Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Preface by Kate Allen, Director, Amnesty International UK
Prologue
PART ONE: B-BOY
One: There is another Gujrat, in Pakistan
Two: This game’s not for Pakis
Three: The doctor who Said ‘Fuck tha Police’
Four: Matt, the stranger who was stabbed for me
Five: The green rucksack with no bomb
Six: When Babri Mosque fell in India
Seven: A land where foetuses are cut from wombs
PART TWO: ISLAMIST
Eight: An Islamist takeover
Nine: 12,000 Muslims screaming ‘Khilafah’ at Wembley Arena
Ten: Servant of the Compeller
Eleven: The womb that bore me
Twelve: A show of hands to harden the heart
Thirteen: The romanticism of struggle
Fourteen: Dreams of a nuclear Caliphate
Fifteen: Caliphs in Copenhagen
Sixteen: The polemic
Seventeen: Welcome to Egypt, we do as we please
Eighteen: The ghimamah has no rules
Nineteen: Number forty-two
Twenty: Assalaamu alaykum, you’ve just come out of hell
Twenty-One: The luxury of an audience
Twenty-Two: The Penguin is hit by slippers
Twenty-Three: ‘Monocracy’
PART THREE: RADICAL
Twenty-Four: Where the heart leads, the mind can follow
Twenty-Five: No right to silence
Twenty-Six: How many years did you fail?
Twenty-Seven: Civil-democratic intimidation
Twenty-Eight: The decade-late apology
Twenty-Nine: Monkeys in a zoo
Thirty: Visiting No.10
Thirty-One: Khudi Pakistan
Thirty-Two: I will see your day when it comes
Glossary of Arabic Terms
Epilogue
Resources
Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Book
Harassed by Police. Violently targeted by Neo-Nazis. Maajid Nawaz was a young Essex B-Boy recruited to an extreme Islamist group in London. He galvanised thousands against the west and incited armies to revolt against Muslim-led governments.
Setting up cells in Britain, Denmark, Pakistan and Egypt, he left a burning trail of recruits in his wake. Eventually hunted down by Egypt’s notorious State Security, he was sentenced to five years in a brutal Egyptian jail.
Amnesty International adopted him as a Prisoner of Conscience, and reformist Arabs took him under their wing. Upon his release from prison he renounced political Islamism and now travels the world organising young people along democratic lines, risking his life to undo everything he had once been prepared to die for. Islamist extremists attack him. Arab revolutionaries know his name. Presidents and prime ministers have courted him.
B-Boy. Islamist. Activist. Always the radical. This story will make you believe in change.
For my family, my son, and for all my friends.
And for those with whom I started a movement.
The moving finger writes, and having written moves on.
Nor all thy piety nor all thy wit, can cancel half a line of it.
Omar Khayyam, Ruba’iyat
Preface
This is a book about change and transformation. Maajid Nawaz’s extraordinary account of his life – from young childhood in Southend through teen years embroiled in street violence and induction into Islamism – makes it relatively easy to understand how political and ideological radicalism occurs. His description of the violent prejudice he experienced in his youth is a salutary lesson in what can happen when institutional racism is allowed to flourish. He makes it very clear how and why he became desensitised to violence and shows how racist aggression created a fertile recruiting ground for Islamist extremism. He writes powerfully about his gradual detachment and inability to feel empathy for others; such was his experience of immersion in radical ideology.
But what is most fascinating to me is the evidence that radical extremists can change; it is possible. Maajid describes his awe at the compassion of ordinary human beings who, after his arrest, unfair trial, ill treatment and imprisonment in Egypt, put aside their own dislike of his politics, stood up for the universality of human rights, and campaigned for his release. Chief among them was Amnesty member John Cornwall. Not only did he prompt Amnesty International to adopt Maajid as a Prisoner of Conscience, he wrote letter after letter of friendship to Maajid himself.
I am moved beyond measure to read of the transformative effects of these letters on Maajid. It reminds me again of why I am proud to work for Amnesty International UK, whose members’ actions were so instrumental in enabling Maajid to reconnect with life and humanity. In essence, human rights, compassion and kindness helped to save his humanity. This book is the account of his redemptive journey – through innocence, bigotry, hardline radicalism and beyond – to a passionate advocacy of human rights and all that this can mean.
Kate Allen, Director, Amnesty International UK
Prologue
Southend, 1992
‘Slammer’: that’s my tag when I’m out bombing, plastering the streets with graffiti. I write it without an ‘m’ – ‘Slamer’ – because it’s quicker that way, and speed counts if you don’t want to get caught by the cops. I’m a hip-hop B-boy, into Public Enemy and N.W.A. Tracks like ‘Rebel Without a Pause’, ‘Fear of a Black Planet’, ‘Fuck tha Police’ – their lyrics are deep. I’m in a ‘click’ suit, baggy corduroys with pin tucks at the bottom, rocking Adidas trainers. My hair’s a grade zero up to the top – when not in a red bandana it stands up in a box-cut, with a mad design trimmed up the back. My crew all wear the same clothes, blast the same tunes. Like Erick and Parrish Making Dollars, we look the Business.
