[Times-UK] Shiraz Maher - For almost four years I was on the front line of British Islamism serving as a regional officer in northeast England for Hizb ut-Tahrir, an extremist group committed to the creation of a puritanical caliphate. My time in Cambridge was a turning point. I was studying for a doctorate, researching the development of Islamic political thought in late colonial India. I surveyed a wide range of Muslim opinion, among whom Abul Kalam Azad was a leading figure. He explained how Islam obliged Muslims to create a harmonious society and was adept at offering lucid explanations from the texts of the Koran to show a secular state was validated through Islam. By the start of 2005 mentally I was no longer an Islamist. Then my nightmare was realized. I watched as London came under attack on July 7, 2005, by four British Muslims who claimed 52 innocent lives. This was the cauldron of Islamist hate boiling over. Just as the divisive message of political Islam has been spread by young men across Britain, there is now a growing number of former activists leading the charge against the ideas that we once helped to promote.
2007-08-16 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive