought, how fanatics penetrate Muslim communities and the truth behind their agenda of subverting the West and moderate Islam.

The book was shortlisted for the 2008 Orwell Prize for political writing.

Husain's book has been called "highly acclaimed" and received positive reviews from The Guardian, The Times—which found it worth to run extracts from it for two weeks—and the International Herald Tribune. Other sources such as the Islamist organization Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Salafimanhaj.com website, and the Muslim Council of Britain have made strong criticism, alleging inaccuracy and flawed analysis by Husain. The text has been supported by former Islamists such as Maajid Nawaz and others, however.

The Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips has described Husain as a "brave Muslim". Guardian columnist Seumas Milne has called Husain a "British neocon pinup boy", while the former Labour minister Denis MacShane wrote in The Guardian that Husain and the Quilliam Foundation is "precisely the kind of witness to truth about evil that the left should embrace, not reject".

Ziauddin Sardar, the British Muslim intellectual, called Husain's "critical faculties ... conspicuously absent", arguing that his case is far more atypical than Husain claims, as "young Muslims are no more likely to join Hizb ut-Tahrir than young Christians are to join the Moonies." Sardar suspects Husain "wants everyone (in Muslim organizations) locked up, leaving the terrain open for his brand of neocons to run amok." In another of his articles in The Guardian, Sardar strongly attacked the feting of Husain and his colleagues arguing that "Just because you have been an inmate of a mental hospital does not mean you are an expert in clinical psychology. ... these repentant members of Islamist cults are part of the problem, not the solution".

The Muslim writer Andrew Booso "salutes" Husain for spending "so much of his time and energy" on the problem of "extremism" in the Muslim community, but criticizes Husain for showing "a serious inadequacy of knowledge regarding theology and Sacred Law as expounded by the masters through the ages." He has also been criticized by the Muslim Council of Britain for saying that "Saddam Hussein effectively invited the US army to invade Iraq by playing cat-and-mouse games with United Nations arms inspectors."

Views

Further information: Quilliam Foundation

Husain's views have been very controversial. His book "has caused a ruckus in the newspapers, on television, on talks shows and in blogs" in Britain. He has been called a "traitor" by some Muslims, criticized by some on the left, while "others, mostly on the right, have hailed him as brave."

Husain supports a liberal interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence, telling a journalist

In traditional circles, Muslim women are not allowed to marry non-Muslim men...But in a pluralistic world in 2007, where non-Muslim men and Muslim women are marrying, you can't say, 'You can’t do that.'

Husain also questions teachings relating to an Islamic state or Caliphate, arguing

... a dawlah ([a state] not 'the' state) can and should preserve and protect the religion. But 'the state' is not a rukn [pillar] of the deen (religion i.e. Islam) and without it the deen is not lost. And individual can remain a firm believer, a mutadayyin, without the imam and the jama'ah.

Husain has also explained that he believes Muslim society is in need of change. In an interview with Time Out, he said:

As I left extremism I realised that if you are born here and grow up here, then you belong here. The Islam that was preached 2,000 years ago isn’t going to work here in modern London. Muslims need to alter their lifestyles to a Western lifestyle. To criticise is not Islamaphobic. It's about opposing certain ideas.

Husain supports a two-state solution to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict. He has condemned the suicide bombing of Israeli civilians as well as the "killing of Palestinian civilians by the Hamas-led Gazan government".

Since joining the Council on Foreign Relations in 2010, Ed has commented on U.S. policy on issues ranging from the 2011 U.S. congressional hearings on radicalization spearheaded by Rep. Peter King (R-NY) to the events of the Arab Spring and the death of Osama bin Laden.

On the 'Arab Spring', he has said:

The Arab world is no longer across the oceans. It is also on our streets here. Millions of American citizens are of Arab descent. Millions more are here as workers and students. What happens over there matters here. Can America make these people proud and empower them against Muslim extremists by changing the American story and making us all safer? Yes, it can. It must.

In a May 2011 Op-ed in The Times he wrote:

Without doubt, the US was right to remove bin Laden, but it is wrong to think that his death will weaken al-Qaeda. Yes, a colossal psychological blow has been dealt, but al-Qaeda is no longer a mere organisation, but a global brand, an idea, a philosophy that now has its first Saudi martyr from the holy lands of Islam.

See also

• The Islamist
• Islamism
• Extremism
• East London Mosque
• Brick Lane Mosque
• Hizb ut-Tahrir
• Council on Foreign Relations
• List of British Bangladeshis

External links

• Bio page at CFR.org
• The Islamist - Penguin Books
• The Quilliam Foundation website
• Hizb ut-Tahrir website
• BBC World Have Your Say with Ed Husain
• The Charade of Ed Husain
• CNN Interview with Ed Husain (Video)
• All mod cons
• CNN Interview Transcripts
• To lionise former extremists feeds anti-Muslim prejudice
• "The 'Islamist' bogeyman" by Taji Mustafa, executive committee of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Britain
• Satire of Ed Husain
• Does Saudi Arabia Preach Intolerance in the UK?
• The Quilliam take on Islam: fascinating but flawed
• Promotion of clients and stooges will get us nowhere
• ED HUSAIN’S RESPONSE TO MUSLIM CONCERNS