A former Islamist speaks...

Wahhabi Threat?

Saudi Coat of Arms

(Image from Wikipedia)

The British newspaper The Sunday Times online has a fascinating article, "How a British jihadi saw the light" (April 21, 2007), written by a certain "Ed Husain" whom I've never heard of but who is, apparently, a British citizen of African descent -- though whether directly or by way of the Caribbean (or elsewhere), I do not know.

Husain is a former Islamist and has written a book, The Islamist, about his experience in Saudi Arabia as a black man encountering stark racism where he least expected to find it, namely, in the puritanical Islam of Saudi Wahabism. The above-mentioned article is an extract from his book.

I'm not sure that Husain was ever really a "jihadi," for the extract says nothing about him fighting in an actual jihad, but the subtitle aptly summarizes his article: "Ed Hussain (sic), once a proponent of radical Islam in London, tells how his time as a teacher in Saudi Arabia led him to turn against extremism."

Allow me to extract from his extract:

During our first two months in Jeddah, Faye and I relished our new and luxurious lifestyle: a shiny jeep, two swimming pools, domestic help, and a tax-free salary. The luxury of living in a modern city with a developed infrastructure cocooned me from the frightful reality of life in Saudi Arabia.

My goatee beard and good Arabic ensured that I could pass for an Arab.

But looking like a young Saudi was not enough: I had to act Saudi, be Saudi. And here I failed.

My first clash with Saudi culture came when, being driven around in a bulletproof jeep, I saw African women in black abayas tending to the rubbish bins outside restaurants, residences and other busy places.

"Why are there so many black cleaners on the streets?" I asked the driver. The driver laughed. "They're not cleaners. They are scavengers; women who collect cardboard from all across Jeddah and then sell it. They also collect bottles, drink cans, bags."

"You don't find it objectionable that poor immigrant women work in such undignified and unhygienic conditions on the streets?"

"Believe me, there are worse jobs women can do."

Though it grieves me to admit it, the driver was right. In Saudi Arabia women indeed did do worse jobs. Many of the African women lived in an area of Jeddah known as Karantina, a slum full of poverty, prostitution and disease.

A visit to Karantina, a perversion of the term "quarantine" [i.e., (Arabic: الكرنتينا al-qarantīna)], was one of the worst of my life. Thousands of people who had been living in Saudi Arabia for decades, but without passports, had been deemed "illegal" by the government and, quite literally, abandoned under a flyover [i.e., an overpass].

A non-Saudi black student I had met at the British Council accompanied me. "Last week a woman gave birth here," he said, pointing to a ramshackle cardboard shanty. Disturbed, I now realised that the materials I had seen those women carrying were not always for sale but for shelter.

I had never expected to see such naked poverty in Saudi Arabia.

At that moment it dawned on me that Britain, my home, had given refuge to thousands of black Africans from Somalia and Sudan: I had seen them in their droves in Whitechapel. They prayed, had their own mosques, were free and were given government housing.

Many Muslims enjoyed a better lifestyle in non-Muslim Britain than they did in Muslim Saudi Arabia. At that moment I longed to be home again.

All my talk of ummah [i.e., the worldwide Muslim community] seemed so juvenile now. It was only in the comfort of Britain that Islamists could come out with such radical utopian slogans as one government, one ever expanding country, for one Muslim nation. The racist reality of the Arab psyche would never accept black and white people as equal.

I cannot vouch for Ed Husain's generalization about the "racist reality of the Arab psyche," but he certainly seems to know Saudi reality well.

Husain places the blame solely upon Wahhabism -- though I suspect that something broader than puritanical Islam is at work -- but things could be even worse, he implies:

In contemporary Wahhabism there are two broad factions. One is publicly supportive of the House of Saud, and will endorse any policy decision reached by the Saudi government and provide scriptural justification for it. The second believes that the House of Saud should be forcibly removed and the Wahhabi clerics take charge. Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda are from the second school.

And after relating many other of his experiences in Saudi Arabia, he informs us that he has come to a far-reaching conclusion:

My time in Saudi Arabia bolstered my conviction that an austere form of Islam (Wahhabism) married to a politicised Islam (Islamism) is wreaking havoc in the world. This anger-ridden ideology, an ideology I once advocated, is not only a threat to Islam and Muslims, but to the entire civilised world.

As I said, a far-reaching conclusion. I think that I will need to read this book, for an extract is too little upon which to base an informed opinion...

UPDATE: I misunderstood Ed Husain's ethnic origins, as this report by John-Paul Flintoff, "Rediscovering a kinder, gentler Islam," from the Sunday Times Online (April 21, 2007) makes clear:

The oldest child of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent, he grew up in East London. His parents were religious and had close ties to an internationally revered Muslim scholar Sheikh Abd al-Latif, whom young Ed (short for Mohammed) called "Grandpa". Grandpa helped to perfect his Arabic accent.

In other words, Ed Husain is what the British refer to as "Asian," or what we Americans might awkwardly call "Indian from India" (although the expression "Indian subcontinent" is not entirely clear, for that also includes both Bangladesh and Pakistan). His nickname "Ed" confused me. Apologies for the error.