I’m fifteen years old, and I live in Southend in Essex. This summer, like every summer, the fair is here, in the park across the way from my house. When I was young I used to go to the fair with my folks. Back in those days it was all about the rides: the dodgems, the Egg-Roller, the Carpet Roll. These days I go with my boys, and at night not during the day. Now I don’t care about the rides. I go to chill and check out the skins on show, the local female talent.
As Ice Cube once rapped today was a good day … or at least it had been. The sky is full of blurred lights against the blackness: there’s a backdrop of girls’ screams and thumping tracks from the rides; that sweet and sour fairground smell of candyfloss and fried onions. We’re bowling around, on the prowl, when out of the crowd comes a face I recognise. It’s my friend Chill – real name, Tsiluwa. Chill and I are tight. Born in Zimbabwe, he came to Britain a few years ago. He’s pelting towards us, criss-crossing through all the people, and I can see straight away that he’s relieved he’s found us.
‘Yo, Chill. Whassup, bro?’
‘We’ve got beef, boys,’ he says.
Chill turns round and I follow his gaze to where, and who, he’s been running from. Barging through the crowd is a group of white lads in green bomber jackets, and they’re stepping to us big time. When they see Chill has friends they stop in their tracks. The crowd between us starts to thin and I can feel my heart racing. The leader, a well-known local thug called Mickey, scopes us as he raises his right hand in a fascist salute. Then his friends are all at it, swearing and giving Nazi salutes, calling us ‘Niggers’ and ‘Pakis’ and telling us to ‘fuck off back to where we came from’.
It’s good to know that in situations like this my boys’ve got my back. Mickey’s threats are clear: I’ve been here before, but it’s not something I’m about to get used to. Especially when it’s more than all mouth: I know from experience that they’ll be packing knives. If we get caught, we’ll get sliced to pieces. The longer our stand-off lasts the more the crowd melts away, and the hustle and bustle of the fair gives way to an ominous ring of space. No one wants to know.
We split. I’m running between the stalls, weaving in and out of people, running so hard I can hear my breath thumping against the screams from the rides. Where’s that park-keeper when you need him? I’m glad I know the park well, know where to go. That means I can give these skinheads the slip, and I realise with relief that the shouts of ‘Paki!’ are drifting further and further away as I make my way to the gate. Then I’m over the road, heading for home. Straight in and up the stairs, up to my room and under the bed where I keep it: my favourite hunting knife. Taking three stairs at a time, bishbash-bosh, I’m down and back out of the door before my parents can ask what’s going on. They belong to a generation more tolerant of such trouble, and with a local newsagent’s to look after right opposite the park this is definitely not an approach they would approve of. But me and my crew, we think different. Now’s not the time to cower and hope the shit blows over. Now’s the time to stand with my boys, to back them up. No racist is gonna run us off our own streets.
The group reassembles at one of our prearranged meeting points: the place we head to when we get split up like this. It takes a while but once we’re sure it’s safe we gather on the corner of Chalkwell Avenue and London Road. We’re not looking for trouble, but we sure as hell aren’t backing down either. We’re not gonna be run down by Mickey and his goons.
Walking back up London Road a white van suddenly pulls up behind us. Back doors open, and out climb a group of proper, nasty-looking skinheads.
Shit, here we go.
I’ve heard stories of ‘Paki-bashing’ before. Tales of groups of men driving around in search of unsuspecting victims to stab. But this is the first time I’ve been the ‘Paki’ in question. We’ve been set up. Mickey and his bomber-jacket mates, for all their front, they’re just local youth like us. These skinheads are in a different league: big men, built like brick shithouses, in their twenties, tooled-up and ready for action. There’s a glint of a blade in the street lights as they climb out of the van. Some are carrying clubs with nails hammered in the ends. If they catch us …
My friends all have the same idea as me: we need to move fast. ‘My blade!’ I think, as I hear them tearing down the street. I’ve gotta ditch my blade! If they find me with it, they’ll think I’m up for a fight. My only chance is if I can prove I’m not strapped, try my luck, see if they’ll let me be. I dive into a side alley, duck down, and hide the knife behind a bush. Then I’m out, pelting up the street, in the panic of the moment not sure which way to turn, and – oh shit – I’m surrounded. There’s five, six of them, around me on all sides. Knives, knuckledusters, clubs. There’s the Hitler salute again, pierced by more swearing: Fucking Paki! Fuck off back to where you came from!
I can feel my fear rising, my adrenalin pumping. The look on these men’s faces can only mean one thing; they know there’s no escape for me now, and so do I. This is it, ‘that’s the way the ball bounces’. I’ve had my skins, blasted my tunes, and enjoyed the good times. Now, I guess I’m just gonna get got …
* * *
Egypt, 2002
Am I being driven to my martyrdom, my shahadah? I’m bound and blindfolded with filthy rags, packed between other frightened, hapless creatures, sweltering beneath an unforgiving desert sun. Heat and salt. Heat and salt. It’s all I can taste. The sour, putrid smell of fear is thick in the back of the van we are in. It’s reeking from the sweat of those I’m trussed up against, and I’m certain I smell the same to them too. Someone to my right is murmuring incomprehensibly: a prayer, a whimper, or just plain confusion. The rest are silent but for the sound of their ragged, laboured breaths, waiting, waiting for what lies ahead.
