Ed Husain
Ed Husain Discusses His New Book: “Among the Mosques: A Journey Through Muslim Britain”

Ed Husain Discusses His New Book: “Among the Mosques, A Journey Through Muslim Britain” | 07.28.21  - Welcome everybody, and a very, very warm welcome to Ed Husain. Ed, this is your first time with us on Lockdown University, and I’m so thrilled to have you with us today. So before I hand over to you to discuss Among the Mosques: A Journey Across Muslim Britain, I want to just give a little bio and to introduce you to our audience.

Ed Husain is a British writer and political advisor who has worked with leaders and governments across the world. He’s an adjunct professor of Georgetown University in Washington DC and has held senior fellowships at think tanks in London and New York, including the Council of Foreign Relations. Ed is the author of the Islamist and The House of Islam: A Global History. His writing has been shortlisted for the George Orwell Prize. A regular contributor to the Spectator Magazine, he has appeared on the BBC and CNN and has written for the Telegraph, the Times, the New York Times, the Guardian and other publications.

We are so looking forward to hearing from you today, and I’m going to now hand you over to Carly, who will be in conversation with you. Thanks Ed.

• Thank you very much, Wendy. So Ed, it’s a pleasure to be be reunited. We’ll have to do our best not to have too many Inside British Baseball discussions, but I am going to indulge myself a little before we talk about your new book, and that is to talk about the Islamist. So I was in my late teens when the Islamist came out, and it was just before I was going to DC to do a political internship. And that book was actually really formative for me in thinking about some of the challenges that you talked about.

So I was hoping you could tell our audience a little bit of your story. I hope they all go and read the Islamist if they haven’t. So you don’t have to give away the whole book, but you know, a bit of an intro to you and how you came to write the Islamist and the books that followed.

• Carly, thank you, and a particular thanks to Wendy for that very warm welcome. And just before we all came online, she used that beautiful, beautiful phrase being a bridge builder. And in my teenage years, as Carly correctly identified, I was anything but a bridge builder. And it was a misunderstanding of that bridge that links the modern west to our past, whether it’s the Jewish past or Christian past, or indeed the Muslim past.

I was raised in a genuinely pious Muslim mainstream Sunni Hanafi family. I mean you don’t get more mainstream than being Sunni and of the Hanafi jurisprudence. So it’s kind of very, very mainstream household. And then, you know, at school I had anxiety around identity as to who I was, whether I belonged to Britain or not, and you know, I was the first generation that went onto university in my family. My father had migrated from British India. My mother had come from what was then Hejaj, but today Saudi Arabia.

So I didn’t really know where I fitted or whether I belonged or not, and amid all of that you had white, blonde, blue-eyed Muslims being killed in their thousands in Bosnia, only two hours away. And at school we were taught that the Holocaust had happened and it would happen, or something like that would never happen again. And yet there we were, Carly in the middle of London witnessing the rise of extremism because at that time the British government had given political refuge to a whole range of extremist actors, as with the Jarid, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and others into Britain. So they radicalised not just me, my generation of people on campuses, saying that if you’re British, if you are Muslim, if you are brown, you don’t belong in Britain, you know.

Your home is somewhere else, and you should rise against this country. And you should make every effort, we should make every effort to overthrow governments, Muslim governments in every Muslim country and create a caliphate that would have this army, an army of only Muslims that would be dedicated to destroying Muslim governments, overthrowing Muslim governments, overthrowing Israel, removing Israel, but also turning our guns then to defend the fellow Muslims in Bosnia that were under attack. So that narrative at least was a practical way forward rather than the silence that was predominant in most Muslim communities.

So that drew me into Islamist extremism for about four years, you know, on the upside of about five years, the influence stays in your mind. So the Islamist is about telling that story of someone born and raised in Britain and yet drawn to extremism that came out of the Middle East that was given political cover and political shelter across Europe, not just in Britain, but across Europe. So the book is a story, Carly, of why I joined, what I saw inside and eventually why I left.

• And you know, you slightly downplayed your kind of four years foray into Islamist ideology because you didn’t spend those four years in the UK. So what was it that kind of, and as I say there’s a lot more in the book, but I think it’s important context for people before we talk about this journey that you’ve gone on, you know, what was it that you grappled with globally that kind of allowed you to complete the circle and now look to have some more deeper conversations about the Muslim community in the UK and more broadly?

• Yes. You remember what you read all those years ago. I spent some time, about two years, in Syria, in Damascus. I spent some time, almost a year, in Saudi Arabia and then I did a lot of travelling across the Middle East. All the way from Morocco down to, you know, across to Indonesia, so the whole swathe of the Muslim world. But what, you know, what shocked me, you know, was two things really. One, that on my own college campus, someone had been murdered because my organisations that I belonged with all talked about jihad in Palestine and jihad against Israel and jihad or political violence against other governments including Serbia and others.

But never did we anticipate that it would be in our own country in Britain. So I think the first Islamist murder happened on the Newham college campus around the year 98, 99. And that was a direct outcome of political rhetoric leading to violence. And you know, we should never forget that there is a correlation between rhetoric and violence. Just as we saw, you know, President Trump’s upping the ante with his rhetoric and the attacks that we saw on January 6th here in this country.

Similarly, wherever there’s an increase in the volume of hatred, you see an outcome in people losing their lives. I saw in Damascus when I was there in 2005, someone who had been a very, very nice, warm, welcoming individual at a major mosque in Hounslow became the suicide bomber in the year 2004, 2005 in Michael’s Bar in Tel Aviv. And that was a direct correlation between someone who I’d known, been close to as a friend who did not show signs of extremism.

