A Beautiful Passage from "The Islamist" and some thoughts on it

So, it's been a while.  I've moved 650 miles from home since I last posted.  I miss my family and friends, but life has to keep moving on.  So please enjoy this blog post.

    On a personal level, my relationship with God had deteriorated.  If we were working to establish God’s rule on earth, as we claimed, then Hizb-ut-Tahrir activists were the most unlikely candidates, God could have chosen.  My comrades were heady and headstrong young people.  We were ecstatic at the thought that soon a “real Islamic state” would emergy in the Middle East, reverse history, and allow a return to the glory days of Islam.
Yet, as I had become more active in the Hizb, my inner consciousness of God had hit an all time low.  The presence of God in my life, a gift from my parents to me, was lost.  Externally I portrayed signs of piety to maintain a standing among my target audience, but I was no longer an observant Muslim.


     We sermonized about the need for Muslims to return to Islam, but many of the shahab did not know how to pray.  I witnessed at least four new converts to Islam at different university campuses, convinced of the superiority of the “Islamic political ideology” as an alternative to capitalism, but lacking basic knowledge of worship.  Within three weeks of their conversion, they were lecturing others about the need for a khilafah, the role of the future Muslim army, and the duties of citizens in the future Islamic state.  But when it came to reciting the Koran or maintaining basic Muslim etiquette, they were clueless.


     When Patrick and Bernie came to ask me about basic verses of the Koran for recital in prayers after they had delivered sermons at prayer rooms in universities, I began to realize how little these people knew about the Koran.  I was getting older and the Hizb seemed suddenly like pretentious, counterfeit intellectualism. 


     Despite huge political success, I despised myself for appearing pious and upright in Muslim eyes when all the while I knew there was a vacuum in my soul where God should be.  I spoke to several Hizb-ut-Tahrir members about this and they were unanimous in saying that this was my personal responsibility.  That response annoyed me.  They were shirking responsibility for developing the Islamicness of their Islamic recruits – but content to use these same recruits to promote a seemingly Islamic cause.  I was not persuaded.


     I went to the top.  I found myself alone with Omar Bakri one night in a car on the way to a mosque in Edmonton.  I put it to him that we were not sufficiently Muslim in our personal lives and asked how we could establish the Islamic state if we, as a group, did not master the acts with which we earn God’s pleasure.  How did we expect Muslims to trust us?  Omar was candid:  he agreed.  He went as far as saying that the founder of the Hizb believed members of the group, especially in the 1970s Middle East, were not sufficiently pious.  Why else was God withholding the state from Hizb-ut-Tahrir?  Nabhani had believed that within thirteen years of the Hizb’s establishment, the Islamic state would be set up.  In later life he blamed his members’ distance from God for the Hizb’s failure to secure the state.  But the effort to gain a state never evaporated.  If anything it increased in intensity.  Omar said that he had noticed vast gaps in the knowledge of group members in the 1990s.  Omar reassured me that something out be done; a training session had to be held.  Months passed and nothing happened.  I approached Jamal Harwood, a leading Hizb apparatchik and city accountant.  He instructed the shahab to pray at mosques ‘to show Muslims we were serious, to provide leadership’.  As usual, prayers were linked to political ambitions, but at least instructions to worship were given.  Still nothing changed:  members knew that prayers were not the first priority.  Islam’s first command to Muslims, but not of much interest to Islamism’s activists.


     We continued to disrupt meetings of other Muslim groups, to plaster the walls of inner-city London with our posters late into the night, come home in the early hours of the morning, and go to bed without saying our prayers.  We were too tired to pray; establishing the Islamic state was more important than minor matters such as praying, reciting the Koran, giving to charity, or being kind to our parents and fellow Muslims. 


     At home, I no longer knew I had a family.  By day I was active on campus, and in the evenings I kept myself away from my parents and siblings.  I could not bear discussions with my parents any longer.  All subjects returned to what my father called my “going astroy to the enemies of Islam”.  Those words angered me.  My life was consumed by fury, inner confusion, a desire to dominate everything, and my abject failure to be a good Muslim.  I had started out on this journey “wanting more Islam” and ended up losing its essence. 


     Nevertheless, in public, I was still the mighty leader of the Hizb on campus, the challenger of the kuffar in the name of Islam, the leader of the Muslims.  I went around college with Majid and many of our new recruits, maintaining our visible presence and making ourselves available to the ummah.  Of the many faced I encountered on a daily basis there was one belonging to a girl called Faye that did what mine used to do a lot:  smile.  As an Islamist I had lost my ability to smile.  Every time I approached Faye with an invitation to our meetings, she smiled, accepted, then failed to turn up.  Faye confounded me, I wanted to get to know her more.  Slowly, we became very good friends.