It seems like four hours since I awoke, maybe five. There’s no way to tell. The searing heat could be Cairo, but then again it could be anywhere in Egypt. Allahu a’lam – God only knows. Maybe it will be a bullet in the back of my head. The state security, called Aman al-Dawla, has been known to bus people out to deserted areas to do just that. What a mercy that would be. Quick and easy. Just time enough to read my testimony of faith, the Kalimatain, before I go. Yes, the Qur’an, I must remember the Qur’an. Chapter Ya-Seen will surely calm my nerves. I try recalling the words with all the focus I can muster, but nothing penetrates through the heavy, almost asphyxiating haze.
And then I hear of it, announced with relish as a police conscript, a shaweesh, jostles us out of the van and down steps we can’t see: al-Gihaz. The Apparatus. Headquarters of Aman al-Dawla, notorious in all Egypt for what has been whispered about its dark, underground cells. Many have come out crazed, unable to speak of what they encountered inside, others have never come out at all.
In here I have lost my name. I am now a number. Forty-two – itnain wa arba’een – is what I must remember, and what I must answer to every time it is called. Itnain wa arba’een, itnain wa arba’een, itnain wa arba’een. Everything else is uncertain. I don’t know if I will get down these steps without falling, I don’t know when I’ll be beaten. I have been stripped of defence; my blindfold means I cannot see it coming. Clenching my body in anticipation of the blows is exhausting but it’s all I can do. The muscles in my stomach and the back of my neck ache with the effort.
The change in the air tells me I am being shoved below ground. The space becomes constricted; dank, invisible walls start closing in. As I’m shunted through a corridor, the smell hits me like a blow to the gut; the stench of human waste left stewing too long. It cuts through the agony and the fatigue, leaving me gagging for air, begging soundlessly for respite. I feel movement on both sides, the restless stirring of confined bodies. Packed holding cells to my right and left.
With no room to spare, I am made to lie on top of others already lying on the soiled floor of the corridor; we are like human dominoes. I can feel a strange body crushed beneath mine. Ya akhi – my brother, forgive me for what my weight must be doing to you. I want to speak but our orders are to maintain absolute silence, or be silenced. Hour after hour, new bodies pile up around me. In the solitary world of the blindfold, I have no way of distinguishing one living corpse from the next.
And so it begins, the long sleepless vigil of al-Gihaz. No rest, no communication, no movement. Shivering and sweltering between carefully orchestrated extremes of temperature, we must be ready at all times to answer the hourly roll call of our assigned numbers. Itnain wa arba’een, itnain wa arba’een, itnain wa arba’een. I must not forget. Failing to answer or falling asleep means a vicious boot to my face.
In moments of lucidity I remember that no one, not the wife and child I left behind screaming after me in the middle of the night, or the parents that fretted about my move to Egypt, know where I am. Panic rises like bile in my throat as I struggle to regain control. Allah have mercy. Hasbi Allah wa ni’mal wakeel – you are sufficient and the best of protectors. Ever since I dedicated myself to the re-establishment of our Caliphate, I have spent years knowing that this moment would come. Pharaohs have never been defeated without blood and sacrifice, and the victories of the righteous have always extracted a heavy price. But help me through this ordeal, my Lord, as I am scared and alone. Ya-Seen, wal Qur’an il-Hakim …
Days, nights, I can no longer tell the difference. But I recognise with a shudder when the roll call stops and the ‘questioning’ begins. A brother somewhere down a corridor nearby – assigned the number one – is yanked to his feet.
Raqam wahid!
Scuffling amid muted cries, he treads his way between the rows of prisoners to a room down the corridor. The door is left open like a warning to the rest of us. Shouts. Thuds. Pleas. And then a noise that turns my stomach. The sharp, unmistakable crackle of electricity, followed by a bloodcurdling scream. A’uzu billah – I seek refuge in God! It is hard to imagine the impact of a howl wracked in pain until you actually hear it. A chorus of murmuring engulfs my corridor as all the brothers pray under their breaths. We all know that our own numbers will be called soon enough. Think! I tell myself. Recite the Qur’an! But my lips are quivering, my throat is dry and my mind is shot with exhaustion and fear.
There are fewer footsteps as the brother is brought back to his place. His limp body is dumped against a wall with a sickening thud of finality. And then:
Raqam itnain!
It’s on to number two. With time the threats and shouts of the guard and wailing of the nameless brothers blend into an endless stream of screaming sound. With brutal regularity the numbers are called, growing ever nearer to my own – drawing ever closer.
Itnain wa arba’een, itnain wa arba’een, itnain wa arba’een. I must not forget.
* * *
Texas, 2011
Spring is giving way to summer in Dallas, and I’ve already decided it’s too warm here. My suit collar chafes against my neck as I gaze out of the car that has collected me from my hotel; the neighbourhoods are getting visibly grander as we near our destination. Unsurprising really, given where I am headed.