And yet within a few months of being in Damascus, he’d been radicalised and went over to Israel and blew himself up in Michael’s Bar in Tel Aviv. So I’d been close enough to see the connection between extreme speech and violence, so those things helped me move back, away from the extremism and the violence.

• So looking now, you know, since 2007, I think the book came out, you know, you’ve written another book about a more historical book and now you’ve done a kind of travel around the UK to look at some of the mosques, you know, around 20 in total. That’s a relatively small reflection of how many mosques we have in the UK. But what was it that inspired you to write this book in the first place?

• Well, it was a number of things. The Brexit vote, I was a Londoner. I voted to remain. I didn’t understand why was it that so many people in the north of the country, who we thought were beneficiaries of the European Union, voted to leave. And a large reason for them wanting to leave the European Union was the angsts around identity. Many did not think that that Britain belonged to them. And when I went to my old boss, Tony Blair’s constituents in Sedgefield and asked people there why was it that they, you know, 67% of them voted to leave the European Union, many of them pointed towards Muslims and mosques and more Polish people and basically immigrants and migrants.

And that worried me as to, you know, why they would vote to leave the European Union in order to minimise immigration and then focus on mosques and Muslims. And given there’s no mosques in Sedgefield, it was doubly worrying that why was it that mosques was was a real issue in the imagination of the people that I was speaking to. So I made it my business to go and find out. So I travelled across the country in many, many northern towns, Manchester and further afield up to Dewsbury, Rochdale, all parts of the UK, the capitals. Yes, 20 mosques, but I visited the largest mosques and I visited the most populated sectarian mosques.

So, you know, we can go into details if your questioners wish to, but we’ve got around 2000 mosques. I mean, it’s not feasible to go to every mosque, but what I did is went to the central mosques on a Friday where there were the denominations, the various Muslim denominations, the Barelvis, the Deobandis, the Salafis, the Wahhabis, they were all present. So I think it’s the genuine reflection of the country as a whole, not just northern towns where I spent a lot of time. I went to Cardiff, Edinburgh, indeed London, Belfast. So that’s what triggered it, an anxiety around immigration, an anxiety around Islam and anxiety around Muslims, not just in Britain, but across the continent led to trying to travel and have a conversation. Kick tyres, if you like, and really understand what’s going on in people’s minds and why.

• In the book, you mentioned that in the course of the last 15 years, the Muslim population in the UK has grown by over a hundred percent. What accounts for that large increase in such a short period of time?

• Yes, that’s a great question. Can you hear me, Carly? Sorry, I can just hear a certain… Anyway, so I think the large number of increase among Muslims as opposed to other populations and communities is to do with the fact that many Muslims have come in from conflict zones, be they Somalia or Syria or Libya. So that’s one. Secondly, there’s a real push factor because of the instability in countries such as Iran and Muslim populations in Turkey, which come from a Kurdish background.

Indeed poverty in countries such as Bangladesh and Pakistan. So there’s an increase, ongoing increase of migration from those countries. And I think the fact that many Muslims who are already born and raised in Britain tend to go to Pakistan or Bangladesh and marry from those countries, bring spouses from those lands, and then that culture of not allowing the wife to go to work, but she is often expected to stay at home and, you know, therefore numbers of children follow, because the wife often comes from Mirpur and the husband has often been raised in say, Bradford or Keighley or Rochdale in enclosed communities where there’s an expectation that the wife ought to stay home and have more children.

And given that the education levels are low and unemployment levels are high, you know, importing your spouse from Pakistan or Bangladesh has that cultural input. And I think David Goodhart, one of Britain’s commentators put it best when he said, “In every generation of currently British Muslims, there’s someone who’s first generation.” Because of this constant bringing back of partners and not integrating and not marrying in Britain, and not wanting to lay down serious sustained roots. So I think all of those factors combined leads to what you normally have in other communities by the second, third generation. A higher rate of education and a birth rate tends to come down to be on par with other people in Britain.

So, you know, 1.8, 1.9 would be the average birth rate. Muslim birth rates are still significantly higher. So all of those factors, I think contribute to a sustained 100% and above growth.

• So you’ve used a word there that obviously gets touched on a number of times with regards to immigrant communities, which is integration. And your former boss, you know, had a particular approach around multiculturalism. You know, you could argue that the UK government’s gone on a few journeys since then. And in fact in your book, I think you say, “From multiculturalism to mono-culturalism.”

But the UK had a particular way that it tackled minority integration. Some would say almost diametrically opposed to the way that France, for example, chose to tackle integration. Could you tell our audience a little bit about how you would describe the UK approach and then the French approach and kind of where each one has been viewed as successful or perhaps less so?

• So again, an absolutely brilliant question because the French took a different route. we took a a separate route, we’ve both come to the same problem again and again. So neither of our methods of integration are working. The French approach has basically been to conserve the 1789 revolutionary moment that Laïcité is supreme, which is a very French version of secularism in which no expression of religion in the public domain is acceptable. That you distance and you refute the Catholic church, and therefore by extension Islam and Judaism. And the French way has been to say that you are nothing but French and your public identity is that of a French citizen in a secular state.

Very hard line, very ideological, very philosophically driven. The British approach has been to take a much more John Lockian approach. And John Locke was heavily influenced by Spinoza, the great Jewish philosopher from Amsterdam. And before that, you know, he was in Spain or Portugal or his family was at least, and that’s to have a much more coexistence, multiethnic, multicultural, multi-faith background, in which, because the queen is the head of state, we are allowed, rightly, to express our religious affiliations in public, but not to impose any one religious interpretation onto the public domain. And this is the American model or, you know, the English speaking world’s model that you can bring your religion into the public domain.

