Please note that this is BBC copyright and may not be reproduced or copied for any other purpose. RADIO 4 CURRENT AFFAIRS ANALYSIS KORAN AND COUNTRY: HOW ISLAM GOT POLITICAL TRANSCRIPT OF A RECORDED DOCUMENTARY Presenter: Frank Gardner Producers: Innes Bowen & Mukul Devichand Editor: Nicola Meyrick BBC White City 201 Wood Lane London W12 7TS 020 8752 7279 Broadcast Date: 10.11.05 2000-2100 Repeat Date: 13.11.05 2100-2200 Tape Number: Duration: MUSIC BUKHARI: I don’t see religion as a set of rituals. What’s the point of a god that says just pray, fast. No, God surely is there to make man better and man can hardly be better when so much oppression is going on around the world and man is not doing anything about it. GARDNER: These are confusing times for anyone trying to understand the nature of Islam in the 21st Century. It is, of course, primarily a religion and a code of conduct for over a billion people - but for an increasing number of Muslims it’s a political project too. HELBAWI: The Prophet is our leader. Koran is our constitution. To die for the sake of God is the best objective we have. GARDNER: Osama bin Laden and the whole Al-Qaeda phenomenon have ensured that much of the world is desperate to understand more about political Islam. But there is far more to the Islamic political movement than its extreme, terrorist fringe. BURKE: When you’re talking about political Islam, you have to remember that it’s a scale of activism. You have many people who believe that if their state was a more Islamic state, that they personally would have a better life. That does not mean that they want to go out and bomb market places. GARDNER: Over the next hour, we’ll be tracing the rise of this relatively recent phenomenon – from roots in colonial India… SIDDIQUI: Jemaat-i-Islami’s main thrust was that the way to implement Islamic values will come by grabbing state power. GARDNER: …to the parallel movement which grew up in Egypt. HELBAWI: The Muslim Brothers, they wanted to have a political party, but the government did not allow them to do that. GARDNER: How, according to those who knew him, Osama bin Laden’s split with the mainstream Islamist movement came about. HELBAWI: Osama was one of the moderate Islamists and then he was influenced by some Jihadi groups and he believed that this is the only way. GARDNER: And I’ll be revealing how what started out as a project to create Islamic states in Muslim countries has turned into a broader movement which has played a part in politicizing ordinary Muslims, not just in the Islamic world but here in the West. SHAST: Our government always goes on about for example Iraq. One of the reasons that we had to go in was because Iraq didn’t comply with UN resolutions. But when Israel doesn’t comply with them, nothing is said. And so it’s that kind of double standard that Western governments have that really angers Muslims. FARUK: I am Muslim first, I am British second, and I am Bengali third. OMAR: We’ve got to do something. We’ve got to help the Palestinians somehow. HOQUE: I am a Muslim, yes. I’m very proud of my religion, but I have also seen the politicization of it and quite an extreme politicisation of it. GARDNER: Political Islam has two interconnected aims – they’re both about reviving Muslim identity. For its adherents in Muslim countries, this can mean creating perfect Islamic states. Where Muslims live as minorities, such as in Britain, political Islam is more about solidarity with the Ummah, the global Muslim community. Aminul Hoque, a 28-year old journalist and PhD student, has seen this at close quarters in his community in East London. HOQUE: Once young people, in particular, once they leave literally the doors of the mosque, they are entering the political sphere. And you can literally see sometimes on the mosque doorstep people who are angry, who are politicised, giving out leaflets and what’s happening in Afghanistan is wrong, look at what they’re doing in Iraq, how many people are dying as a consequence. This was about oil and never about human rights or democracy. And those very people who have become conscious and aware of themselves as Muslims first and foremost in the mosque have come out all peace, all calm, and suddenly they’ve become angry because they’ve got this feeling of attack, that everyone’s against us. So I’m seeing that literal ten metre journey happening in front of me every single day. GARDNER: Do you sense that this generation of young British Muslims are far more politically aware than their parents were? HOQUE: They’re far more politically aware. They have their political lenses on all the time. And one other thing I want to say, Frank, is if you were to go on a Sunday afternoon to a typical Muslim household over lunch – whether that be a halal turkey or halal roast lamb or just rice and curry – and just observe the conversation amongst the family, young children as young as eleven, twelve, thirteen – yes, they know who David Beckham is, yes they know Britney Spears and they’re talking about the latest mobile phones and latest trainers. They understand all of that, but at the same time you’d hear them talking about the Palestinian issue, you’d hear them talking about, “did you hear how many died in Iraq last week? Did you read the headlines?” GARDNER: Which you would never get a twelve or thirteen year old Western white kid in Britain saying. HOQUE: Of course and therein lies the difference. These young people, they’re deeply politicised. They’re personalising an issue which is essentially thousands of miles away. They feel affected. GARDNER: The Muslims who moved to Britain from South Asia in the 1950’s and 60’s were religiously devout but mainly preoccupied with the everyday business of making a living in their new home. So what changed this? How did Britain’s Muslim communities suddenly discover a sense of political identity? Perhaps surprisingly, given that Britain’s Muslim community is mostly Sunni and South Asian, much of the early inspiration came from the Shia revolution in Iran. ISLAMIC REVOLUTION IRAN/UK MONTAGE After his long years in exile, the first hesitant steps of Ayatollah Khomeini on Iranian soil. CROWD: Kill him! Kill him! GARDNER: The Islamic Revolution in Iran was a turning point. Until 1979, political Islam had been a dream. Now, it had become a reality. One of the most powerful and populous countries in the Middle East had overthrown its pro-western monarch, the Shah, and replaced him with a theocracy. Iran’s new leader was Ayatollah Khomeini, a devout, black-turbanned cleric who’d been living in exile. ARCHIVE: NEWS 200779 IRAN AYATOLLAH RETURNS Its extraordinary how one man can command such adoration – how so many people can believe that this frail old priest holds all the answers to Iran’s problems. SIDDIQUI: All of a sudden he takes the banner to establish an Islamic state. This was very, very attracting to us and we were the first people in the whole Sunni world who came out to support a revolution which was taking place in Iran. GARDNER: Ghayasuddin Siddiqui was a supporter of the Ayatollah at the time, based in London. To him and his friends it didn’t matter that Iranians were mainly Shi’ite Muslims while they were