Dallas has just launched the Presidential Center for Democracy, and the conference I have just spoken at is part of its inaugural proceedings. I was invited to discuss the role of social media in the recent uprisings in the Middle East – mass protests that set the region alight and shook decades of tyranny and repression. Naturally, the rest of the world is paying very close attention. On the panel with me was Oscar Morales, a friend and fellow activist. Oscar is the man credited with organising the largest demonstration against terrorism ever recorded – 12 million people responded to his viral campaign by taking to the streets to protest against the Columbian terrorist group FARC. Together, Oscar and I addressed an audience of global activists on how online platforms can be harnessed to mobilise and feed into traditional media. Surreal. Two years earlier I had not heard of Twitter. Now I was using my account to inform back-to-back television interviews about an uprising in Egypt.
These formalities over, I’m on my way to lunch with the sponsor of the event. I reach a large, imposing house and at the door I am greeted by a butler who tells me that guests are to ‘go casual’ for this one – in other words, we are to lose our jackets and ties. Uncomfortable with shedding my jacket, I make my way through the patio doors to a huge, immaculately kept lawn, where the other invited guests are mingling and a buffet-style lunch has been laid out.
As enticing as the smell of a Texan barbecue is, even more interesting are the guests at this gathering. I spot former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice chatting in a corner. While standing in the queue for barbecued meat, a man comes over and introduces himself as Michael Meece, Chief of Staff to a former President. He informs me that I have been invited to join our host at his table. Following Meece, I find myself among familiar faces: American activist and campaigner Stephanie Rudat, and various Egyptian and Syrian revolutionary activists. And there, ushering me to an empty seat next to him is the host: former President of the United States, George W. Bush.
So much rushes through my mind as I look into that familiar face, but I keep my own expression neutral. I return the handshake he extends and take my seat. Lunch with Bush: this is something I didn’t see coming. Half-remembered memories of television appearances, the public persona, the caricatures, all flash through my mind as I recall his ‘War on Terror’, his war on me.
A discussion is already under way at the table, and I tune in to catch up on the debate. Bush listens intently to each person, interrupting frequently to ask questions and seek clarification. It’s Egypt’s future that’s being deliberated; the Egyptians are advocating passionately for swift justice for the ousted dictator, Hosni Mubarak. For them, his trial and incarceration will herald a new dawn for Egypt.
But I beg to differ, and feel I must give voice to my concerns. I try to explain why this single-minded focus on ‘justice’ might be detrimental to Egypt’s long-term interests. ‘What is needed first and foremost is a constitution, followed by an election process, after which justice against Mubarak can be sought. If Egypt fails to define a constitution for itself at the outset, the first party to win an election will mould it in their own image. Justice cannot be arbitrary; it must be set in law.’ I argue this not from detached interest but from a deeply personal place; the suspension of constitutional rights following the assassination of President Sadat in 1981 has impacted my life in a way I cannot begin to explain. I have learnt what Emergency Law and the overriding of individual liberties really means. I have witnessed what Mubarak’s regime has been capable of: the paralysing fear, the routine humiliations, the torture …
‘Stop.’ I am interrupted sharply by Bush, who has now turned his full attention to me. ‘How do you define torture?’
Has Bush just asked me for my definition of torture? I know immediately his interest isn’t merely academic – during his time in office, the question of what did and did not constitute torture was a vital component in the development of the ‘War on Terror’. In 2002, Bush’s Office of Legal Counsel wrote a notorious memorandum on the subject of ‘water-boarding’, an interrogation technique involving the simulation of drowning by pouring water over the prisoner’s cellophaned face. The memorandum famously, and highly controversially, concluded that water-boarding was not torture but instead an ‘enhanced’ interrogation technique, thereby making it admissible by US law.
Where do I begin? Should I say how I feel about the overly militarised aspect of the ‘War on Terror’ and what it has cost the world in terms of human rights violations, reinforcing the terrorist narrative, and widespread damage to countries? Should I bring up Iraq? I’ve been on record talking about these issues, but how are you meant to respond when the leader of the ‘War on Terror’ asks you for your opinion over a barbecued lunch in his own backyard.
I decide to deal directly with the question asked. ‘How do I define torture? What about electrocution?’ I look back at Bush and wait to be asked about water-boarding. Instead, he nods and agrees solemnly ‘Yes, that is torture’, and with a wave of a hand, ‘please carry on.’
PART ONE
B-boy
Notice to all passengers, please do not run on the platforms or concourses. Especially if you are carrying a rucksack, wearing a big coat, or look a bit foreign.
Anonymous graffiti in the London Underground, after police killed innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell station with seven shots to the head, July 22nd 2005
CHAPTER ONE
There is another Gujrat, in Pakistan
I WAS BORN in the late seventies, the same time as hip hop was busting its first moves in New York. The B-boys in the Bronx started it all, poppin’ and lockin’ to the original loops. Afrika Bambaataa, he was there at the beginning. So too were the Sugarhill Gang, sampling Chic and hitting the mainstream with ‘Rapper’s Delight’. Then there was Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five; Melle Mel gave voice to their fury in ‘The Message’. A dozen years later, I’d find inspiration in this scene, discover my voice in its rhythms. Until then, I’d grow up in isolation on the other side of the Atlantic, fledgling years that mirrored hip hop’s own early development.