In America here, for example, people say God bless America, often publicly. You know, the currency has the inscription God on it. God is done in public. That’s nothing to be ashamed or afraid of, but you don’t impose your interpretation on the public domain. That was the British model. And I think it was the noble model. I think it was the better model, and I think it worked for many decades, and I think it was a much more welcoming model for people of faith backgrounds. And you know, where we went wrong, I think, in the last kind of 10, 15 years where there’s been an assertion from the Islamist far right, i.e., Hamas, Muslim brotherhood, Hizb ut-Tahrir, who have made a mockery of that, and they’re making the mockery is not so much the problem as there has not been a robust principled, strong defence of what Britishness and the West stands for.

So one of the things I try to do in the book is to re-articulate what the West stands for. You know, why reason, individualism, gender equality, and open society, our uniqueness in relation to say China or Japan, and our racial parity laws are what make us different and unique. And unless we can stand by that and defend that we don’t push back against the far right, far left and increasingly the strong Islamist presence that we’re seeing in our country. So I think that’s where we’re going wrong in the last 15 years or so.

Now that’s where mono-culturalism has appeared and the ghettoization has started, but I think multiculturalism was a noble idea and its intentions were right, but somewhere in the next 10, 15 years, we’ve ended in the wrong place, and that’s why we’ve got to question it and try and reassert what it means to be a westerner, which is inclusive and not turning people away from the door.

• So now more than ever, language and narrative and context matter. And one of the things that I often think is fascinating and tells a lot about a community is how do they describe themselves? You know, I would describe myself as a British Jew. I would never say I’m a Jew from the UK. Right? To me, I say I’m a British Jew.

Within the Muslim community, how do they tend to position themselves and their place within the UK, and is there certain components of the Muslim community who, you know, as you say, are mono-cultural and ghettoised, or has the integration worked better in some areas?

• The integration has worked better in some areas. You know, that’s a very revealing point you’re alluding to because in Belfast of all places, it’s worked really well because the Muslims in Northern Ireland have said, “We don’t want anything to do with that Catholic Protestant division. We want to be much more integrated and, you know, have our loyalty to the nation state.” Which is fascinating to see in Belfast.

Similarly, I saw integration working in parts of Manchester, in parts of Rochdale. I saw integration working in parts of London. So there are lots of good news stories to be told. Indeed in Birmingham, one of the highlights for me was to walk into a gay clinic, a gay clinic because gay people have clinical specialties that are facilitated in Birmingham and elsewhere. And when I walked into the LGBT area and the gay clinic, it was fascinating to see a Muslim woman in a head scarf was the clinician. And she saw her duty as a citizen, as a Muslim, sorry, as a British Muslim, in line with other British people, other communities, in this case the gay community.

And she had none of the homophobia that you would associate with someone wearing a head scarf. And that was a hugely liberating moment for me, that it can work, it does work, and in large swathes it is working, but in other parts it is not working. Now some Muslims describe themselves as just that, Muslim in Britain, you know. Hoping one day that some kind of caliphate will be created where they’ll be loyal. But to be fair, the vast majority of British Muslims, a poll done by, I think it was Pew, shows that they are deeply loyal, understandably so, to the nation state and to British laws.

I think it’s a good 65% or so are loyal to the concept of being British. And that’s something that’s got to be welcomed and that’s something right. So it’s that Britishness and that loyalty to the nation state in which we are, that binds us as citizens and our religion is private and relationship with God is something that we cherish and that’s private. Now there are, sadly, I think it was Gramsci or Mosca, the Italian Marxists who said that, you know, a small and organised minority can control a disorganised and large majority. So that’s where the risk lies, Carly, that, you know, in 20, 25 years from now, we will see almost 30 to 35 constituencies with large Muslim populations.

And if the current trajectory of being close to Jeremy Corbin and George Galloway, and therefore voting for the far left is an ongoing trend, we have a real problem. So whichever way that, quote unquote, community sways, we will see them as king makers in future governments. That’s why it’s got to be important that the Britishness and therefore the diversity of being a Lib Dem or a Tory or a center-left Labour person, stands. So you’re not voting because you’re Muslim, you’re voting because you’re a Brit and you have British priorities and you care about Peterborough and you don’t care necessarily on priority orders to what’s going on in say, downtown Baghdad. Because we have no control over Baghdad. We do have control over what happens in Peterborough.

• Well, we could go down a George Galloway rabbit hole, so I’m going to restrain myself, but we may return to it. One of the things that happens in the UK across synagogues on a Shabbat morning is there is a prayer said for the welfare of the royal family, and you know, that’s always seen as an indication, you know, a prayer for the State of Israel at bar mitzvahs, at weddings. Like, Hatikvah is sung along with God Save the Queen. And is there any such equivalent or would there be such an equivalent in the Muslim communities?

• You see, that’s a another very thoughtful question. I’m sat here in Washington DC where there are mosques with the American flag flying. And that’s when I spent time previously in New York at the Council on Foreign Relations. I mean I saw Jewish colleagues who would come and explain to us about the importance of the Hanukah and the events around the Menorah candles and the Maccabees and so on. And yet they were proudly patriotic in being American.

Nothing taken away from their Jewishness in being American. And yet at synagogues you’d see the American flag. You’d see, as you say, you know, out here in American synagogues, prayers for the American Armed Forces, but also prayers for the IDF. Similarly, in England I hear the same with Jewish communities praying for Her Majesty the Queen, but also for Israel. Now my point to my fellow Muslims in England has been, or across Britain, has been, why can’t we do the same? Why can’t we pray for the royal family?

