This is
a full transcript of my interview with Maajid Nawaz, head of the Quilliam Foundation and author of
“Radical”.
Mr. Nawaz is a former leading member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist organization
with a presence all over the world. The news report, in Portuguese,
can be found here.
Transcrição integral, no inglês original, da entrevista
com Maajid Nawaz, autor do livro “
Radical” (Texto
Editores) e ex-membro do grupo Hizb ut-Tahrir, um movimento fundamentalista islâmico
com presença em todo o mundo. A reportagem
encontra-seaqui.
In the course of your life as a fundamentalist,
and subsequently through the work you have been doing to track and fight
extremism, have Portugal or Portuguese elements ever come up?
Of
course they have come up. Almost every country in Europe has come up, over the
last seven or eight years that we have been doing this work.
Frankly,
the situation in Europe is that wherever there are Muslims, unfortunately a
faction of them, today, will subscribe to the sort of ideologies that feed into
recruitment into groups such as Al-Qaeda or ISIL or any other type of extremist
group.
There
will be a faction of these within most communities in Europe. I emphasize it is
a minority faction, but our work is an attempt to galvanize the silent majority
against them and that is where the real difficulty lies.
For a young Muslim to embrace fundamentalism is
one thing, but are you surprised by the amount of Western converts to
fundamentalist Islam who have been carrying out attacks or travelling to do
Jihad?
That is
not really a surprise to me, it has been consistent for a long time, even when
I was a member of the Islamist organization. And the way that I explain this is
that whereas in the past, 30 or 40 years ago, the Zeitgeist for angry young
people who were anti-establishment could have been Stalinist communism, today
its Islamism, its islamist extremism. Because it has come to symbolize the peak
of anti-establishment ideology, it even attracts people who don't come from a
Muslim background.
Diagnosing
it this way, our challenge is to make this current Zeitgeist of islamist
extremism as unattractive or as unappealing as Soviet Communism has become for
many young people across Europe.
How is that done?
If we analyse
the make-up of social movements, and what makes them popular, I've narrowed it
down to five core factors, and those are what I call the ideas, or the basic
ideology.
The
Islamists want to enforce a version of Islam over society, that's their idea. Their narratives, or propaganda, that's the second thing they have. The
third, after ideas and narratives, they have leaders, charismatic leaders who are able to recruit people through
their powers of persuasion. They also have iconography,
or symbolism. If we look at ISIL the black flags and other kind of iconography
come to mind immediately. The fifth element is that they have a vision, or a dream. And in ISIL's case it is the
creation of a Caliphate, with the analogy I drew previously with soviet
communism it was the creation of the utopian communist state.
So what
we need to be able to do is, through civil society activism, discredit the
ideas, narratives, leaders, symbols and dream of Islamist extremism, and we
need to be able to capture the imagination of young people with alternative
ideas, narratives, symbols, leaders and dreams.
Now that
is a very difficult task, and it is actually a task for a couple of
generations, it’s not something that is going to happen over ten years.
Governments of Western countries such as
Portugal are now discussing ways to try and fight this problem. What pointers
would you give them?
I would
suggest that they focus on prevention, rather than on de-radicalization, what I
mean is that it is a lot easier to try and stop people joining extremist
organizations than it is to try and pull them out once they've joined. So the
first thing I say is to focus on the prevention element.
The
second thing I'd say is that what we mustn't try and do, or States and
governments mustn't try and do, is to predefine a correct version of Islam,
versus an incorrect one, and then sponsor this predefined correct version.
By doing
that the State gets locked into sectarian debates about what real theology is,
and the State really has no business interfering in religion in that way, nor
vice versa.
A better
approach, I feel, and this is the advice I have been giving the British
Government and others across the World, is that the State should work within
communities to reinforce the core values of the social contract. These would be
secularism, respect for human rights and democratic process, a respect for
individual autonomy and liberty. And those values, regardless of one's
religious affiliation, need to be reinforced and religious communities need to
be aware that it is their responsibility to reconcile their respective sects
and religious interpretations with the values of the social contract.
It's not
the state's problem that they are unable to do that, it's the community's
responsibility to do that, and that is where we are very far behind, currently,
in this debate, in that the communities across the spectrum, Muslim and non-Muslim,
all need to step up to the plate and start reinforcing these core values which
make our societies stable and peaceful.
Are you in hiding?
No. I am
not in hiding, I am actually running for an election to Parliament, so I am
very public. But I take precautions, because as you can imagine some of the
things I say are not very popular with extremists.
You abandoned Islamism, but you remain Muslim?
That is
correct.
Some people say that these terrorist acts have
nothing to do with real Islam. Do you agree?