Sunnis. What mattered was that this was an Islamic Revolution. SIDDIQUI: In Iran revolutionary guards play a very, very significant role. And many of the revolution guards were students in Britain, so as such they were our close friends, so whenever we went to Iran, we were obviously their guests and they would look after us for all the support that we have given. And I remember one day that we wanted to go somewhere and we were getting late and I said to the friends who are in the revolutionary guards. He said, “No, no, no, that is no problem” and we took a helicopter. And I said, “My God” and this left a great impression. And immediately I realised that you know it is really true that if an ideology can control state resources, then it can do whatever it wants. GARDNER: Of course, taking control of state resources could not be on the agenda in Britain, where Muslims were – and still are - a tiny minority. But Ghayasuddin Siddiqui and a small group of like-minded British Muslims, including the charismatic Kalim Siddiqui, had created a thinktank called “the Muslim Institute” with the aim of asserting the political identity of the Islamic faith. The institute and its contacts with the Iranian regime remained obscure until 1988 when they capitalised on their access to the Ayatollah Khomeini and temporarily seized the leadership of British Islam. ARCHIVE: NEWSNIGHT 080389 RUSHDIE The official aim of this march is to extend the law of blasphemy, get ‘The Satanic Verses’ banned, and have its author put on trial. But many of the demonstraters demand instant and final retribution. CROWD: Burn Rushdie, burn! Burn Rushdie, burn! GARDNER: Salman Rushdie did not of course burn; he went into hiding, after being accused of blasphemy in his novel, ‘The Satanic Verses’, that so infuriated Muslims by apparently insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Following a visit to Iran by the Muslim Institute’s leader Kalim Siddiqui, the Ayatollah issued an edict, a fatwa, saying that Rushdie should be killed. ARCHIVE NEWSNIGHT 080390 At this meeting in the east end of London, Dr Siddiqui was received by hundreds of Muslims of Bangladeshi origin. SIDDIQUI: The idea of a global Islamic movement, if you like, without national identities, without these artificially created borders and frontiers, obviously we are trying to capture the hearts and minds and souls of the Muslim youth, of the future generations in this country. GARDNER: With Kalim Siddiqui at the helm, it was almost as if the Rushdie affair gave British Muslims their own ‘Islamic revolution’. One of the many young Muslims who first tasted political activism during that time was Asghar Bukhari. BUKHARI: We bought some spray cans of paint and then we sprayed the local library because they had a copy of Salman Rushdie’s book in it, saying you know ‘death to Salman Rushdie’ or something. Which sounds really sinister now that you say it, but at that time, to us, it was ha-ha, you know you’ve stocked it and look, look. GARDNER: But in terms of whether the fatwa was right or wrong, can you remember how you felt at the time? BUKHARI: I felt that, yeah, if Ayatollah Khomeini is saying kill him, kill him. GARDNER: The Rushdie Affair was a public relations disaster for British Muslims. People were shocked by TV footage of Muslims burning books in the street. ‘The Satanic Verses’ was not banned in Britain, unlike in India and several other countries. But for Dr. Kalim Siddiqui, the fatwa against Rushdie was an essential vehicle for launching his political vision of a Muslim Parliament. According to Ehsan Masood, a reporter with the Muslim magazine Q News at the time, Siddiqui’s idea was to offer Muslims a tailormade alternative to existing British institutions. MASOOD: Siddiqui was arguing that if this is the case, we’re not getting any play with the authorities, then the solution is to withdraw and is to set up your own schools, set up your own organisations, your own businesses, trade amongst yourselves - sort of an enclave within a community, you know the sort of federated kind of structure you know in a broader sense. Obviously he was talking about it in a much smaller way. And so the Muslim Parliament was a political institution which would govern Muslims for themselves on the understanding that the rest of society doesn’t doesn’t want to know them, and if that’s the case then this is how they should live. GARDNER: The concept of a Muslim Parliament in Britain turned out to be short-lived - it effectively died with Kalim Siddiqui in 1996. But it did put political Islam on the map. And, as Ehsan Masood recalls, another strand of ideology assumed political leadership of the Muslim community. It eventually grew into the Muslim Council of Britain, the MCB. MASOOD: Without a doubt, the Rushdie Affair was the midwife of the current generation of people who are now in leadership positions. You’ve got to take it in these two strands, so you’ve got the Kalim Siddiqui isolationist Muslim Parliament strand and then you’ve got the MCB strand. And they were working on a very different strategy and the two did need to talk to each other. The MCB’s idea was that the Tories will one day be out of office and so we need to cultivate strong relations with the Labour party, which is what they were doing in a very, very strategic way. GARDNER: This group, “the UK Action Committee on Islamic Affairs”, rose to prominence and many of its members still have an influence in today’s leading Muslim body, the MCB. Many drew their inspiration from an Asian Muslim writer called Mawdudi. It’s impossible to overstate this man’s importance – he was almost a godfather to the Islamist movement in the 20th century. His ideas were the seed of future political movements and yet while he himself opposed violence, some of his followers interpreted them in very confrontational terms. MAWDUDI SECTION MONTAGE Jihad becomes a political struggle to impose your ideas and ideology. It’s almost like a liberation theology you know of a Pakistani Islamist kind. GARDNER: Syed Abul Ala Mawdudi’s ideas had an anti- secular, many would say anti-Western, edge to them – influenced perhaps by his upbringing in British colonial India. His many critics said he was not qualified to write about Islam since he had never completed his religious training, and he was after all a journalist by profession. But for those that loved his writings, he was an Islamic “revivalist”, who pushed for Islam to reclaim its former glory more than a century after the British had defeated India’s Muslim rulers. Mawdudi had a comprehensive vision of what an Islamic state would be like in modern times; and after Pakistan was created as a secular homeland for India’s Muslims in 1947, Mawdudi demanded that the new state adopt a full Islamic constitution. Pakistan’s secular government jailed him more than once when his political party, the Jamaati Islami, took to the streets. His then follower, Ghayasuddin Siddiqui remembers a formative meeting he had with Mawdudi. SIDDIQUI: I met Mawdudi at a very early age in Multan prison. I think I was probably fourteen or fifteen. A group of Jamaati Islami from where I lived were going, and out of excitement I went there. So