Even so, my own beginnings could not have been more different from those of hip hop. My birthplace and hometown was Southend, a coastal town in Essex. In Britain in the eighties, Essex was in tune with the times: Thatcher’s populist appeal of tax cuts and the right to buy council houses, strident nationalism and an individualist ethos all suited the county. Nobody summed this up more than Norman Tebbit, MP for nearby Chingford and Tory Party Chairman, the minister who told the unemployed to get on their bikes, and whose Spitting Image puppet saw him dressed as a skinhead.
The Southend of my childhood was not at all like New York – it wasn’t, and still isn’t, a place of ethnic diversity. Of its present day population of 160,000, 96 per cent are white. When I was growing up, that percentage was even higher. These days there are Kosovan, Albanian and West Indian communities in the town, but thirty years ago there were no East Europeans, and the main West Indian communities were in nearby Pitsea and Basildon. There were few Asian families in Southend – literally a few hundred people, no more than 0.1 per cent of the population. At that time if you saw a Pakistani, Indian or Bangladeshi face in Southend, you would usually know their parents, where they had been on holiday last year, and the latest domestic scandal that was doing the rounds in their family.
Growing up in such a minority community has to have an effect on you. It was a completely different experience from being brought up in a large Pakistani community, in East Ham or Bradford. It meant that we had no choice but to engage with the wider community, and as a result I grew up feeling far more equipped to deal with cultural differences. The equivalent ‘Maajid’ in Bradford may not have known where to put himself in an all-white environment. Even today, there are Bangladeshis in Tower Hamlets who have grown up speaking Bangla as their first language, and who despite being raised in the UK made no white friends.
Such communities, in other words, are big enough for people to live their whole lives within them, rather than venture out. The result is that for many people growing up in a place like Bradford or Tower Hamlets the only interaction they have with white kids is when they are facing them in a fight. And the only time they come into contact with white women is when they are chatting them up in the hope of a quick one-night stand. That has a corrosive effect on how each community perceives the other. It’s a bad situation, for both sides.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I need to first explain how my family ended up in Southend in the first place. My family originally hail from Gujrat. This isn’t to be confused with Gujarat in India, which gives its name to the more prominent Gujarati community in the UK. There is another Gujrat, in Pakistan. It’s a district and a city in the province of the Punjab, in the north west of the country, towards the border with Kashmir. It is near Islamabad, though given the bad roads is still a good two-and-a-half-hour drive away from the capital, and equally far from Lahore. Gujrat lies on the banks of the River Chenab, and my family is said to have settled in the area from the eighth century, coming to the subcontinent with the Arab armies of Muhammad bin Qasim.
Gujrat is a city with a disproportionate influence over Pakistani politics. The Chaudhrys of the area have long held sway within the army, and the city has produced prime ministers and powerful political factions. Gujrat is also fabled for its clan, or biraadari-based gangsters and beautiful women. Folklore places the tragic ancient love story of Sohni Mahiwal in Gujrat. Sohni, a Punjabi word for beautiful, is said to have drowned in the River Chenab as she tried in desperation to reach her forbidden lover Mahiwal. Infatuated by her beauty, Mahiwal jumped in to save her, and he too drowned alongside his lost love. This story has in turn inspired numerous poems, paintings, songs and even two Bollywood movies. Family legend has it that my Nana Abu, my maternal grandfather, spent his childhood during the British Raj in close association with an English doctor, the governor of a hospital in the town of Jalalpur, located in the wider Gujrat district. This Englishman resided in the hospital grounds with his family. Having grown extremely close to Nana Abu’s father, the doctor often invited the family round to share meals, festivals and holidays. (Apparently the hospital building still stands, in all its Imperial splendour, in Jalalpur.) As a boy, Nana Abu, named Ghulam-Nabi, or servant of the Prophet, developed a deep fascination for this English doctor. Being keenly impressed by his culture, education and generosity Nana Abu decided that when he was married and had children of his own, he would raise them all to be doctors, and would run a hospital just like this one. This was to become his guiding dream.
A medical education wasn’t immediately available to Nana Abu. So with a heavy heart he joined the army of the British Raj in the hope that this would give him the opportunity to follow his ambition. He pursued a vigorous regime of extracurricular courses alongside his day-to-day routine in the army. He quickly succeeded in qualifying as an accountant, and was appointed to manage the military accounts for food stocks. With all appearing to be on track, and his dream still seeming attainable, Nana Abu got married. My Nani Ammi was a beautiful woman from Gujrat named Suraya, which means a constellation of stars. Newly-wed and full of hope, Nana Abu took Nani Ammi across India to Lucknow for their honeymoon. But that same week something happened that would change the course of history: Partition.
It was 1947 and it had been decided to create two countries: India, which would have a majority of Hindus; and Pakistan – at that time West Pakistan, and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) – in which the majority would be Muslim. This meant that vast numbers of people had to leave their homes and move across the new border to live: Hindus to India and Muslims to Pakistan. There was chaos and pandemonium. The great human exodus unfolded right before my grandparents’ eyes, while on their honeymoon in India. In a panic they rushed to catch a train back to Gujrat, which was suddenly on the Pakistani side of partitioned Punjab. But it was too late. Mob violence and mass murder from all sides accompanying the geo-political divorce were focused on the trains. Bloodthirsty hordes, hell-bent on revenge, were boarding the carriages and indiscriminately killing all Pakistan-bound commuters. Train after train would pull into the station in Pakistan, with all on board dead. These were the ghost trains.