No I
don't. I think it is unhelpful. I was doing an interview with the US media last
night and I drew an analogy with the Harry Potter books.
The bad
guy in Harry Potter is called Voldemort and the author uses the phrase:
"He who must not be named", because people are so scared of this
figure, that they are scared of even naming it. That leads to a climate of even
more paranoia and more fear. So I think it is unhelpful if we don't name the
Islamist ideology. Because what it will do is lead to a climate of even more
fear and, invariably, people will start blaming all and every Muslim.
So to
avoid all Muslims being blamed, let’s pinpoint exactly what we are talking
about, so that we know what it is we need to refute and critique. We are
talking about Islamism. Islamism is the desire to impose any version of the religion
of Islam over society. That distinction is what makes the difference between a
Religious Muslim [and an islamist].
And by
the way I am not a religious leader nor do I claim to speak in representation
of Muslims, I speak based on my principles and my thoughts.
But however
one wants to follow one's own religion: Conservative, liberal, reform,
moderate, strict, traditional, however these denominations or differences exist
in Catholicism, or any form of religion, that is very different from wanting to
impose your view on other people through law, or by infiltrating governments
and then enforcing that over society. That is what we refer to as Islamism.
Jihadism
is the use of force to spread Islamism. I have a problem with both Islamism in
principle and, of course, Jihadism as a method to spread it.
When we talk about jihadism and Islamism, are
we talking about mainly a political or a religious problem?
It’s a
combination of both, which is why I said earlier that the statement that this
has nothing to do with Islam is incorrect, it has something to do with Islam,
it may not be what the vast majority of Muslims subscribe to, but it certainly
has something to do with Islam, that is undeniable.
And what
it has to do with Islam is that you have a bunch of people out there who are so
fundamentally insecure in their own relationship with God, that they want to
force everyone else to follow the way they think God wants them to follow their
religion. That fundamental insecurity is the birth of Islamism.
You suffered terribly at the hands of the
military regime in Egypt. How did you feel when Mubarak fell?
It was a
cathartic moment for me. Mubarak was eventually held in the same row of prison
cells, in the very same prison in which he held me. So in that sense it was
very cathartic. I was optimistic at the time about the prospect of a
democratic, albeit imperfect future for Egypt. I am slightly less optimistic
now, because things moved one step forward but then they moved ten steps
backwards, since.
Meanwhile there were elections and the Islamists
took charge, only to be ousted by the military one year later. What went wrong?
Is this proof that countries like Egypt and Syria are better off without
democracy?
I would
dispute that, because Tunisia, for example, demonstrated where it can work.
Tunisia had a peaceful uprising and a peaceful changeover of government. They
went from their post-Islamist "Ennahda" party led by Rashid
Ghannouchi to a largely secular government, so Tunisia can demonstrate, or does
demonstrate, that Arab countries can handle democracy.
What
went wrong in Egypt was that the young democratic activists who rose up against
Mubarak weren't organized, they fell into infighting and bickering, it left the
way open for the most organized faction in society which happened to be the
Islamist faction, the Muslim brotherhood. They came to power, made an absolute
dogs mess of the situation and that led to Egypt's largest ever protests in the
country's history, against the Muslim Brotherhood's government.
It was a
popular uprising against Islamism, which again demonstrates that Muslims are
not intrinsically or somehow inherently attracted to Islamism. More people
protested the Muslim Brotherhood government than they first did against
Mubarak's regime. That, unfortunately, precipitated another military coup and
Sisi came to power.
What should
have happened at that point was a new election, but unfortunately it led to
another coup and since then the situation has gone downhill.
Your journey into fundamentalism was through
the Hizb ut-Tahrir party. The goal of this party is to create a new Caliphate.
When you were active in the movement, would you have embraced a group like
ISIS?
No. I
think Hizb Ut-Tahrir is still an organization which works across the World, and
their stance on groups like Al-Qaeda, which did exist when I was a member, and
ISIS, which didn't, has been that they don't condemn them, but they don't agree
with their methodology. It is worth pointing out that my former organization
was the first group to popularize this idea of creating this Islamic utopia, or
the dystopia we now see in the so-called Caliphate that ISIS declared. Hiz ut-Tahrir
was founded in 1953 with that sole mission statement, to resurrect the so
called caliphate.
I think
ISIL's failed experiment should be sufficient, ideally, to demonstrate to every
Islamist, exactly what happens when you try to create Heaven on Earth. These
theocratic utopian states are inevitably going to fail.
Did you ever take up arms?
No. Hizb
ut-Tahrir's method of power was twofold. One was to prepare public opinion, which
was my role, to work with societies in Pakistan, in Egypt, and here in Britain,
to prepare public opinion for the return of the Caliphate. The second thing
would be to work diligently to recruit army officers with a view to inciting
military coups in Muslim majority countries so that they could take power.