I met him and he was a very charismatic, elderly person with a lot of knowledge, with authority. He left a great impression. MASOOD: These were the middle class, young people of urban centres, often migrants from India who had settled in Pakistan. GARDNER: Journalist Ehsan Masood. MASOOD: He showed them a way of reclaiming your faith. He wrote in very, very easy to understand conversational Urdu and so it was almost like liberation theology you know of a Pakistani Islamist kind. GARDNER: Ghaysuddin Siddiqui was one of the millions of Indian Muslims who left their homes in Hindu-dominated areas of the old British India to start a new life in Pakistan. He went on to become a leader in the student wing of Jamaati Islami and an ardent admirer of Mawdudi. SIDDIQUI: For him, you see Jihad is no more a struggle to improve your inner soul. It becomes a political struggle to impose your ideas and ideology. Then he writes about his invention of an idea, sovereignty of God, which you will see played a very crucial role vis-à-vis whether we can have democracy in our society or not. GARDNER: Mawdudi told his supporters that Islam was more than just a faith, it was a “revolutionary ideology” that sought to “alter the social order of the entire world”. He made plenty of enemies in his lifetime, especially amongst Pakistan’s orthodox Sufi Muslims, who disliked his politicization of the faith. Mawdudi’s most significant domestic impact came after his death, when Pakistan’s military dictator General Zia Ul-Haq embraced some of his ideas and put them into practice in 1979, turning Islamic Sharia-based criminal punishments into law and making it possible for serious offences to be punished by stoning to death or public lashing. But Mawdudi’s influence was to go far beyond the Indian subcontinent. Over 2,000 miles away, in Egypt, political Islam had found a new enemy – secular Arab nationalism. NASSER ARCHIVE: NASSER: The Arab nationalism idea is Arab solidarity, Arab unity or Arab union, but with the approval and the will of the people unanimously. GARDNER: Egypt’s President Gamel Abdel Nasser, speaking in the 1960’s. He was the first leader in history to battle against the forces of political Islam, in particular his sworn enemies the Muslim Brotherhood. HELBAWI: Allahau Ghayatuna - Allah is our aim, our objective. GARDNER: Dr Kemal Helbawi is repeating the slogan of the Muslim Brotherhood. He’s been a member for over 50 years and is considered something of a moderate. HELBAWI (Arabic) – the Prophet is our leader. (Arabic) Koran or the Bible, Muslim’s Bible, is our constitution. (Arabic) – to die for the sake of God is the best objective or aim we have. GARDNER: Is that something which is still believed in by most Muslim Brothers? HELBAWI: Yes, yes. Yes, but it depends on the interpretation as well. Frank, it depends on the interpretation. For example, if you go as fireman, firemen - they die for the sake of Allah, they protect people. GARDNER: The Muslim Brotherhood had been founded in Egypt in 1928 to promote Islamic values. Kemal Helbawy joined it as a young boy when he was in secondary school near the Egyptian town of Minoufiyya. HELBAWI: I am coming from a small village. I was attracted by the senior brothers who were speaking very well in the school, supporting new students and advising them. The aim of the Muslim Brotherhood is to build a good individual, a good citizen, and they also ask him he must proceed to build a good family. These units, they build good society. And out of this good society, they expect a good government. GARDNER: President Nasser feared and distrusted the Muslim Brotherhood’s vision of good government. He took it to mean an Islamic state and, as an avowed secularist, this was not the direction he wanted Egypt to go in. So Nasser banned the Brotherhood and brutally repressed it, sending thousands of its members to jail. One of those he imprisoned was the Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb, whose radical ideas later helped shape Al-Qaeda’s worldview. In prison, Qutb read books and pamphlets by Mawdudi, which had just arrived from Pakistan after having been translated from Urdu into Arabic. Mawdudi had warned that many Muslims were falling into a state of ignorance of Islam, or ‘Jahiliyya’, because they were mixing non-Islamic Western ideas into their practice of Islam. Sayyid Qutb now took this concept much further, after his own views grew more extreme under torture by his Egyptian jailers. He said that almost all the world’s Muslims were in fact living in ignorance, in Jahiliyya – and that true Islam was almost extinct. For his followers, it was a wake-up call. For traditional Muslims inspired by Sufism, it was an ominous portent of things to come. Rochdale Imam Irfan Chishti is a contemporary critic of this thinking. CHISHTI: These were the first kind of people to deny basic practices which were traditionally held acceptable by all communities throughout time as being something that is totally alien to Islam, and used things like for the first time the tool of ‘takfir’, which is to basically label somebody as being a non- Muslim. And we saw for the first time Muslims being labelled as non-Muslims simply so that they could further their own objectives politically. GARDNER: This idea of ‘takfir’, the excommunication of fellow Muslims who were not considered radical enough, is one that’s been embraced by Al-Qaeda supporters today. Back in the 60’s, Sayyd Qutb argued that since almost all the world’s Muslims were essentially ignorant of Islam, the only true Muslims would be those who struggled with him, as part of his vanguard for Islamic revolution. I’ve personally come across similar attitudes amongst extremists in northern Saudi Arabia. Qutb wrote down his ideas in his landmark work called ‘Milestones’. Jason Burke, a writer on Al-Qaeda, says Qutb’s writings were a turning point for political Islam. BURKE: If you look at ‘Milestones’, you can see that actually it’s almost a communist manifesto, but in Islamic terms. It is full of mythical ideas, it is full of grand statements about religion that actually have very little basis in traditional Muslim practice, and it is about a vanguard going out fighting, leading, motivating, radicalising and mobilising. GARDNER: Sounds familiar? Well, it is a very similar message to the one propagated by Osama bin Laden in the 1990’s. But political Islam does not have to mean Al-Qaeda - there is a whole spectrum of ideology out there that is more concerned with social welfare than fighting jihad. In the decade after Sayyid Qutb’s execution in 1966, the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology spread – and Egyptian Muslim Brothers found they had a powerful new patron in the Saudi King Faisal, according to Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui. SIDDIQUI: In 1965 when there was conflict between Nasser and Faisal over the leadership of Muslim world, a deal was struck between Muslim Brothers and Saudi Arabia that Saudis will give jobs and protection to Muslim Brother leadership and in return Muslim Brothers will mobilise Islamic movements in support of the Saudis. And they got together of course for the glory and leadership of Saudi Arabia as the custodian of two holy places of Islam. GARDNER: It was an exciting time for political Islam. Activists from all over the world found refuge in Saudi Arabia where money flowed and there were jobs for everyone. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood activist Kemal Helbawi was one of those given a job by Saudi Arabia. HELBAWI: When I went to Saudi Arabia, I went to start with other brothers World Assembly of Muslim Youth, WAMY, and we were trying to let the society and the scholars there understand that there is another way of understanding Islam. You are not going to teach only in mosques, but you are going to adopt another method like getting people outside in a camp, in a desert area, near a river. They will entertain and amuse themselves and at the same time learn Islam. King Faisal, may Allah bless his soul, understood this mission and supported us at the beginning, but when he died the support became less. GARDNER: In 1975? HELBAWI: Yes, after 1975. But in any case, young men began to understand that there is another way either of spreading Islam or understanding Islam. GARDNER: The camps that Dr Helbawi describes, and his organisation the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, became instrumental in spreading political Islam worldwide. And Saudi Arabia in the 1970s and 80s was a giant meeting place for the exchange of ideas and contacts. Amongst the many important activists Dr. Helbawi came into contact with was Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian who became Osama bin Laden’s mentor. Bin Laden, Azzam and Helbawi would all meet up almost a decade later in Peshawar where the Muslim Brotherhood with Saudi backing were fighting their first war. AFGHAN MONTAGE NEWS: The main body of the Soviet Army has left the Afghan capital Kabul heading for home and leaving behind the Marxist government they’ve shored up for nine bloody years. KOHLMAN?: It seemed that political Islamists had defeated a world super power solely by their faith. NEWS: God is great, they shout. KHADEEJA: We went to see what was going on in Afghanistan because we were starry eyed with regard to that which had occurred post Russian expulsion from Afghanistan. NEWS: One tank is destroyed and the road is blocked. ….. the Afghan airforce seem impotent against such guerrilla sorties. GARDNER: In 1989 the Soviets left Afghanistan – a world superpower beaten back by a guerrilla army funded and equipped by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the US. The ‘infidel’ communists had been defeated by the divinely- guided mujahedeen, Afghan Muslims backed by Arab volunteers, including the Muslim Brotherhood. All over the Middle East it was seen as a great Islamic victory. KOHLMAN: Their defeating a super power, major super power reinforces their ideology that the real power in the world that matters, it’s not the super power, it’s the willpower that springs from religious belief. GARDNER: The writer and terrorism expert Evan Kohlman has traced the role of the volunteer mujahedeen in various conflicts. KOHLMAN: It galvanised sentiment around the world and militant Islamists were saying here’s our opportunity. We’ve been looking for a revolution, a revolution that will carry the banner of Islam all over the world. We’ve been looking for the start of it, the first sign. Here it was – the first opening blow, a chance to start the ball rolling. And that’s exactly what the Soviet Afghan War was. It was the boulder that got the whole process moving. GARDNER: But in Afghanistan the fighting did not end with the Soviet defeat. The mujahedeen were determined to oust the Afghan communists left in power by Moscow, and thousands more volunteers poured in from around the Arab world. One such volunteer was Noman Benotman who left Libya to join the jihad a few months after the Russians had left. It was a stark contrast to his life as a student in Tripoli. BENOTMAN: I remember once you know I stayed like for a period of eight months, you know, in Gardeez (ph), you know its mountains. It’s three thousand metres above the level of the sea. I still remember you know the first weeks even we can’t breathe, you know, because it’s very high, you know, and you have to fight there, you know. GARDNER: Did you ever think what on earth am I doing here? Why did I leave my comfortable home? BENOTMAN: Oh no. GARDNER: You never thought that? BENOTMAN: No, I was very happy, very happy. Because I found it as if it’s the chance before God to prove that you are a real Muslim and you are willing to give yourself in something which you do believe God is like encouraging you to do that. I still believe I did the right thing you know. GARDNER: The Mujahedeen didn’t just want to drive out the communists. For them, Afghanistan was a chance to make political Islam a reality. But not all the Islamists were convinced it could work. On the one hand, the mainly urban Muslim Brotherhood movement considered Afghanistan still too tribal and too uneducated a society for an enlightened Islamist government to work in. On the other hand, the Afghan warlords thought Islamic society could come about simply by seizing power themselves. The Muslim Brotherhood member Kemal Helbawi tried to persuade the main Afghan leaders that Afghanistan was not yet ready for an exclusively Islamic society. HELBAWI: I said to them that clearly Muslim Brotherhood, they do not believe that revolution or coup d’etat can lead to an Islamic state. You need foundation, you need to train and educate people. I asked the leaders to accept what the United Nations were trying to do, which is a broad based government, because at the end if the communists are defeated, they are citizens. But they refused. They did not conquer the selfishness in their hearts and in themselves. GARDNER: The mujahedeen eventually took the Afghan capital Kabul in 1992, but it was something of a pyrrhic victory. Instead of founding their ideal Islamic state, a bloody civil war dragged on, with Muslim fighting Muslim and rocket attacks taking a terrible toll on Kabul’s residents. Yet despite this mounting deathtoll, the story of the “great Islamic victory” over the communists continued to be told around the world. It inspired Muslims to come and visit, including some from Britain. One of those was Abu Khadeeja, a fundamentalist Salafi Muslim from Birmingham. He went with a group of other British Muslims to the Pakistan border area, where many of the Afghan groups were based. But his curiosity soon turned to disillusionment. KHADEEJA: We’d been told in the United Kingdom if we were to go over to the border regions then you’d see the fruits of the victory of the Muslims. So we travelled up towards the North West frontier province in Pakistan and what we saw in reality was that after the Russians had left, the Muslims themselves in their highly politicised nature had turned upon each other and they started declaring each other to be unbelievers. So I became extremely disillusioned with what this so-called victory brought and for me it turned me completely against the jihadist-takfiri ideology - completely against it. GARDNER: The Afghans were not the only people arguing amongst