For the wellbeing of Britain if segments are Republican. You know, they don’t like the monarchs. Fine, well at least pray for Britain. And there’s a constant refusal to either pray for Britain or fly the Union Jack. And that’s what worries me, that there is, and I’m not saying therefore most Muslims are in any way disloyal. It’s just the culture isn’t there yet. And the push from wider Britain and from other faith communities who are doing that would be a step in a welcome direction.

You know I’ve put that argument out there. Many Muslims have said it’s a great idea, we should do it. Some have said we shouldn’t, but I think it takes people courage to say it and then others over time make it happen or not. So the argument is now made and we hope and pray that it does materialise.

• So one of the things you touch on in the book is the need for compromise. And that perhaps that’s been a part of the way many ordinary Muslims have found a way to succeed in British society alongside their religious beliefs. Do you think integration requires the art of compromise, and that’s a kind of fundamental principle.

• I think the compromise has already happened, Carly. The compromise happened in two world wars that Muslims gave their lives to in their millions. You know, Muslims from India in the First World War and the wider empire in the second war. In the First World War Muslims fought against the Ottoman Caliphate. I mean, that’s a big deal that Muslims in that generation were more loyal to Britain than they were to their fellow Muslims in the Ottoman Empire. So that compromise has already happened.

I think what’s important is for young Muslims in Europe now to realise that they are the beneficiaries of our past generations that lost their lives in the Holocaust, that lost their lives in the Second World War with almost 40, more than 45 million people dying. And they are the beneficiaries of that long philosophical tradition that goes back a thousand years. We stand on the shoulders of those giants and, you know, celebrate our past and work towards a better future rather than say we now have more needs that need to be met. I mean, for all the faults of the West, it still is the best place to be a Muslim.

It literally is, you know, I can point to 52 Muslim countries in which none, other than the UAE, has gender equality as a serious top priority. Every Muslim woman and Muslim man has access to those laws. So I’m, you know, instinctively against trying to compromise more because then I think we put ourselves in a position of weakness, because what we should celebrate is where we already are. 30 million Muslims in the West. Now that’s a historical first. It’s never happened.

You know, we are the recipients of the enlightenment tradition, and it’s those liberal values that we should defend rather than say, you know, which of this should we compromise?

• So in terms of Brexit, which you touched on as one of the kind of impetuses for you to want to travel more around the UK. Did you find a particular opinion in the Muslim communities you visited that was the same as the kind of rest of the community of Rochdale? Or did they have a difference of opinion?

• This is going to surprise you, and I’m sorry I didn’t put too much of that in the book because while Brexit triggered the book, I don’t want to kind of continue to talk about Brexit. ‘Cause I think we need to move on. It’s done. It is what it is. We are where we are. Now, those of us who voted for remain, we are also Democrats. We just have to accept the popular decision and move on. So I didn’t want to focus on it, but since you asked, it was shocking to see that in Rochdale where Sajid Javid, the current health secretary, previously the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I mean, where he comes from. Or you know, in parts of Brick Lane.

I mean, I don’t know if it was just the people I was speaking to, but lots of Muslims were pro Brexit and that I don’t understand, you know. The pulling up the drawbridge culture that they didn’t want, you know. For example, in Brick Lane where there are large numbers of Muslims who are the children of, grandchildren of those who were migrants from either East Pakistan or Bangladesh. They were opposed to Italian Bangladeshis coming over into Brick Lane and opening restaurants, taking their jobs in Sainsbury’s and their council homes or access to education and therefore got onto the ladder of meritocracy with much more effectiveness.

Because I have no idea why Italian Bangladeshis do better than British Bangladeshis. But the Brits did not want the Italians coming over. So they voted for Brexit for those local reasons that they’re taking all our jobs in the local grocery store. They’re taking our school places and they’re taking council houses and we just don’t like these guys and the competition. Now, it’s not comfortable for those of us who have liberal instincts, but that was a strange encounter of kind of herd tribal protection of territory that I did encounter in parts of Muslim Britain.

• And another topic that I also don’t want to spend the whole of the rest of the webinar on, because we could, is the view of the conflict in the Middle East of Israel, of the Palestinians. Now, you know, you and I over the years have had many conversations about this and, you know, as we saw in a recent by-election in the UK, you know, that can still be a very polarising issue for the Muslim community.

How did you find that topic reflecting in your conversations and, you know, do you see a change in, you know, the last kind of 10 to 15 years on the importance of it for many members of the Muslim community in the UK?

• Yes, yes. An excellent question. Some of the imams, we are off the record, aren’t we? I mean, we’re not being, is this going to be online? Is this going to be put on YouTube?

• It’s not on YouTube, and we can put a, you know, “Only for people who are part of Lockdown University.” But you do have over a thousand people on here. So, you know, go with that as your, as your backdrop.

• Okay, in that case right, I can’t see the participants, so forgive me for not knowing the numbers, but I will not divulge any confidences. But other than to say,

• Yeah, state secrets. Keep them to yourself.

• [Ed] Yeah, yeah. Yes. Well, thank you. Some of the imams I met were pro-Israeli, and so I don’t want to name names or give backgrounds. So none of their instincts and their locations will be disclosed because they’re in some of the most important northern mosques with large congregations of up to 4,000 in some cases, five, six in others. Large mosques, mainstream mosques who are pro-Israeli for the following reason, because they believe in the two state solution.