The
difference between that form of revolutionary Islamism and Jihadism, i.e. the
use of force to spread Islamism, is the difference that socialists have between
the whole notion of direct action versus what they call dialectical
materialism, allowing society to evolve, itself, as means of production change
over time, or the evolution of society versus direct action. Socialists had
that split, which led to militant socialists taking direct action, likewise
Islamists have had that split.
Hizb ut-Tahrir
was of the view that terrorist actions would actually hinder progress in the
creation of the Caliphate, so I did have a role in attempting to convince army
officers, in Pakistan for instance, to join the organization and to plan a
coup, and I had a role in preparing public opinion. But up until this day,
though the group has certainly contributed to the atmosphere that lends itself
to Jihadism, it isn't in itself a Jihadist organization.
In your book you talk about the institutional
racism of the police force, when you were growing up. Has that changed?
Racism
and the climate of racism in institutions has changed incredibly in the United
Kingdom. If you had told me, when I was fifteen years old, that one day the USA
would have an African American president, I would have laughed you out of the
room.
It’s an
indication of a lot of the progress which has been made. That doesn't mean
everything is perfect, there are still societies and countries in Europe [with
problems]. Like Greece, for example, which doesn't grant citizenship to people
who are not ethnically Greek, even though they might have been born and raised
for their entire lives, in that country. So there are challenges when it comes
to Europe in itself coming to terms with what being European means, in this day
and age. So things, though they have improved, still have a lot further to go.
You also talk about the role of the Palestinian
problem. How important is this in the radicalization of young Muslims?
I'd say it’s
important, but it’s not the be all and end all.
ISIL
demonstrate, as do the Taliban, that extremism can have very local contributing
factors. In the case of ISIL the failure of the Iraqi government in dealing
with the Sunni situation there, post Saddam Hussein, in the case of the
Taliban, of course, it is Afghanistan, in the case of Lashkar e-Taiba, in
Pakistan, its Kashmir.
So
solving the Palestinian problem is important in and of itself, as an issue, though
some people present it as the main cause of extremism, which if solved, would
end extremism across the world. I would dispute that assumption.
What exactly happened that you should have a
change of heart?
Well I'd
suggest they read the book, that's what this interview is about.
But in
short, I'll give you a sentence, because it was a long five year process, but
when I was imprisoned in Egypt, Amnesty International adopted me as a prisoner
of conscience and I say in the book: “Where the heart leads, the mind can
follow”. And that touched my heart and it allowed me, for the next four years,
to spend my time studying in prison.
I
re-read George Orwell's Animal Farm and I came to the conclusion, among many
other things that I read, including traditional Islamic literature, that if my
comrades in prison ever came to power, they would create the Islamist version
of Orwell's parody of Communist Utopia.
And I
realised that actually these people would be far worse than what we were trying
to overthrow. I think ISIL coming to power in Iraq and Syria has demonstrated
that. I am happy that I came to that view, and managed to pull out, before I
had anything to do with any project related to recreating a theocratic clerical
fascist state in the world.
What is the nature of the work you do nowadays?
We
primarily work with challenging public perceptions around the subject of
Islamism and extremism, in building civil society resilience, in challenging
the ideology of Islamism head on, discrediting the five things I mentioned
earlier, attempting to promote an alternative to those five.
We
advise governments on policy, we work with media, we publish reports that
expose, just today wepublished a report on the ISIS issued guidance on how women should behave
in their organization, we translated it from Arabic and published it.
So
generally our work through civil society is to build resilience and awareness
around the Islamist ideology and the understanding of their operational
methodologies.
 |
| Member of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Pakistan |
The conflict in the Middle East is presented at
times as being a conflict between Islamism and the West. Is it more useful to
see it as a conflict between Sunni and Shiite Islam?
I'd say
that even more important than both those, is the conflict, generally, for
civilization, within the Islamic faith and within the rest of the world.
I think
the world currently is divided between those who stand for liberty, democratic
values, pluralism, tolerance, respect, and the rule of law; and those who stand
for any form of fascism, whether clerical fascism, in the form of a theocratic
state, or totalitarian states, such as North Korea.
Iran and
North Korea are allies, and as is the case with fascists, they have infighting,
so the Iranian clerical fascists are fighting Sunni clerical fascists in Iraq
and Syria, but the rest of the world is united against all forms of clerical
fascism. And in both these general camps, in the camps that stand for liberty
and democratic values, are Muslims and non-Muslims; and in the camp which stands
for Clerical Fascism are also Muslims and non-Muslims.
So I
think that is a more accurate way of looking at the world. As I say, this is a
clash within Islamic civilization, not between Islam and the West.