themselves. Amongst the Arab mujihadeen in Afghanistan a major split had emerged over what direction the jihad should now take. This was to have global repercussions. Some argued for a course of violence, others were against it. A rift developed between Osama bin Laden and his former mentor Abdullah Azzam and the latter was assassinated. The Libyan fighter Noman Benotman and the Muslim Brotherhood activist Kemal Helbawi both had an insider’s view of the politics behind the scenes. BENOTMAN: The difference or … I don’t want to say clash of policies or views between bin Laden and Sheik Abdullah Azzam - it was there, you know. And a lot of people, maybe they would like to deny it or to cover it up, you know, but there was a conflict between them, you know. So bin Laden said he would like to do his own, you know his own work. HELBAWI: Abdullah Azzam continued to be a Muslim Brotherhood member, but he was never attracted to violent ideas. He was teaching against violent ideas. That’s why toward the end of his life, those who plotted against him distributed leaflets in Peshawar to say that he is not a good scholar. Even he is a Kafir, he is not a Muslim. GARDNER: How did he die, do you think? HELBAWI: I think because of differences between Arabs and the Afghans and the Afghans among themselves. GARDNER: I mean some people accuse Osama bin Laden of having him disposed of. HELBAWI: I can’t say Osama or accuse anyone in particular. But maybe some Arabs who are takfirs, who like to be violent, did not accept his teachings and they condemned him as an unbeliever and they killed him. GARDNER: Helbawi’s job during the Afghan jihad involved working with Mawdudi’s followers in Pakistan. He assumed a major role advising the Islamist leaders of the Afghan jihad. He met bin Laden who had a heroic reputation amongst Muslims for helping to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan. Both Benotman and Helbawi thought bin Laden impressive, but they also noticed he was becoming more radical, turning his anger towards America and the West, as he consolidated his influence over the Arab mujahedeen. BENOTMAN: Bin Laden, he has charisma, you know. And you will find a lot of people, they are maybe mujahedeen or leaders but they didn’t impress you, you know. They don’t have charisma. But bin Laden, you can’t miss it. And he’s very calm – very, very calm. And he doesn’t mind if he stays like for an hour just listening to people. And the most important thing, he’s a wealthy millionaire. So a lot of people, they said how come this guy is sacrificing all his life fighting and involved in all these things? Why? So that gives him a lot of credit. That means he’s pure, he is genuine about what he’s saying you know. HELBAWI: I do remember that he was a very nice man. He was a very gentle man and he was very wise. GARDNER: Do you remember seeing the change in him from when he was fighting the Soviets to when he turned his enmity towards the West? HELBAWI: I see there is a change because he was one of the moderate Islamists all his life in Saudi Arabia and then he was influenced by some Arab fighters who came from Egypt, from Jihadi groups and Jemaati Islami groups in Egypt like Ehman Zawari. GARDNER: And they radicalised him? HELBAWI: They radicalised him with ideas. And he has a lot of money to help and sacrifice and he believed that this is the only way. BENOTMAN: I think some people, they encouraged bin Laden to create Al-Qaeda to serve their own purpose. GARDNER: Which was what? BENOTMAN: Certain groups. GARDNER: So you’re talking about national groups here like the Egyptians, the Algerians? BENOTMAN: Yes, yeah. Not Algerians, but certain groups yeah. So it’s been created to give them support financially or you know in terms of skills and training and cover and all these things. And it’s happened. GARDNER: Bin Laden’s views hardened with the Gulf War that drove Iraq’s army out of Kuwait in 1991. Bin Laden had offered the Saudi princes the services of his battle hardened mujahedeen to do the job. But the Saudis turned him down, choosing instead to invite in half a million American troops. Bin Laden never forgave them, nor the Americans, and his global movement called Al-Qaeda began to turn its sights on the West. Meanwhile, small numbers of young, impressionable British Muslims were travelling out to Afghanistan to meet him. According to Abu Khadeeja, some of those with whom he travelled to the Afghan borders during the civil war also came into contact with this new militant movement, including the Afghan warlord Gulbaddin Hekmatiar (ph). KHADEEJA: Some of those individuals went into Afghanistan proper and they met the likes of Hekmatiar (ph) and later on they met the likes of Osama bin Laden. They were there basically because they felt Afghanistan was jihad and the killing of other Muslims was jihad. So there was a split between us and that split has continued right up until this very day that we are in now. They decided that they were going to become radicalised and jihadist and we decided that this wasn’t the way of the Prophet, peace be upon him, and this wasn’t the Koranic methodology, so we were not going to support them in that. And from that day till this day, we’ve been warning against them. GARDNER: The Arab fighters who remained in Afghanistan in the 90’s did not necessarily owe allegiance to Al-Qaeda or to bin Laden. Many stayed in their national groups, setting up training camps with the aim of toppling what they saw as their own corrupt and apostate national governments. Noman Benotman was one of the leaders of “the Muqatilah” or Libyan Islamic Fighting Group – which set up a camp of around 800 fighters near the Pakistan border. For them, this was a unique opportunity to put their radical ideas into practice. BENOTMAN: Afghanistan, I think it’s something like as if it’s a gift from the sky, you know. I can’t explain how it was like unbelievable chance. Because if you take it from any angle, you know - how to develop a jihad ideology, jihadist movements, kill people, recruiting, you name it, you know – you will find it there. It was in Afghanistan. MUSIC GARDNER: Afghanistan was one of several arenas where radical Islamic ideas were now taking root. In the Palestinian Territories a new Islamic movement, Hamas, was gaining popularity. In Algeria an Islamic political party, FIS, was poised to take power but the secular government annulled the elections, and in Egypt there was a violent insurgency by radicals bent on toppling the secular government of President Husni Mubarak. But for British Muslims, by far the most significant event at the time was the horrific civil war in Bosnia- Hercegovina where atrocities were being committed against white, European Muslims. BOSNIA MONTAGE Ten days ago the Serbians took people from our bus and killed them. They slit their throats and then took a girl and raped her. I saw many bodies, maybe five hundred. SEGUE: KOHLMAN: Bosnia Herzogovina was in Europe and the effect that that had in terms of galvanizing political Islam, of bringing political Islam to the dinner table for British Muslims, it cannot be calculated – an enormous effect. SEGUE: WOMAN: They were fetching up the wounded people and