      Faye was no ordinary girl:  her genuine and illuminating smile, caring eyes, her endearing face with its olive complexion, her warm ways, drew me to her.  I discovered that we had identical ancestral and social backgrounds, a common interest in Arabic, and a shared desire to travel.  In time we realized that our friendship was no longer platonic.  The new threshold of our relationship to mark a milestone in many ways. 


     We could write to each other, and Faye’s letters and verses spoke of a God that was close, loving, caring, facilitating, forgiving, and merciful.  Faye was close to God:  she prayed regularly, I , by contrast, believed in a God who was full of vengeance, a legislator, a controller, a punisher.


     I could not envisage a future without Faye.  I marshalled sufficient courage to write and ask if she would consider me for a future husband.  She paused for thought for a week and eventually said yes, but only on condition that we both complete our studies and pursue careers.  Love illuminated beyond all expectations.  For the first time in many years, I was uplifted from within.
     -From Ed Husain’s The Islamist.

When I read this passage the other day, it spoke to me.  I know I’ve been in a similar position before; so worried about pleasing God and acting “the right way” that prayers and relationship with Him have gone by the wayside.  It’s why I make such an effort not to get drawn into arguments where legalism can rear its ugly head.

Yet, as I stay on Facebook and a few Christian websites of various denominations, this is what I see time and again.  Imagine the horror that some of the people I know would feel, if they thought I were comparing them to a man who once sought the overthrown of the British government and the institution of a new Islamic state.  A man who attended halaqa cells and whose group influenced the creation of the ideology of Al Quaeda.  And yet, that is what this reminds me of.  So many people I know who are so full of “this is how Tradition works, just do it, don’t bother understanding, just follow the orders”.  Tradition, without knowing why it is done, and without genuine faith and love is dead.

So many people I know are wrapped up in their Christian culture bubble that anything outside of the bubble should be declared haram, forbidden for Christians to indulge in.  I know people who have non-ironically suggested burning books for not being Christian.  And yet, wrapped up in that bubble, are the commands of Christ really followed, or is it like Ed discovered, he was not really holding to the pillars of his Islamic faith.

And so many I know are wrapped up in their pride for being some sort of super Christian, posting nothing but statuses about God or Bible verses.  Swift to condemn those who disagree with them as lacking in Truth.  And you know what I notice, as someone who is just trying to live the faith?  Those people so rarely smile in their photos.  And they often speak of the wrath and vengeance of God, a God who is a controller and punisher, as Ed states here.  But that’s not who God is.

Deus caritas est.  Three simple Latin words, one meaning that transcends all.  God. Is. Love.  Ed discovers that through his talking about God with his future (and as of the book, wife of four years) wife, Faye.  We discover that in Scripture and through our interactions with others.  Saint Paul, not exactly known as the fluffiest and most huggable of guys says in 1 Corinthians 13,

“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

“Love is patient, love is kind.  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

“Love never fails.  But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.  For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears…and now these three remain: faith, hope, and love.  But the greatest of these is love.”

Some may read this and go, “oh all of this is hippie dippie bullshit”.  Some may read this and go, “oh I totally agree”.  Really, I don’t care.  What I do care about is that far too often we become so enamored with “the cause”, be it Tradition at the expense of Love, Christian Culture at the expense of Love, legalism at the expense of Love, or even trying to proclaim how much we love and care for others, at the expense of actual Love.  We make false idols all too often, out of things which should help us on our journey, and then get sidetracked for days, months, years, decades, or even a lifetime.
In Ed’s case, it took falling in love, to remember the God of love that he had known as a child, rather than a God whose cause was political.  What does it take each of us to do the same?  Deus caritas est.

Tomorrow is the fourteenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.  It would not be wrong to say that the course of history was changed by nineteen men hijacking four planes.  Ninety-two nations would lose a combined three thousand plus individuals, each of them someone’s relative, friend, or beloved.  The march towards war would begin, the butterflies of those wars would take flight.  Fourteen years later, we still deal with the repercussions of repercussions begun on that day.  U.S. soldiers are still in Afghanistan and Iraq, though the latter had nothing to do with 9/11.  The Arab Spring, so full of hope, lies in ashes of sectarian strife and civil wars.  The greatest refugee crisis the world has known since the end of the Second World War is well under way.  A group seeking the Hizb’s establishment of an Islamic State rampages across the Middle East, destroying lives, temples, towns, and priceless historical relics.

There are so many things that are easy to get caught up in, so many causes that need help, so many people who are displaced.  And it’s not wrong to help people.  It’s not wrong to get involved in a cause.  It’s not wrong to be involved with something that you can use to aid yourself in worship and in things that should be supplementary to the faith.  We just need to remember to do so out of love, lest we lose track of Him who is Love incarnate.