Nana Abu was on one such ghost train. The mob had cut his train in two. The front carriage, where Nani Ammi and all the women sat, had been separated and taken off into the distance. The back portion, containing Nana Abu and all the men, was held captive to be massacred. By what can only be described as the grace of Allah, somehow Nana Abu escaped the massacre that followed. In that chaos, desperately seeking his new bride, and in an era without widespread communications, Nana Abu ran from platform to platform, having to avoid rampaging mobs while searching for his wife. He stumbled across her, frantically waiting for him at another station. Together, these traumatised newly-weds fled India, now a foreign country, back into Pakistan, now a new country.
Things changed so rapidly for Nana Abu after Partition. Having been raised in a multi-ethnic and multi-faith united India, he lost many of his childhood friends. Those who now belonged to the ‘wrong’ faith were forced to emigrate to India, others left for England. Disturbed by memories of the massacre he had witnessed on the ghost train, and having been torn from many of his friends, he became restless. Years later in 1965 he decided to make a trip to England in search of his long-lost friends and to rekindle his kinship with British culture. He still had his old dream of building a hospital in Gujrat and planned for his sons to be doctors and help with his dream.
The British education system was seen as something unparalleled and Nana Abu wanted his children to have that opportunity. If you had the privilege of visiting his home during those early days, you would often catch him instructing his children, ‘Be not as strangers to the goodness and kindness of others. We must adopt as our own, piety, truth, and goodness, wherever it comes from.’
And so he took advantage of his right to live in the UK. Immigration, at that stage, simply wasn’t an issue. It was Southend where they – we – ended up: a seaside town with no family links, no halal meat shops, no mosques, and no community. Setting these things up was down to Nana Abu and his friends. They created the first mosque in the town and organised space for Muslim burials in the town cemetery. Due to his education, good temperament and thoughtful nature, Nana Abu quickly became a leader for his community, maintained relations with his local MP and was widely respected.
Nana Abu was a traditional Muslim, which in those days meant being conservative but in no way extremist or fundamentalist. Expecting his children to accept arranged marriages and wanting them to marry other Muslims were examples of his traditional mindset. Pakistan, like most of South Asian culture, was historically non-dogmatic. That comes from the way in which mysticism became entrenched across the Indian subcontinent. My grandfather was typical of that mindset, being liberal when young, and more religious as he got older. That is – was – a very Pakistani thing to do. I say ‘was’, because of the rise of extremism among so many young Pakistanis today.
My mother was the third of nine children, and was roughly nine years old when the family moved to Southend. They started off in a rented property for two to three months, then bought their own home. Despite being an accountant back home, Nana Abu found that his qualifications weren’t easily recognised in England. Undeterred, with dreams of the hospital spurring him on, he supported the family by getting a job as a bus driver, and drilled into his children the need for study, to work hard and make the most of themselves. He typified the stereotype of the hard-working immigrant and was determined to give his children the best chance, and make sure that they grabbed it with both hands.
The result was that his children excelled at school. They started off in some of the worst schools, but ended up going to grammars and on to universities. Every one of that generation in my family is an engineer or a doctor of some kind, apart from those, like my mother, who were married off before they could go to university. Nana Abu, for all his forward thinking, still believed in arranging husbands for his daughters. My mother’s two younger sisters, Shaba and Shaz, are today married to white men, and these are unions that he may have had extreme difficulty with, had he still been alive.
One day, while jumping up and down on a bed that I wasn’t allowed to stand on, my mother walked into the room with tears streaming down her face. I thought she was angry with me for bouncing on the bed.
‘Sit down, beta – my son, I need to tell you something, but you need to sit before you hear it.’
‘What, Ma, why are you crying? What did I do?’ I asked.
‘No no, listen, you need to listen. Today … today your Nana Abu passed away, I mean, he died. He’s gone to heaven, do you understand what that means?’
Before he could ever build his beloved hospital, Nana Abu collapsed and died from a double stroke. He was only fifty-eight years old. I would have been nine at the time, and I still remember how much I cried on that day.
Just as Nana Abu’s experiences were unusual, so in a different way were those of my mother and her siblings. Many of them had been born and brought up in the UK. My mother in particular has always been very liberal and progressive in her outlook. Often the Pakistani experience in the UK is for the parents to have been brought up in Pakistan, and then come over. It was unusual, therefore, for me to have a mother who had been brought up in England, speaking in an English accent. It meant that her experience was similar to mine. I was brought up calling her Baji – a title for an older sister – and it was easy to relate to her. Until, that is, I became interested in political Islamism: almost immediately, she became representative of everything liberal and Western that I began campaigning against. How such an estrangement could occur is the rest of this story.