executing them on spot. MAN: Did he see that himself or did he just hear about it? SEGUE: FARUK: Bosnia was a turning point. That’s when the consciousness came awake amongst the Muslims. SEGUE: WOMAN: He said, “I saw it with my very own eyes and I heard it with my very own ears. GARDNER: As graphic details of what was going on in Bosnia filtered back to Britain, the conflict there became a hugely important politicising event for British Muslims. They were appalled that the British government was apparently unwilling to protect the Bosnian Muslims or even allow them to arm themselves in the face of what was becoming known as ‘ethnic cleansing’ by the well-armed Serbs. Omar Faruk, a British Muslim of Bangladeshi descent, was a law student at the time. FARUK: When Bosnia happened, I myself found it absolutely disgusting. The UN’s position – we will feed the people in Sarajevo. If, however, the people we are feeding are attacked by the Serbs, we will not do anything. And it was like we’re fattening people to be shot at by the Serbs, and that was the position. GARDNER: In the light of Europe’s failure to intervene effectively in the conflict until it was too late, Bosnia replaced Afghanistan as the new jihadi battleground, a place where Muslim volunteers saw it as a sacred duty to go to the defence of their fellow Muslims. Evan Kohlman is the author of a book about the Bosnian conflict. KOHLMAN: By 1992-1993, at the start of the Bosnian War, the Afghan War had evolved into something that the mujahedeen and the political Islamists around the world were not too fond of and that was inter- mujahedeen fighting. And when they see this catastrophe of Muslims fighting and killing other Muslims, they are looking for something where the sides are very clear, where it’s Muslims against non-Muslims. And Bosnia came up front and centre and they began to sell the Serb military as the equivalent of the Soviets in Europe – a Christian military intent upon wiping out Muslims. GARDNER: By 1995 stories of Serb atrocities were galvanising Muslim political opinion all over the world. NEWS At the local hospital, we came across Farisa, an eighteen year old girl who had been working at Srebrenice clinic when the Serb soldiers arrived. The hospital has confirmed that she was repeatedly raped. At first, she said, they took all the wounded to one side and then one Serb soldier told me, “I know you” and took me away to another house. Then he held a gun at my forehead whilst another raped me. GARDNER: For British Muslims like Omar Faruk, what made all this particularly disturbing was that the victims were white. Bosnian Muslims were not religious zealots from another continent, they were integrated Europeans. So, the reasoning went, if white Europeans didn’t care what happened to white Muslims, then what chances would Asian Muslims in Britain have if there was ever a major ethnic conflict here? FARUK: That shook us, shook us to the ground, because here there were European Muslims, blonde eyed, blue eyed, and they were being massacred. Ethnically there is no huge difference between the Serbs and the Bosnians - they used to live together, they used to inter-marry - and this took place in the soil of Europe. And I asked myself do I need a second home? Is this ever going to happen in England? GARDNER: Was this quite a common fear then ten years ago amongst British Muslims; that the kind of persecution based on religious lines that had happened in Bosnia could happen in Britain? FARUK: Absolutely. Bosnia was a turning point. That’s when the consciousness came awake amongst the Muslims. And then what happened was people who had gone and fought in Afghanistan first time round, some of them went and they fought in Bosnia. And if I had a chance at that time, the level and amount of injustice I felt in my heart, I wouldn’t have seen it being wrong in any way whatsoever for me to go and fight for the Bosnian Muslims who were being oppressed, killed and massacred and UN and other forces were just standing there doing nothing. OMAR: I would be at the mosque and I’d hear of certain you know Muslim brothers going out to Bosnia and stuff like this and you’d say a prayer for them and be scared. You know just go oh my God. GARDNER: Kosh Omar, the son of Turkish Cypriot Muslims, experienced similar emotions. He was a London drama student from a Sufi background and for him, the Bosnian crisis came along just as he had begun to get involved with Hizb-ut-Tahrir or “HT” a radical Islamic political party which the British government now wants to ban. Kosh Omar remembers going to HT meetings when it was led by Omar Bakri Mohammed who later went on to head the now disbanded organisation, ‘Al- Muhajiroun’. OMAR: What these HT members taught me was that Islam is not a religion. It is an ideology, something that has a political, economic and social system and religion is just something within it, something personal between you and God and the personal code between you and God. So this sort of captivated me more than anything else that was happening in youth culture. GARDNER: But Hizb-ut-Tahrir, they were not getting involved in Bosnia, were they, or was that … ? OMAR: No, what they were doing, they were bringing attention to it. Other imams, other sheikhs were talking about just giving a Koranic story. And if a HT member got up, basically Omar Bakri Mohammed - when he got up and said a speech, it was captivating if I’m to be honest. I mean it was totally bringing attention to what was happening in the world and to Muslims and he gave very good speeches, you know. GARDNER: And what was he saying that you had to do? OMAR: Basically the core was wake up and look what’s happening to the Muslims. But because HT was a political party, they very much wanted to fight against it politically. I mean I remember personally being at talks where Omar Bakri Mohammed would be talking and certain young Muslims would get very emotional and stand up and say right I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that. And he would turn around and say well it’s good that you want to help your Muslim brothers, but what would that do? You would kill a couple of people, you would kill a leader and they would be replaced. What you’ve got to do is convince people politically. GARDNER: None of the main Islamic political groups in Britain at the time – like Hizb-ut-Tahrir or the Jamaat-i-Islami groups - were publicly calling on British Muslims to actually go and fight in Bosnia. But they all encouraged their followers to lobby the government to defend Bosnia’s Muslims and many of their members went over there as aid workers. But according to the Birmingham Salafi, Abu Khadeeja, stirring people up too much over this issue was an inherently dangerous thing to do. KHADEEJA: It was a religious genocide that took place in Bosnia and there’s no doubt about that and history speaks for itself. However, political Muslims in the United Kingdom, they turned it into another highly politicised event, so what they started doing was started spreading videos of atrocities in Bosnia, under the counter videos that you wouldn’t find in mainstream stores. So they started spreading this amongst ignorant Muslims and that