Radical (13 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Dreams of a Nuclear Caliphate

In 1999 Pakistan successfully tested its first atomic bomb, becoming a member of that small group of countries that could boast nuclear weapons capability. For Hizb al-Tahrir, this meant that if it could infiltrate the Pakistani military and successfully instigate a coup, then “the
Khilafah
” could start as a global heavyweight. Overnight, our dream of a Muslim superstate felt that much closer.

The difficulty was that HT had virtually no representatives in the country. It had never invested time there because of the view that “the
Khilafah
” should emerge from an Arabic-speaking nation, which Pakistan is not. The second problem was that the few HT members who were already there had been abysmally unsuccessful in drumming up recruitment.

Nasim was extremely reluctant for me to travel and felt I would be better off continuing my studies. As part of my course, I was already due to spend a year in Egypt studying Arabic, and could be of better use there. My parents, too, were doubtful. I told them that I wanted to go on a one-year study course to reconnect with my Pakistani roots. Remembering a much more tolerant, diverse, and spiritual Pakistan from her childhood, Abi thought this trip could do my Islamist fervor some good. My father, though, smelled a rat. “I will support you through your degree,” he said, “but if you go to Pakistan, I'm afraid I can no longer support you.” By now, he had a far clearer idea of my politics and wanted no part of it.

I listened to Nasim's advice and initially agreed to stay on my course. But then a second communiqué from the
qiyadah
came through, more insistent than the first. It implored members to drop everything and move to Pakistan immediately. That second letter decided the matter for me. This time Nasim didn't try to stop me.

As I was preparing to leave, I came across Reza Pankhurst again, one of the students who had led the recruitment drive with me at Cambridge University. By this time he had relocated to Egypt and was back in London tying up some loose ends. I told him what I was doing, and he became fascinated with the idea of moving to Pakistan as well.

Rabia and I packed our things. Rabia, as a member of HT, could understand why I wanted to go and offered me encouragement. My father was true to his word. Dismayed by what his son had become and very critical of HT, he refused to offer me any financial help. He told me not to tell Abi what I was really up to. So I didn't, and because I enrolled in Punjab University for a year, Abi was happy to let me study and experience Pakistan. I also told her that I wanted Rabia to meet our family. Because of this, Abi sent out money behind my father's back and keenly kept in touch. This help from a desperate mother trying to heal her son turned out to be invaluable, as there was no money coming from HT. They paid for our flights to Pakistan, but after that we were on our own.

I remember Osman dropping me off at the airport and how he cried as he hugged me goodbye. He knew the truth about why I was going.
Please look after yourself,
he said.

In 1999, twenty-two years old and full of Islamist zeal, I arrived in Lahore determined to help foment a military coup in Pakistan. Although I had visited the country before, it had been when I was a small child, and it took me awhile to adjust to our new surroundings. A Westerner could actually live extremely comfortably for not too much money. You can have—and people do have—huge mansions, with swimming pools, Jacuzzis, and the works. Outside, however, there would probably be a half-built road, unless you were willing to pay for it. There may well not be regular electricity, and you would have to fund your own electricity generator. These were all typical indications of state failure and bad governance. Pakistan was ripe for rebellion.

Contrary to crude stereotypes, Pakistan is a truly diverse, rich, and cultured country. There is no single ethnicity called “Pakistani”; rather the country is made up of various languages and ethnicities, among them Punjabis, Baloch, Sindhis, Pashtuns, and Kashmiris. Many of these ethnicities and languages span neighboring states too, accounting for a rather stunted
Pakistani
identity. Rather than describing Pakistan, the political entity you see on a map, it is more accurate to describe
Pakistans
in the plural. The country not only has deep ethnic and linguistic diversity but also vast political, class, cultural, and delightful culinary differences. One legacy of the postcolonial partition is that entire provinces are split down the middle, half in Pakistan and the other half in India. Many older Pakistanis still have first cousins across the border, and in Karachi a powerful political bloc has emerged seeking to represent the
muhajir,
or those who moved across from India after the Partition.

Therefore what held this country together by its artificial seams—more than any shared heritage—was the dream of its ailing founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, along with a collective fear of what could have happened had Muslims remained a minority in India. Jinnah had wanted to create a safe haven for a Muslim minority in a Hindu-dominated subcontinent. In turn, he had envisioned a country that would safeguard other minorities, too.

In 1947 Jinnah succeeded in outmaneuvering almost everybody to gain independence for East and West Pakistan, but died shortly after achieving his dream. Having lost its founder so early on, Pakistan has been locked in unrelenting ethnic, intra-religious, and linguistic sectarianism ever since. Troubles came to a head when the Bengalis of East Pakistan succeeded in gaining a majority of seats in the national parliament and wished to form a government. The Punjabi-dominated West refused to accept the results. Disaster struck in the form of civil war, and the Bengalis seceded from West Pakistan in 1971 to form modern-day Bangladesh.

After this war, the founding idea that Muslims could look after each other better than Hindus seemed under threat. The army of West Pakistan encouraged the Islamisation of Pakistan, attempting to glue the country together using politicized religion as the national identity. In 1977 General Zia took over in a coup and did exactly this. Pakistan has never been the same since.