One way in which my mother – known endearingly to all as Abi – was determined to bring her children up in an enlightened way was in her attitude to literature. She always encouraged me to read from an early age, and I have many memories of the sort of books that I read at the time. Roald Dahl was a particular favourite: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, George’s Marvellous Medicine and so on. C.S. Lewis was someone else I read, though I had no idea about the religious connotations of The Chronicles of Narnia until much later. I also used to love those Fighting Fantasy books, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain and so on, where you’d read a page and be given a choice as to what you wanted to happen next. The idea of being able to create my own story always appealed to me.
All of this was quite different from the old Pakistani tradition of storytelling. Although modern Pakistani literature is currently witnessing an upsurge, the old tradition was oral, and for me that was most obviously represented by my Tai Ammi, my dad’s brother’s wife. When she visited, she would tell us stories, such as Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, but these would be in Urdu, and recounted orally at bedtime. My brother Osman and I would love hearing them because there was something magical in their telling, in the inflection of the story voice and the emotion each line would portray. Rather than putting us to sleep, they would awaken all our senses to imagine a far-away land of flying carpets and genies, or jinn. We never told Tai Ammi that her stories woke us up rather than helped us sleep. There’s a lot of skill within that oral tradition: it’s all about telling stories in a way that is intriguing and suspenseful. Tai Ammi was very good at that: and this was how a Pakistani mother would bring up her children, and we’d sit on the edge of our seats, wanting to know what happened next.
But as wonderful as this oral storytelling tradition can be, it doesn’t necessarily encourage children to read themselves, and even today reading in Pakistan is not as widespread as it should be. How expressive a child could be if parents were to combine these two methods, the old and the new. I believe that it was precisely this combination that contributed to keeping a passion for life within me in the most difficult times.
One book that particularly tested my mother Abi’s liberalism and my own changing views as a teenager was Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. When this was published in 1988, it caused a huge furore among many Muslims around the world. Its depiction of the Prophet Mohammed, upon whom be peace, was deemed blasphemous and the author was forced into hiding after the Ayatollah Khomeini issued his now infamous fatwa. True to her fiercely independent spirit, Abi bought the book and read it to make up her own mind.
By then, my belief that she was dangerously on the wrong side needed no more confirmation. Abi’s response had been a classically liberal one: ‘Let him write his book. If you don’t like it, go and write your own book against him.’ That is Abi through and through.
The other remarkable character in my family is my father, affectionately known to all as Mo. From an early age he grew up with a lot of responsibility. Both his father and elder brother died when he was young, which left him as head of the family before he was married. In the old days in Pakistan, when a man died his wife would often return to her parents’ family. The absence of a welfare state left only blood relatives as the safety net. But my father wanted to do things differently. He asked Tai Ammi, his brother’s widow, to stay with him so that they could bring up his two orphaned nieces Nargis and Farrah as his own daughters. This ensured that Tai Ammi, still a Sohni of Punjab in her own right, did not have to remarry again merely for convenience. Until this day, over forty years later, Tai Ammi remains a widow out of love for her late husband.
My father started out working for Pakistan’s navy and trained as an electrical engineer. Unfortunately he contracted tuberculosis and was honourably discharged on medical grounds. To begin with, the navy paid for his treatment and wanted him to return to work. However, he didn’t respond to conventional treatment and the navy lost hope. My father then went to see what is called a hakeem – a herbalist trained in ancient natural remedies – and he provided a number of powders. Curiously, these worked where modern medicine failed, and I suppose I owe my life to an obscure herbalist who has probably long died somewhere in the Land of the Five Rivers.
My father didn’t return to the navy, but resumed life as an electrical engineer: he laid a lot of the electrical foundations in what is now the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. He laid down political foundations too, and it is this proud defiant streak in him that has rubbed off on me. He had been doing some work for the Dawood Group – a powerful industrial group in Pakistan. The company was immensely powerful politically, and unions were prohibited. At this time Pakistani workers, heady with Soviet socialism, became aware of their organising power. And upset with working conditions and knowing that employers would never concede rights unless forced to, my father set up the first trade union in his industry.
Dawood’s response was to try to shut them down. My father and his fledgling organisation were taken to court. This was real David and Goliath stuff and my father’s eventual victory was a huge coup at the time. Dawood was forced to allow the trade union to operate. Arguably modern unions have morphed into the beast they were fighting, with strikes holding the public, their original constituency, hostage to ever-increasing union demands. However, the original role of unions in improving conditions for workers is undeniable, especially in countries such as Pakistan.
My father then married Abi. It was an arranged marriage, when he was thirty-four and Abi just eighteen. He moved to the UK and used his experience as an engineer to get a job with the Oasis Oil Company in Libya, where he worked until his retirement, and where we were to visit him later on.
By this twist of fate, I had an awareness of Gaddafi’s tyranny long before it became common knowledge. My first memory of trouble in Libya harks back to the late eighties. I asked my father why the name of his company had changed from Oasis to Waha. My father explained that Colonel Gaddafi had nationalised the company and kicked out all Westerners in revenge for American airstrikes that had killed his son. ‘But why are you still there, then?’ I naively asked. ‘Because Libyans like Pakistanis,’ he assured me. I didn’t understand this. As an ex-pat he was very well paid for the time, and we eventually moved into a large six-bedroom house as a result. Why didn’t Gaddafi consider him British? What I wasn’t to know then was that in 1974 Gaddafi had gone to Lahore and publicly supported Pakistan’s right to pursue nuclear weapons. In turn, Pakistan named Lahore’s main sports stadium after Gaddafi. I had no idea how this pursuit of nuclear weapons would go on to affect my own life so profoundly. But again, I’m jumping ahead of myself.