just radicalises them. All they’re seeing is Muslims being killed. What are we going to do about it? Let’s get the next flight out to Bosnia and do some killing of our own. Our argument was always setting up your own separatist camps goes against the prophetic tradition anyway because the Prophet, peace be upon him, said in a narration stick to the Jemah of the Muslimeen. Stick to the united body of the Muslims and their leader. So Bosnia had a leader in those times – it was Alija Izetbegovic – and they had a legitimate army, so they are the ones who should have been supported. As for individual jihadist groups going into Bosnia, setting up camps and taking Western recruits, those camps were in fact educational institutions for the jihadists where they radicalised them further. MUSIC GARDNER: The conflicts of the mid-90’s in Bosnia, Chechnya and Algeria were all becoming jihadi battlegrounds, complete with a small backstreet industry of gruesome videos used for recruiting new fighters. Hovering in the background was Osama bin Laden and his shadowy Al-Qaeda organisation. He’d spent the early 90’s in Sudan as a guest of the Islamist government. But in 1996 he had to get out or risk being handed over to the Americans. So, he returned to the country he felt most at home in, not his native Saudi Arabia, but to Afghanistan where an Islamist movement in the form of the Taliban was gradually taking over the country. The author Jason Burke believes this was a milestone in the route some political Islamists took towards violence. BURKE: The crucial moment is bin Laden’s return to Afghanistan in 1996. He comes back and looks at the jihadi landscape, if you like, around him. And what can he see? Well he can see that in Chechnya a nasty war has failed to create an Islamic state, he can see that in Kashmir a similar thing has occurred, he can see that in Egypt, in Algeria there were some hopeful signs from his perspective but that largely the idea that each individual nation could create some kind of Islamic state alone has failed. And the next stage is to take it beyond the individual conflict and to internationalise them. What he needs is targets that everybody hates and the target is America. 9/11 MONTAGE WOMAN: We saw smoke coming out and everybody started running out and we saw the plane on the other side of the building and there was smoke everywhere and people were jumping out the windows! BUSH: The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts. BURKE: We are seeing attacks that are hugely mediatised in that they are created for TV, to reach an audience and to radicalise and mobilise that audience. That is the specific thing that bin Laden worked out. He worked out how to reach people, how to shock people out of what he would say is apathy, and how he hoped – and still hopes – to call them to his extremist flag, if you like. GARDNER: The attacks of September 2001 were both a tactical and strategic victory for bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. They humbled the world’s only superpower, killed thousands of so-called ‘infidels’ and triggered a military campaign that Al-Qaeda has been able to portray as a war against Islam. President Bush’s clumsy use of the word ‘crusade’ for the war on terror only reinforced this impression amongst Muslims. But for most of them, 9/11 was a disaster. Together with the subsequent bloody attacks in Bali, Madrid and elsewhere, it associated their religion with extreme violence, something they condemned. Until Al-Qaeda eventually claimed responsibility for 9/11, some clung to the hope that Muslims were not really behind those attacks. Others felt shame, embarrassment or resentment at the suggestion that 9/11 had anything to do with their religion. Four years on, this resentment still shows in a palpable rise in Muslim pride and politicisation verging on anger. It’s particularly noticeable amongst young Muslims in Britain. It was in evidence when I met up with a group of students at the Islamic Society of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Even amongst this group of highly educated British-born Muslims there was a distinct sense of alienation. It was as if they saw the world through a lens of ‘them and us’, of Western governments versus Islam. SHAST: Our government always goes on about for example Iraq - you know one of the reasons that we had to go in was because Iraq didn’t comply with UN resolutions. But when Israel doesn’t comply with them, nothing is said and there are no such economic sanctions. In fact we kind of subsidise their sort of military escapades, so it’s that kind of double standards that western governments have that really angers Muslims around the world. GARDNER: Rosana, what about you? Would you consider yourself quite a politicised student? ROSANA: I think every Muslim would consider themselves a politicised student simply because what’s going on in the world is affecting every single Muslim and the war on terrorism is affecting Muslims in Iraq, in all the other countries that they’re being affected in, so of course it means a lot to Muslims in the UK. GARDNER: But to be fair, most of the carnage in Iraq on a day to day basis is being inflicted by people who call themselves Muslims, who are setting off suicide bombs killing other Muslims. ROSANA: Yes unfortunately that’s true, but the intentions behind their slaughter is not to kill each other. It’s to make a point and it’s to get rid of the troops that are there at the moment. GARDNER: Nahed, you wanted to say something. NAHED: Yeah, I was just going to point out a couple of things like in terms of media manipulation sometimes. Like whenever a killing takes place in Iraq, they say you know Sunni against Shia, Shia against Sunni; whereas most Muslims, we just consider ourselves Muslims and so it’s this kind of playing the group off each other and you know just dividing. And I see it in the media a lot, you know. Rather than just saying that you know Iraqis are killing Iraqis, you know this division is made. GARDNER: To be fair though, Abu Musab al-Zarkawi, who is the most wanted insurgent in Iraq, he has made a public declaration of war against most Shi’ite groups in Iraq. JAMAL: Can I … GARDNER: Of course, Jamal, yes. JAMAL: All of the things that’s reported to us, especially with regard to the suicide bombings and so forth - to me, I personally take it as speculation because you know what guarantee do we have that they’re done by Arab or Muslim or Iraqi insurgents? You know, as far as I understand - and I studied history for quite a while - the greatest thing that the British Empire did was the divide and rule policy and it’s a similar thing that I see going on now. GARDNER: So you’re saying that you have your suspicions that British or coalition forces are setting off bombs themselves? JAMAL: It’s a plausible you know possibility. GARDNER: But why would coalition forces want to set off bombs? What would they gain by that in Iraq? JAMAL: Well it’s a justification for them to stay longer. GARDNER: These Muslim students are clearly highly politicised and some, though not all, told me they were directly influenced by the ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood. A