Once Were Radicals (32 page)

However, the Nomani who wrote that primer and the sectarian Nomani who rallied against Shia Islam seemed like two different people. He tried to use uniquely Shia sources to claim that Shia Muslims were never honest about the true nature of their beliefs. Nomani claimed that Shia Muslims practised this thing called
taqiyya
(‘concealment' or ‘dissimulation') which allowed them to dissimulate (or rather, to tell outright lies) as a way to slowly infiltrate and then take over the institutions of Sunni Islam.

What put me right off Nomani's book was his postscript, written at the height of the war between Iran and Iraq (and which I was reading just as Iraqi troops were entering Kuwait). Nomani seemed to present Saddam Hussein as a true Sunni leader facing the scourge of Shia Iran almost completely alone. I was shocked and surprised that anyone, let alone a respected scholar of Islamic sciences, could repeat almost wholesale the propaganda of other people.

My friend Abdullah from my first camp lent me a book published in Saudi Arabia. Its title was
al-Khutoot
al-Areedah
. In Arabic it sounds really impressive, but don't ask me for a translation. The book contained all kinds of weird and wacky theories about how Shia Muslims told lies (yep, good old
taqiyya
again!) to hide a sinister agenda of taking over the Muslim world and then the entire world. Similar stuff is written today by semi-literate buffoons in conservative magazines and newspapers, except that the accusation is made even against Sunni and Wahhabi sectarian propagandists spreading identical nonsense against Shia Muslims.

On one rather embarrassing occasion, I was at a Sydney Uni MSA meeting aimed at mediating between the sectarian factions. We'd reached agreement that the Lebanese Shia dude would stand down as vice president in favour of a Saudi overseas student seated next to me. Everyone was happy that all this was resolved. While we were having drinks, I noticed an Arabic book peeping under the Saudi student's folder. I thought it must be a commentary of the Koran, and my curiosity got the better of me. I took the book out and asked the Saudi student what it was about. It was too late for him to grab it from me before the young Lebanese Shia guy approached us. He recognised the book as an anti-Shia tract which claimed that Shia Muslims were aligned with communists and Jews to take over the world—using
taqiyya
!

The more I explored the anti-Shia propaganda, the more I saw the political linkages to the anti-Shia religious establishment in Saudi Arabia. It didn't surprise me when a prominent Saudi imam was sacked and imprisoned for making anti-Shia remarks in the presence of a senior Iranian politician who was in Saudi Arabia for an official visit.

I also found Shia sectarian literature equally un convincing. While I was at school, I'd sometimes visit the Adyar Theosophical Bookshop to see what Islamic books were being sold. I kept up this habit, and once found a book containing translations of correspondence between a Lebanese Shia imam named Abdul Hussein Sharifuddin and a senior Egyptian Sunni scholar from the prestigious al-Azhar University in Cairo. The Shia scholar apparently convinced the Sunni scholar that Shia claims about community leadership were correct, and did so using Sunni sources. At the time, I found the arguments unconvincing and overly intricate. I wondered whether the Shia scholar was quoting Sunni sources out of context in the same manner as Deedat quoted the Bible.

In such an environment, with so few authentic books available in English and with sectarian theology being used as an instrument for fighting political propaganda wars, theological intricacies were never explained. We learned our Islam from books and pamphlets, trying to figure out where we fitted in the sectarian scheme of things. Imams were of little or no assistance, since most spoke little English. Further, many imams simply aligned themselves with the interests of whichever faction was financing their mosque (and hence paying their wages). Too often this was the Saudis, and hence our mosques were flooded with anti-Shia Saudi literature, much of it of little relevance to assisting us develop an Australian Islamic identity.

Saudi and Indian religious books displayed a complete disdain to what they saw as Western decadence. This fitted in quite well with the cultural attitudes of many ethnic Muslim leaders who saw Islam as some kind of cultural relic
and only wanted to see it practised in the manner they last saw it being practised when they left Tripoli or Izmir or Mostar or Karachi decades ago. Our leaders had little or no interest in our learning religion in a cultural setting more relevant to our lives in Australia. In this sense, although we often bagged AFIC leaders for their butt-kissing of foreign leaders, the reality was that AFIC showed much foresight in organising national Muslim youth camps, even if it was largely the kids of members of the Islamic establishment who attended. Were it not for these camps, groups like the IYA would never have existed.

I saw my task as trying to bring the struggles of so-called Islamic movements to Australian Muslim organisations. But where did these movements sit in all this sectarian discussion? The vast majority of Islamic movement protagonists followed the twin Sunni methodologies of the Indo-Pakistani Jamaati-Islami or the Arab Muslim Brotherhood. None of these groups seemed to have any interest in changing the status quo of the broader Australian community. If anything, the people regarded as representing (or who claimed to represent) these groups in Australia openly expressed a wish that Muslim-majority states emulate the liberal democratic traditions of the West.

In terms of Iran versus Saudi politics, the movements were basically split down the middle. Some transformed their pro-Saudi sentiment into anti-Iranian feeling and then into a broad anti-Shia prejudice. Others transformed their anti-Saudi resentment into pro-Shia or pro-Iran sentiment. This was reflected in the magazine of a national umbrella Muslim student movement that called itself Ittihad al-Jamah
al-Islamiya (‘The Federation of Islamic Groups') or Ittihad for short.

Ittihad was basically an operation almost completely run by Malaysian overseas students. Most were members of the Islamic Youth Movement of Malaysia (ABIM), and would often speak of Malaysian Islamic leaders like Syed Naquib al-Attas and Anwar Ibrahim. They published a national magazine in English called
Salam
(an Arabic word literally meaning ‘peace').