They believe in the Quranic verses that point to the right of the tribe of Israel, as, you know in the Quran there’s a beautiful verse, you know. “Oh my people, enter the holy land.” which was prescribed for you, “God wrote for you.” They know those verses, they know that old historical truth that, you know, Moses guided from the land of Israel in the Book of Exodus and in the Quran, references to the holy land being written for the Jewish people. They know all of that. So they’re coming at it from a theological point. One.

Two, they are tired of being used by the far left as a Trojan horse to fight a far left agenda that uses the Israeli Arab conflict for a whole range of other issues. They’ve woken up to that. Third, what’s happened in the Middle East of late with the a Abraham Accords, and, you know, these are Muslim friends in mosques that I know, and they know I have, you know, friends in the Middle East. So they were confident and divulging that they’re worried about the trajectory of the young people, a younger population.

I mean most of the imams are in their forties and fifties and you know, they are all behind interfaith work, working with their Jewish populations and they work together with their local rabbi on issues around circumcision, kosher meat, you know. All kinds of religious freedom issues. So there’s really good news on the older generation. Many of them have visited Israel, have been to the West Bank. So all of that’s great and Abraham Accords was a big propeller and a confirmation of their instincts. However, there is a younger generation that has politicised this issue.

And one of the things that struck me, and I was in Dewsbury just two months ago before I came here to Washington DC for an interview with a British newspaper. And, even there, you know, free Palestine from the river to the sea. All of that is written on the walls as graffiti, and the younger generation is obsessed with the conflict, but from a destructive point of view. I mean I’ve got no objections to anybody who wants to focus on the Israeli Palestinian conflict from a peacemaking and a supportive point of view, but there is this destructive vein there.

And you know, the previous Labour leader, Jeremy Corbin, did not help. And I think the Israeli Palestinian issue often comes to the fore as an issue of identity. And I’ll lend this answer by saying this, many of the young Arabs who are, you know, very liberal, pro-gay, pro-gender equalities, pro everything of the modern world, still hold onto the bashing of Israel as they’re bonafide, as their kind of authenticity. That I’m still with the downtrodden, and I think that’s where the debate is shifting in the Middle East, but is not shifting in Europe, where we are now seeing a real pushback against that narrative from Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and others thankfully, you know, thank God, coming online.

We are not seeing that same momentum in London or in Europe, And the evidence for that is what happened with convoys from Bradford and northern towns coming into parts of London, swearing the most insulting things against Jewish women. So that’s a real threat and it’s on the horizon and something that I think still being neglected.

• And to continue that a little, you know, the Abraham Accords and the warming of relations with some Arab countries with more to follow, how has that been received? You know, we’ve seen, not necessarily in the UK but around the world, you know, pictures of burning of UAE flags, for example, at pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Now I appreciate that, you know, COVID and whatever else has presumably made it difficult for you to continue some of these conversations. But was there any discussion around their view of the Abraham Accords and the general warming of relations?

• Yes, because the UAE has this annual regional polling that it does in partnership with 25 other countries to see which country is still the most popular destination for anyone under the age of 27. This year, I think February or March, the UAE was again voted the number one location. So this is one year after the a Abraham Accords. Nothing’s been dented across the Middle East for Muslims. But once the book came out this year, last month, in fact, I got some flack from some of the imams because, you know, the book is unapologetically, you know, pro-Israel, pro-coexistence.

And you know, I make the argument that the whole concept was a rule of law, Liberty Nation states we get from the ancient Israelis. And it’s not me saying it. Abraham Lincoln cites that. The founding fathers here cited that. John Locke cited that, I mean, I can keep going on. The concept of a nation state with a particular people and language and liberties, in this case, away from Egypt when the Israelis came in. And with particular laws, you know, we uphold all of those values as Western values, but were taken directly from ancient Israel and was preserved through the Westphalian treaty in 1648 and onwards.

So I got some of the Imams calling and, kind of, slightly unhappy about that. I got some attacks for being a UAE voice, which I’m not. I mean, the Emirates are friends. I don’t take money from them. They’re allies because, you know, Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia is where we wanted them to be 10 years ago. So we welcome all of that. But there’s been some attack. But it, you know, who was it that said, if you’re not being attacked, you’re not doing your job properly? I can’t remember, but you know, there has been criticism, there’s no doubt about that.

But I think that’s good. I think it’s something to celebrate that there, it’s something that’s been listened to, but it’s also worth saying that the UAE and many of the religious clerics in that country are still in touch with Muslims in Britain. They are still authorities for British imams. And, you know, given the first opportunity, many British Muslims will returned to the UAE and to Bahrain and, you know, return to Israel to Jerusalem for the holy site. So I think yes, there’s hot air with the protestors in the burning of the flags, but they’re still in a strange way on the fringes.

What we’ve got to ensure is that virus doesn’t come in to the mainstream of the elders of Muslims. But, you know, in a strange way, I feel that we’re making more progress in the Middle East than we are in Europe and in the UK, but…

• No, I mean, I think there were many after the last Gaza conflict who felt as a Jew they would be safest in the UAE right now.

• [Ed] Yes.

• More than on the streets of America, or the streets of Europe, you know.

• [Ed] Yes.

• Which is certainly not where I think we’d all find ourselves 10 years ago.

• Yes.

• [Carly] And so one of the other elements that the book touches on and that we’ve just talked about is gender equality. And, if I may say, what your book describes as the kind of lack thereof in the management of the mosques. Now, you know, actually this was something that Orthodox Jews struggled with in the Jewish community, in synagogue leadership and you know, in the role of rabbis over the last kind of 10 to 15 years. So I guess my question through the lens of gender equality is how much of some of the issues you’ve raised are the nature of traditional conservative religious elements,

Right, how much of some of the concerns you have could be targeted at the Orthodox Jewish community in parts of Stanford Hill and Manchester, or parts of the Catholic church that may be at odds with certain elements of British fundamental values in societies. You know, how much is a conservative traditional religious problem versus a particular Muslim or mosque issue in this case?