My father went in for the whole oil look. This was the era of the American soap Dallas with J.R. and Bobby Ewing. We all loved to watch Dallas; in fact I still catch myself sometimes humming its catchy theme tune. Typical of charming, worldly-wise Pakistani men of his day, my father didn’t shy away from flaunting his style. He’d wear a Stetson, cowboy boots, a big belt buckle with his name embossed into the leather at the back, and an expensive diamond-encrusted gold watch: these days you’d call that bling. Like any child growing up, I didn’t rate my father’s fashion sense, but I did inherit his love for cultivating an individual style.
The other main effect my father’s job had on my upbringing was that it created something of a polarised childhood. My father would alternate between spending a month in Libya, and then having three to four weeks at home. When he was away, Abi would be in charge, and her more liberal outlook would prevail. When my father was back, we lived under stricter, more traditional house rules. This created conflict between my parents – a clash of backgrounds, really, and a generational difference rather than anything more personal. My father was socially liberal but with traditional family values. Abi was a fiercely independent free-spirited beauty, always the first to dance at weddings and the last to sit down.
Work would be the focus of my father’s life, but politics would be the way in which he socialised with friends at home. This was a typically Pakistani and typically Muslim way of going about things. His stance towards the pressing questions of his day was essentially a ‘plague on both your houses’: he was very much anti-colonial, but having lived and worked under Gaddafi, he was also anti-Arab dictators. Importantly, and unlike many of the ‘old’ European left, he wasn’t pro-Arab tyrants just because they stood up to Western imperialism. He was well aware of Gaddafi’s record of torture long before it became public knowledge in the West: he knew of the hatred that everyday Libyans bore their leader.
On one occasion we went on a family holiday to Tripoli. This was in the late 1980s after the airstrikes but I didn’t have any real sense of what these meant. Life certainly got more awkward for my father, especially after Lockerbie, when Pan Am flight 103 was blown up over the Scottish town. The British government began taking an interest in him – by this point there weren’t many people from the UK who were travelling to Libya for work. He was stopped and questioned both to and from the airport. He was even asked to use his position to inform on the Libyans, which he politely declined.
It’s hard not to look at Nana Abu, Abi and my father without thinking that something from each of them has rubbed off on me. Although they are very different characters, what unites them is the way they have gone against the grain: Nana Abu leaving a newly independent Pakistan for Southend to pursue a dream; Abi’s liberal views challenging those of her community; my father taking on a leading corporation to set up the company’s first trade union. Apart from all the other traits that I may have been lucky enough to inherit from them, it is this instinct to rattle the status quo that strikes me as their most significant influence.
CHAPTER TWO
This game’s not for Pakis
I FIRST ENCOUNTERED and became properly aware of racism at around eight years old. I was having lunch at my primary school, Earl’s Hall, and as usual I was queuing up with my tray to get my food from the dinner lady. This particular day, it was sausages on the menu. Now, I knew I wasn’t meant to have sausages. I wasn’t quite sure why, but I was aware that my father didn’t want me to eat them. When my brother Osman and I had started at the school, Dad realised that the food served there might be a problem. So to avoid it becoming an issue he’d said to us, ‘Eat anything you want, even if it is not halal. The main thing is, keep from eating pork. So no sausages.’
The dinner lady put my lunch down on my plate.
‘What is this?’ I asked.
‘Sausages,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said politely, handing the plate back. ‘I’m not allowed to eat them.’ At this stage I was still very much a timid little boy.
‘What do you mean, you’re not allowed to eat them?’ the dinner lady snapped back.
‘I’m … I’m not allowed to eat them,’ I repeated nervously, but stood my ground. ‘My dad told me I wasn’t allowed sausages.’
‘Why on earth not?’
‘I don’t know,’ I replied quivering. ‘All I know is that I’m not allowed to eat them.’
At this point, I remember being very scared, not just as a small child standing up to an adult, but also over why I wasn’t allowed to eat the sausages. I didn’t really know what they were but my dad had been so insistent on not eating them that I thought I might have some reaction if I ate them. I could feel everyone in the canteen starting to look at me.
‘Stop being so fussy!’ the dinner lady shouted, shoving the plate back at me, so I had to take it. ‘This is your lunch, and you’re going to eat it.’
The dinner lady followed me round. She came out from behind the counter to where I was sitting, and insisted that I ate them in front of her. Now I was crying. I felt the eyes of everyone staring, as if I was some sort of freak. I was completely conflicted, and didn’t really know what to do.
‘What a fussy little boy,’ she snapped again. ‘You will eat your sausages.’
With fear literally rising up like a lump inside my throat, caught between parental and school authority, I obeyed the immediate threat, and put a piece of sausage in my mouth. At which point, fear took its revenge and pushed out the offending morsel, along with everything else in my stomach. I vomited all over my plate. As I continued to cry, the dinner lady’s stance changed.