In 1990 I was searching through the archives of my own campus MSA when I discovered some early issues of
Salam
published in the years before and just after the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. The magazine took a decidedly pro-revolution stand and published articles by and about the revolution's main figures—Khomeini, Shariati, Bani Sadr (Iran's first revolutionary president who later fell out with Khomeini and fled to exile in Paris) and Mutaherri. They also published articles by such Islamic movement figures like Maududi of Pakistan and the Qutb brothers of Egypt. There were also articles about the excesses of the Shah of Iran, his torture and murder of political prisoners and his murderous secret police known as SAVAK who had been trained by both the CIA and Mossad. It was the first time I read this kind of reporting, which was generally not available in Australia when the revolution actually happened (or at least if it was, we rarely noticed it).

By the mid-1980s, with the Iran–Iraq war commencing, there was a split in opinion in the
Salam
magazine. Some writers supportive of Iran were now writing anti-Shia polemical tracts. Sunni writers of political Islam were still
present. However, the Islamic movement as a whole seemed to have split.

The same rifts occurred among religious elders in Australia. Sheikh Hilaly was genuinely neutral, refusing to support any faction and criticising the leader of any Muslim-majority state he thought was doing the wrong thing. For this, pro-Saudi leaders accused him of being pro-Shia. Anyone who criticised Iran for something was suddenly branded by some as pro-Saudi or pro-Wahhabi.

Thankfully at my university, we managed to avert this kind of sectarian silliness. A large group of students started attending our
usra
(study circles), which at one stage were held twice a week. We had students from all ethnic backgrounds attending. We deliberately avoided sectarian issues, and focused on more spiritual matters. I started hanging around with Shaf, who was heavily involved in a spiritual reform and revival movement called the Tabligh Jamaat (TJ), and reading books more related to Sufism. My involvement in the IYA also increased, and was now based less on trying to transplant a confused and confusing and heavily fractured Islamic movement into Australian Muslim religious bodies and more on saving my own soul through serving others. Sufis use the Arabic word
khidmah
to describe such service.

After the 1988 Harrietville camp, I attended an IYA state camp at Glenrock, just north of Sydney. The organiser of that camp was Rambo, who had attended various Muslim camps (though none I'd been to). By now, Rufus (the Turkish group supervisor from my first camp) was busy
with marriage and kids. Rambo was similar to Rufus in that he was quite informal. Unlike Rufus, Rambo was of Jordanian extraction.

Rambo was very close to Sheikh Hilaly. He would go completely troppo over even the slightest criticism of the sheikh. Rambo was also not terribly fond of some of the sisters, especially the ones with more feminist views. One thing that I liked about Rambo's company was that he had no hesitation in keeping matters simple by using four-letter words. It was fun attending camp meetings with someone who didn't think twice about expressing his displeasure with such time-honoured phrases as ‘fuck that shit' and ‘he can just go get fucked'. Rambo made Islamic work feel truly Australian.

The camp imam was Brother Mahmud, the large Turkish guy from Melbourne who attended AFIC camps and had years ago won a Koran recitation competition in Saudi Arabia. By now, we had given Mahmud a nickname—The Kooch—which was a corruption of his surname. The Kooch had very strict views on segregation and hijab, which upset many sisters and pleased Rambo no end.

The leadership of the IYA became fractured as a result of arguments at the Glenrock camp. On Rambo's side was Shaf, a Lebanese baker we all called Ken, Ken's brother, another Lebanese guy nicknamed Modags, the Aussie convert Damien from Senior Usrah and an engineer whose Arabic name rhymed with the nickname (‘Shamir Yahood') we gave him. It was a significant nickname at the time as the Israeli prime minister's surname was Shamir. The word ‘Yahoud' rhymed with his surname and was Arabic (and indeed Hebrew) for ‘the Jew'.

The other faction was led by another (though much more sensitive new-agey) Lebanese guy whose given name was often mispronounced as Salim. On Salim's side were a fair few sisters (including some hardened feminists who were often at loggerheads with Rambo and The Kooch). Salim also had the support of Imran the Malaysian who was originally from Canberra. Imran and Damien were flatmates in Lakemba, and we'd often hang out at their flat until the wee hours of the morning discussing and arguing about sectarian and other frivolous matters.

The annual elections of the IYA were to be a real showdown. They were held in the prayer hall adjacent to the IYA office in Zetland. Salim had been nominated for president, and his campaign had proven quite effective. Rambo had his forces there, but he was short of numbers. He was also absent himself, and we wondered what was delaying him. Just as the returning officer was about to start the ballot, we heard the screech of brakes outside and a van door opening. Then a line of around seven or eight guys with huge beards walked in, with Rambo behind them wearing a huge smile on his face and a stack of membership forms in his hand. It looked like ZZ Top had just shown up to perform with some additional members and with Rambo as their manager.

Needless to say, Rambo won that election. He was delayed picking up these boys from the other side of Sydney. One of the guys, a member of the pro-Saudi faction of Sheikh Abdussalam Zoud, told me he'd turned up after hearing the IYA was about to be overrun by Iranians. Zoud later had a huge fight with Sheikh Hilaly. As Rambo was a
Hilaly loyalist, we never saw these guys set foot at an IYA meeting or function again.

It was the very first time I witnessed a stacked election. I saw many such stacks in future IYA ballots, including when I managed to take and then lose control of the IYA.

Rambo's term in office was characterised by petty infighting and even pettier politics. He presided over an executive of eleven people, almost all of whom had parents and relatives in the Islamic establishment. Disputes among IYA executive members were often reflective of broader rivalries between various Muslim organisations. IYA exec meetings were marathon events, often lasting over six hours with arguments on petty issues such as whether to recite a certain prayer at each meeting. There wasn't any problem with the prayer as such, just that it was associated with Sunni–Shia unity and therefore somehow related to Iran.