• Yeah, that’s a fair, absolutely fair point. And you know, right to probe. But Islam is firmly part of that Abrahamic faith family. You know, so we have the same heritage and you know, by the way, I always say that we’re all Jewish because, you know, we wouldn’t have Christianity without Judaism and without Christianity and Judaism, you wouldn’t have Islam. So we’re downstream from Judaism and anyone who understands that understands how we’re all Jewish, you know, 'cause without the mothership, I.e., Judaism, we don’t have Islam, and all the prophets of Islam are Jewish prophets that, you know, we have subsequently appropriated in the language of the age.

But, so you’re right on Catholicism and you’re right on Orthodox Jewish communities, but here’s the difference. Large numbers of the other faith communities have modernised and there are strong reform elements that can offer other options. And Islam is the last of those a Abrahamic faith traditions. It’s the youngest and the newest, and what we are now seeing is that effort to reform Islam. So we’re away from the literalism of a caliphate, that we’re away from the literalism of the need for an Islamist state with hardline Sharia. And the most important issue in this is to make sure that there are Muslim women who are equal as Muslim men.

And where Judaism has made progress on this, Christianity has made progress on this Islam lagged, Muslims lagged, you know, desperately behind. Again, other than the UAE and Bahrain. Those two countries have tried their most to reform and to modernise. Now why I think it’s important, it’s because that’s where we are. And I genuinely believe that the prophet Muhammad was a progressive feminist prophet because he gave women the right to inherit when they had no rights. He gave women the right to divorce when there were no divorce rights for women. And, you know, he allowed for, you know, his wives and others to have a leadership role that were still subsequent in his life and after his death.

So the theology exists in Islam for women to be seen as equals. My call is that Muslims move in the spirit of the Quran and the prophet to catch up with where we are in the modern world. Now with Orthodox Jewish communities, you know, however conservative they may be, and if there’s any truth to that film Orthodox, there are genuine concerns. But I think there’s a robust and healthy debate going on inside Jewish communities to address that. With, you know, the most generous number of Jewish people around the world is around 30 million Jewish people, I think around the world.

Now, two big differences between Orthodox Jewish people, and if this trend of sexism continues and misogyny continues within institutional religiosity among Muslims, is that Muslims are 1.8 billion around the world with 52 countries. One. Which says the scope of the problem is just massive. And secondly, those who are most extreme and orthodox, although orthodox in extremism isn’t the same thing, but the most extreme, the most politicised, the most misogynistic, the most sexist tend to also be the most proselytising. So not only, I mean with the Orthodox, they’re quite happy to be left alone, by the way. I mean, they don’t want anyone else to convert to an Orthodoxy.

The problem with extremist misogynistic Hamas types that we’ve got is they want others to convert. And that’s why I think that the parallel does not stand up on scope and proselytising, 'cause while the Orthodox are happy to be left alone, our politicised Hamas types want to want to take over the rest of the world in an ideal situation or continue to convert. So for those two reasons, I firmly believe that mosques in Britain must modernise, must allow women as equals into the prayer space. I’m not calling for female imams, we already have female rabbis, we already have female priests in the Church of England and elsewhere.

I think I stopped short of going that far, but women deserve to be treated as fully equal citizens and have recourse to the rule of law for their own divorce and not be controlled by the mosque for divorce rights. They should go to the courts and get the divorce rights like everybody else, and full inheritance and full equality. And it’s strange that in the year 2021 I have to even say this, but that’s where we are with most Muslims in European countries, sadly.

• So over the last few years in the UK, but actually in much of the western world, we’ve seen a continual increase in the rise in anti-Semitism. And you know, if you talk to some of the key figures who track this, you know, and some of your older colleagues. You know, whether it’s Alan Mendoza or others, you know. There is a real concern about how much of this anti-Semitism is coming from the Muslim community. In your tours around the mosques, how did you find the views regarding interfaith and engagement with the Jewish community? And what do you think can be done to kind of look at improving the understanding, and to quote Wendy, the kind of bridge building between communities?

• Yes, yes. The good news is among problematic institutions such as the large Madrassah in Dewsbury that’s been given a very negative Ofsted report just three weeks ago. So I feel exonerated for what I observed and wrote about because Ofsted, the government’s inspection body went in and observed. Now they have many, many flaws. Misogyny, institutional problems are real issues. But I asked a young student who’s I think about 21 years old in Dewsbury, you know, the first of the most conservative, most orthodox Madrassah Seminary about relationships with Jewish people, and he had positive things to say.

I mean, I didn’t even detect the blink of an anti-Semitism in this kid who’s 21 years old. In Bradford, the synagogue there was supported by Jewish business, sorry, Muslim business people to make sure the old synagogue in Bradford continues to be there. In Brick Lane Jewish people used to own the mosque that was then the synagogue. But you know, lots of people still there feeling much more comfortable than they do in other parts of the country. You know, similarly in Belfast and in Edinburgh, you know. All of the relationships between mosques and synagogues institutionally so far are holding, and there’s not a real institutional problem, you know.

Between ambassadors, you see the Israeli ambassador has excellent relationships openly and in private with others. But the problem is genuinely with a younger generation who look at Jewish people, say, in Manchester, where I detected a problem with some of the activists, when this question comes up, or you see them flying the Palestinian flag with anti-Israeli slogans on their car number plates, or bumper stickers. And I saw that again in Dewsbury when I went back. Or you see events being organised which are publicised in bookshops and shops that sell Islamic clothing.

In the activism there’s a real problem. In the institutional high ground there isn’t a problem. And that activism, the antisemitism, has a correlation into parts of the far left political space. So there we have a real problem, but the interfaith activities still stand up and I think it’s good news that at a parliamentary level we are seeing really deep ties between, you know, Labour friends of Israel, Conservative friends of Israel working with Muslim parliamentarians. But that said, there is a younger generation, and forgive me for making a political point, whether it’s Zarah Sultana in the Labour Party, you know, the Corbinite.

Or whether it’s AOC here in America and Ilhan Omar in the democratic party’s more progressive wing. They are riding a certain ugly tiger. And that’s the tiger I worry about growing over the years. And then, you know, we should be optimistic, we can strangle that beast 'cause it has been done before. But we should also be careful. Albert Camus in his book, The Plague, always warns that you’ve got to be constantly vigilant to this ugly monster because it raises the head from time to time.

So we are seeing, you know, on both sides of the Atlantic, the emergence of that ugly far left antisemitic space that raises its head from time to time. And on the far right there is the antisemitism that raises its head from time to time. But I think the political centre, center-left, center-right is still holding And institutionally you’re seeing most Muslims in that space politically, but also in in religious Jewish Muslim institutions.

So there is good news on that front, and I think we’d be remiss here not to remember the great, late Rabbi Sacks and the immense work that he’s done to lie and to put those roots down for all of us, which I think many of us still watering those roots that he had and the tree that he grew because he spoke with Muslim professors like Akbar Ahmed and others and, you know, many, many others in recalling that great Monodian period and how again we benefit from that. So the great work of that generation still is giving us the fruits, I think from which we continue to benefit.

• I want to ask a slightly off-topic question, but one that I think would be very interesting to our audience, which is to look at the Covid vaccine for a second because, you know, in minority communities or very traditional communities or those who are less integrated, we have traditionally been seeing less vaccine uptake. Now obviously, you know, the book is, is pre-that, but have you had any kind of feedback or understanding on how the vaccine and as a response is being received by some of the mosques you visited?

I’ve seen some great pictures in the UK of, you know, drives in some of the mosques to do vaccines, you know, partnerships with Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London or elsewhere, you know, talking about the importance. But for minority communities, vaccine uptake is low. So how is that being received?

• Yes, there’s good news and there’s bad news. The good news is that, you know, many mosques have opened their doors, you know. Because in Mecca and Saudi Arabia vaccination is a demand it sends the global message that, you know, vaccines are not a problem. Vast majority of, you know, mosques and Muslims have welcomed a vaccine and there isn’t a genuine problem, especially, you know, those who I’ve observed, you know, subsequent to Covid and the vaccine and the mosques I’ve been going to in London.

However, there is a real problem in northern communities, in places such as Rochdale, Dewsbury and elsewhere. And since the vaccine came, I’ve been up there, as I say, for a particular interview and there’s been more resistance to the vaccine there. Some of it’s to do with the same issues that you see in the US South, you know, anti-government tendencies, you know, doubting the vaccine. Conspiracy theories around who produced the vaccine, and you know, and with Muslims from a Pakistani background, there’s the other issue of the polio vaccine.

When they hear vaccines, they think polio. They think that was a campaign run by the CIA in order to get to Osama Bin Laden. So they have other triggers going off in their minds. So it is what it is. And I think it’s just us bearing in mind that for most sensible normal Muslims, the vaccine is not an issue. You know, alongside Israel, the UK and the US it was Bahrain and the UAE that were right up there vaccinating their populations. So I don’t think there’s an inherently Islam or Muslim problem, but in the UK there have been real issues with some sections because of the Pakistan polio vaccine and tracking Bin Laden through that programme, and they think, oh no, they’re here to track terrorists in our midst.

To which the question is, well, what’s there to fear? There are no terrorists. If there aren’t, why are you worried? To which the answer is there are currently 42,000 people being monitored for support for extremism or support for those who may commit terrorist acts. So that’s why there’s a degree of fear, which I think, you know, we should take seriously. 42,000, you know, people on the intelligence agencies radar being monitor as POIs, People Of Interest, is a huge number. And 90% of those are to do with Islamist extremism. You know, 10% far right extremism. So the vaccine is pointing, I think, to a wider set of issues.

• So what surprised you when you went to do the tour and as you wrote the book, you know. And we can soon call you, you know, Doctor Ed Husain when you finish your PhD, but you know, you went out with a hypothesis or a theory of the case, you know. What was it that that kind of challenged you or countered your expectations?

• I went with a genuinely open mind. And I mean that, you know. I didn’t want to be critical of Muslims 'cause I just feel that Muslims get criticism so often they just don’t need yet more criticism. So I went out with a genuine degree of empathy and sympathy for, you know, and my first encounter in Dewsbury was an open one. And my publishers insisted that I had that Socratic spirit of asking open questions and those open questions landed me in trouble.

My only thesis or hypothesis was to make sure that the liberal values on which the West, you know, the openness, the gender equality, you know, tolerance, coexistence, the things that allow Muslims to remain as Muslims in the West, that those values were generally being upheld. And you know, when I asked, I went into the mosque in Dewsbury and those who read the book will see that there’s a lot of beautiful spirituality in those mosques.

A lot of reflection on God, a lot of zoning out of the daily clutter of our lives and a real presence of the divine, the spiritual. And all of that comes across in mosque after mosque. And that’s all to be welcomed, but it disturbed me greatly that if I went there with my daughters, I wouldn’t be allowed in or they wouldn’t be allowed in. So I asked the imams, you know, where are places for the women? No places for women. I mean, how is that possible that a woman can be prime minister and lead the world, but can’t be inside a mosque praying?