few years ago, it would be unusual for Muslims of South Asian origin to be aware of these Arab ideas. But there is a sort of ‘fusion’ going on in Britain between the younger Mawdudist groups with their origins in the Indian subcontinent - and prominent Islamists from the Arab Muslim Brotherhood. The leading Muslim Brotherhood member Kemal Helbawi founded the Muslim Association of Britain 8 years ago. It’s an important affiliate of the Muslim Council of Britain, the MCB. Political Islam - in both its Muslim Brotherhood and in its Mawdudist forms - now has a powerful lobby in Britain through such groups. It’s an influence which worries some British Muslims. Rochdale Imam Irfan Chishti.. CHISHTI: In this country I think the Mawdudi movement, because they’ve established themselves as such a mainstream and just the whole set up there has just become so much establishment, that it’s very hard now for anyone to say that, look, if you scratch beneath the surface a little bit, if you really ask some very hard questions about what you think about things, you will get some quite surprising answers. But I think people just simply aren’t ready to do that because of the established position that they have gained. GARDNER: Those difficult questions might include equivocation over suicide bombings in places they consider to be Muslim lands under occupation, such as the entire state of Israel. Then there’s the question of Iraq. The vast majority of British Muslims oppose the invasion and occupation by Western forces there, but their problem is that they – and their non-Muslim allies - have so far failed to influence the government on this issue. Some Muslims believe the government’s failure to listen to them on Iraq has had disastrous consequences. 7/7 News Central London is rocked by a series of terrorist attacks. Police speak of many casualties. The underground system was the main target. At least five stations were hit. The entire system is at a standstill. GARDNER: Most British Muslims were appalled by the London bombings of July 7th. Once again, some clung to the hope that this had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda or with an extreme version of political Islam. But the release later this summer of a recorded video message by Mohammed Sidique Khan, the bombers’ ringleader, made it clear that the attacks were intended as retribution for western policies in the Middle East. SIDIQUE KHAN: Until we feel security, you will be our targets. And until you stop the bombing, gasing, the imprisonment and torture of my people, we will not stop this fight. We are at war and I’m a soldier. HOQUE: This resentment, this level of anger aimed towards – I need to choose my words here carefully – aimed towards anybody who is a non-Muslim has been simmering for a good twenty odd years now. GARDNER: Aminul Hoque again. HOQUE: It hasn’t just come from within the community. Everything around us has contributed to it – global events, media events, subtle racism, blatant racism. Lots of factors have been playing into this. And people were saying in the late 90s that you know it’s not going to stop here. And I remember these words – you just watch, it’s going to continue. Our lives as Muslims living in this country is going to get far worse. This was way before 9/11, right, and what they said came true. GARDNER: So does this mean that more violent attacks on the West by Al-Qaeda-inspired extremists are now inevitable? That’s certainly the view of Europe’s counter-terrorism experts. But some Muslim activists here in Britain believe the solution lies in giving Muslims a greater political voice. BUKHARI: We say listen, the only people who can protect their own rights are the Muslims, so we teach the Muslims to lobby Parliament or the media. GARDNER: Ashqar Bukhari, who we heard from earlier as the teenage rebel who spray-painted a library during the Rushdie affair. He set up MPAC - the Muslim Public Affairs Committee – 4 years ago. It’s a small political pressure group based very much on the model of AIPAC, the successful Israeli lobby in the US. Bukhari wasn’t inspired by the likes of the Muslim Brotherhood or by the Jamaat-i-Islami or even by the writings of Qutb and Mawdudi, but he was motivated by television pictures of the sufferings of Muslims around the world. He thinks there’s now an urgent need for Muslims here to engage more in mainstream British politics. BUKHARI: The reason why those terrorists blew themselves up on a tube is because they felt, like many Muslims, that Western governments were so barbaric in Muslim lands that they wanted to stop them and this is their way of stopping them. Now the reason why they did that, I would argue and MPAC would argue, is that we failed to understand how to channel it peacefully. GARDNER: If British Muslims don’t get the policy changes that they want in British policy, then we’re looking at seeing more terrorism on the streets of Britain? BUKHARI: No doubt about it. And not just Britain; around the world. This is the tip of the iceberg. MASOOD: That is actually quite a worrying message... GARDNER: Journalist Ehsan Masood. MASOOD: Anyone who says that unless the British government changes its foreign policy, then there’s going to be more terrorism on the streets if they can’t control their young people who might have terrorist intentions - you know that is actually the wrong kind of message, almost a sort of hold Whitehall at gunpoint, which is what seems to be happening at the moment. GARDNER: Politicised Muslims would deny they were effectively holding the government to ransom, but they do want policies to change. Even those who have never read or possibly even heard of Mawdudi and Qutb have now become increasingly conscious of their Muslim identity and of their membership of the ‘Ummah’, the global Muslim family. This has happened through graphic television pictures of Muslim suffering, through articles and chatrooms on the internet, and through leafleting campaigns on the street. In a sense it’s all a triumph for political Islam. But for Ghayausuddin Siddiqui, who met Mawdudi and who supported the Iranian revolution in the past, it’s all gone too far and it’s now time for a major rethink. SIDDIQUI: I think political Islam - the road it has put us on is a road to destruction. I think today, as a result of this approach, we are against everybody. We simply cannot afford to have the whole world against us. We have to have friends. Every project, idea we have is based on some kind of a confrontation and I think the time has come that Muslims wake up and challenge these dangerous ideas. GARDNER: That will not be a popular message in some quarters. While Dr Siddiqui thinks political Islam has made too many enemies, for plenty of Muslims, the world was already against them and they need to stand up for themselves. The majority are not seeking confrontation with the West, nor do they really want to live in a strict Islamic state, but they do care passionately about what they see as the persecutions of Muslims around the world. As long as this perception remains widespread, there is the risk that adherents of political Islam will always be prone to influence by fanaticism and violence. 1