Of course, confusing as it is for most outsiders, there are as many Muslims in India as there are in Pakistan, so what exactly should form Pakistan's national identity is a question that vexes the nation to this day. And for all my teenage idealism back at Newham of Muslims bonding exclusively on nothing but Islam, things began to look a great deal more complicated on the ground.

Arriving into this quagmire in 1999, we believed we had all the answers. I knew that I would have to quickly learn Urdu, the one language that can be understood by most Pakistanis. I heard it a great deal growing up, and so was familiar with its basics. We were met by Rabia's uncle at Lahore Airport. A genteel man named Dr. Abdul Qayyum, he had traveled far and was excited to receive us. Uncle Qayyum was a well-established and respected dentist in a town called Raheem Yar Khan, which sits almost directly halfway between Karachi and Lahore. He wasn't a member of HT at this stage but was a deeply religious Salafist, sporting a huge gray beard and a warm smile. After the conversion of his seven nieces to HT, Uncle Qayyum began to explore the Islamist cause more closely.

I had been stationed in Lahore because that was where Imtiaz Malik, the leader of HT in Pakistan, was based. He had failed to get the movement off the ground, and the leadership felt that he needed help. I immediately went to meet him. He was older than me—in his late thirties—but it didn't take long for my respect for his seniority to dissipate. He was a thoroughly unimpressive character, and I could immediately understand why he had failed to recruit people to the cause.

Imtiaz suggested that the best plan was for me to recruit people in the Islamic department of nearby Punjab University. There was a certain logic to this: back in the UK one of the best ways of attracting recruits was to start with the students. Punjab University was the biggest higher education facility in Pakistan, and the fact that I was a student myself would make it easy for me. There was just one flaw to the plan, which Imtiaz should really have known. The university was already a Jamaat-e-Islami stronghold. These were students who knew about Islam, who were studying Islam, and who were going to be difficult to convert. Any of the departments at the university would have been better to enroll in than that one.

The best place to have started was the medical college; the atmosphere was different. I discovered that Arab medical students had been coming to study here for a year, some of whom were already members of HT. When I arrived, I overlapped with a Palestinian HT member who had been running a few study sessions there. He was leaving, and I couldn't help thinking that this non-Pakistani had achieved more in a short time than Imtiaz had done in five years.

Within a few weeks more reinforcements were flown in from the UK. There was Irfan Wahid, who had been my supervisor back in London. Shortly after Irfan arrived, Dr. Abdul Wajid also turned up. Abdul Wajid was one of the HT members who had been behind the original recruitment drive in British universities. He was an experienced speaker and a seasoned recruiter. Irfan didn't have Abdul Wajid's oratory skills, but he was a decent enough organizer and administrator. I was excited about their arrival, and felt that together we could really do things.

I sat down with Irfan and briefed him on my views about Imtiaz—he listened carefully to what I said. But then, to my horror, he went straight to Imtiaz and apparently repeated all my accusations! I couldn't believe it: I'd tried to paint an accurate picture for Irfan because I wanted to help the cause. All Irfan appeared to have done was to use the information to curry favor with Imtiaz, sidelining me in the process.

I'd given up a lot to move to Pakistan—I hadn't told SOAS that I had essentially given up on my degree. I'd put my future career on the line and was now faced with the position of having nothing to show for that sacrifice. That stung. But what really got me was something more fundamental. I was an activist absolutely committed to HT, believing so passionately in the group that I would do anything the leadership told me would further our work. I had left my studies behind, only months after my marriage, because of how blindly committed I was.

Irfan's actions, however, opened my eyes. I saw that rather than everyone in the organization doing things for the good of the cause, it seemed to me there were baser instincts at work too. From now on, whenever I looked at Irfan, whereas previously I had seen a brother, now all I saw was someone who apparently liked to maneuver for position. For an idealist like myself that was a painful thing to recognize. Looking back, it was the end of my political innocence.

It was around this time too that Osman, back in the UK, had decided he could no longer remain a student of the group. He had never been a full member, but he finally broke his ties. HT had become too controlling for him and too inflexible with his inquiring nature. Secretly, I began to empathize with Osman and I decided that I would never give all of myself in the same way; there'd always be part of me that I'd hold back. I'd gladly give myself unconditionally to Allah, but not to HT. The thought process involved in leaving groups such as HT begins first at questioning an individual in authority, then the tactics, then the strategy, then the methodology, and then finally by questioning the ideology itself. This was probably the first, unrecognized seed that would lead to my eventual departure from the whole cause.

Abdul Wajid, the man who had seemed such an able and committed recruiter from a distance, appeared up-close to be power-hungry. He was transparently overbearing in his desire to dominate and in his belief that he is always the most capable in the room. Just as I had lost favor with Imtiaz and Irfan, Abdul Wajid now made it clear that he considered me an intelligence operative trying to cause dissent within HT's Pakistan operation. His stance was certainly scary to me. The certainty with which he had decided this made me ponder the dangers of a lack of accountability at the top of the organization. What if such people succeeded in taking over the country?