Or even on the mosques management committee, but her money on fundraising campaigns were welcome. So when I asked that question, they sent me to bookshops where there was a whole degree more of sexism, which I’d document in the book. That shocked me 'cause I had heard of mosques where women were not welcome, but to see that in so many northern mosques in Bradford, in Keighley and Rochdale, in Manchester and elsewhere. That was a big shock.

The other thing that shocked me was the fact that there were mosques in Edinburgh in particular, but also in Belfast, that were not only run and where women were welcome, but they were openly talking about LGBT rights. Now I only mentioned that not because I’m kind of front loading it and kind of channelling it in anyway way, other than to say that here’s a great sign of acceptance, of some communities who are different, acceptance of a different lifestyle and welcoming of people who have an LGBT background.

That’s not something I expect to see in mosques. In Edinburgh, in the mosques kitchen, there were LGBT people openly sitting there and having a having a meal. The fact that they felt welcome was something that genuinely shocked me. 'Cause in my questioning, I did not go that far. 'Cause I thought, you know, that’s a private act and a private thing. It’s not for me to ask. And, you know, the fact that they were there, you know, that was shocking.

And as I said, in Birmingham seeing Muslim women in LGBT clinics working there as patriots and as citizens helping fellow citizens was hugely welcome. And every time I came across depressing moments, and there were many, I’d recall these moments of genuine hope that you can be a pious Muslim and you can accept and tolerate others.

• So you’ve been spending a significant amount of time in the US recently. How are you starting to explore and understand, you know, mosques in the US and perhaps similarities or differences between the two communities?

• I’m glad you asked me that, Carly, because I love this country and I’m going to be moving here and living here permanently. And what shocks me here in Washington DC and I’m teaching a course on Islam, Judaism and western civilization here at Georgetown, trying to explain what Wendy took so warmly earlier in terms of how Judaism and Islam contributed to the modernization of Christianity and then the enlightenment.

And then we are where we are because of the Jewish heritage that we all enjoy, but also because Islam preserved it and developed it, and, you know, the West came out of that synthesis, that conversation of civilizations. In mosques here I’ve kept a low profile. I don’t want to… there are only so many problems one can take on. I’d much rather focus on working here in Washington DC to focus on the Middle East, you know. To have more Abraham Accords, more Isaac Accords, whatever we should call them.

That’s what I want to focus on with my time here at Georgetown and Washington DC, so I’m focused on the policy circles. I go into the mosques, I pray, I leave, you know. It’s quiet, but mosques here seem much more open, much more American. You know, the US flag is flying. But what I will say though is here in Washington DC there’s a lot of negativism, I find. A lot of pessimism. Everyone’s still focused on January 6th and the four years that went before.

And I came here, you know, because everyone’s talking against, the young don’t understand and the young can’t write, and the youth have lost their morals and manners, and the Americans are just so far behind the rest of- I mean, I came here with all those biases, you know, just to the back of my mind, and I tell you, Carly, I have been absolutely blown away by the students here at Georgetown. Their grasp of the roots of Western civilization, Their dedication to understanding Spinoza, Maimonides, Rabbi Judah Halevi, and before them the mosaic influences on Greece, you know, Black Athena’s contribution to how ancient Greece, even Plato, depended hugely on what Moses had done in Egypt.

And that’s why Egypt is in a good place where Plato and others can go and learn. Rediscovering those roots, bringing it to them. And I mean, I’ve just graded my most recent round of essays. The fact that they understand all of that, can write about the Jewish, Muslim, and Greek philosophers, and most importantly apply that to today and undo the clash of civilization’s thesis. And all of them wrote so brilliantly. 'Cause I think we think, you know, the Instagram generation, Twitter generation can’t write. They can write.

So against the negativism and the pessimism, I just hold up these, you know, young American Jewish and other students that I’m teaching from a around the country. I’m genuinely blown away. And I’d like to do more to help them and to help create a young generation of people that go into the School of Foreign Service or the State Department and continue to do what our friends and allies are doing in the Middle East, with America’s support, which is, you know, normalisation and more coexistence in the Middle East.

Because I think if we get it right there, and if we have support for it here, Muslims and others in Europe will eventually realise that they can’t be those Japanese soldiers who after the Second World War, continue to fight because no one told them the war was over. You know, we want them to tell them that the war is now over, you know, the world has moved on.

• I think that’s a pretty fitting metaphor to leave us with. But your students are very lucky that they are getting to learn from someone with your experience. And I’m sure once you are ready, we look forward to having you back. I’m going to hand over to Wendy, but Ed, thank you. This has been a real pleasure and a real privilege and I look forward to part two.

• Thank you, Carly. I appreciate it. I really do.

• [Wendy] Well, Ed, thank you very, very much for an extremely stimulating, informative, brilliantly thought provoking and really truly excellent presentation. As you actually said, the foundations of interfaith relationships are very strong, and when you have strong foundations, the building will hold up. And we are so looking forward to having you back with us to discuss your thesis as we had an earlier discussion about what you wrote your PhD on, and it is ready. I’m so looking forward to hearing more about that. And absolutely good luck here in America.

And what can I say other than a privilege and a pleasure to have you with us and for you to be part of our Lockdown University faculty. So thank you and to Carl, to Carly, our very own Carl. Thank you Carly again for being such a fabulous member of the team. So to all our participants, thank you very much for joining us and we look forward to having you all back with us soon.