Another truly brilliant and thought provoking piece from the writer Shazia Hobbs who is the author of the novel ‘The Gori’s Daughter’. In this passionate piece, Ms Hobbs takes aim at the Quilliam organisation and muses on the difficulty of getting Muslims to accept reform or to accept a secularisation of Islam as such secularisation is seen as sinful. Especially difficult is a proper textual examination and open debate about the contents of the Koran. This is because nothing like the sort of textual analysis or criticism or deconstruction of texts, that Jews and Christians have mostly accepted of the Bible, is allowed in Islam. As usual this piece from Ms Hobbs is right on the money and is a piece that is well worth reading.

Reforming Islam – By Shazia Hobbs

William Henry Quilliam was born on 10^th April 1856 to a wealthy family in Liverpool. He was brought up as Methodist and converted to Islam in 1887 after he visited Morocco. Quilliam opened the first mosque in Britain, on Christmas Day 1889, with funding he received from Nasrullah Khan, Crown Prince of Afghanistan.

He changed his name to Abdullah after converting and argued for a global caliphate and swore allegiance to the Ottoman Empire.

In 2007, three former members of Hizb-ut Tahrir established The Quilliam Foundation. For those who don’t know, Hizb-ut Tahrir is an Islamic supremacist group operating in dozens of countries around the world. They employ subversive tactics to infiltrate governments and military institutions in order to bring about an Islamic revolution, with the express ambition of turning the globe into a totalitarian Islamic caliphate, ruled under Sharia law.

One has to ask what thinking was going on when they came up with the idea of naming their think tank after a man who wanted a global caliphate. Was it done intentionally?

I first heard about Quilliam through one of its founders, Maajid Nawaz, who I followed on Twitter. I purchased his book ‘Radical’ as I was interested in reading about the experience of other Pakistanis who had grown up in Britain.

Although our upbringings were different, we both experienced racism from white people. Nawaz was lucky that he did not receive any racism from Pakistani people, whereas I did, simply for being the white woman’s daughter.

I was inspired by Nawaz and believed that change was possible. Like many others I was fooled. I began to see how he was hated and loathed by his fellow Muslims on social media, the very people whose minds he claims he wants to change; and many white British people are starting to question the motives of Quilliam.

To learn something of his background, let’s refer to a speech he gave on stage at Ted Talks.

“At the age of 16 I joined Hizb ut-Tahrir. At 17 I was recruiting people from Cambridge University to this organisation. At 19 I was on the national leadership of this organisation in the UK. At 22 I was co-founding this organisation in Pakistan. By the age of 24 I found myself convicted in prison in Egypt, being backlisted from three countries in the world for attempting to overthrow their governments, being subjected to torture in Egyptian jails and sentenced to five years as a prisoner of conscience.”

Prisoner of conscience?! There’s nothing conscientious about wanting to overthrow governments through coercion and espionage. Excusing his behaviour as a matter of conscience should tell you something of his character. How is that any different from terrorists sitting in prison cells right now? Perhaps we should sympathise with their predicament too?

“If we look at Islamists, if we look at the phenomenon of far right fascists, one thing they’ve been very good at is communicating across borders, using technologies to organise themselves, to propagate their message and to create a truly global phenomena.”

Quilliam’s focus is on ‘counter-extremism against Islamism’ and their most well-known feel good story is Tommy Robinson, the founder of the English Defence League, established in response to the alarming trends he witnessed in his home town of Luton, England and surrounding areas.

Following a serious of discussions with Robinson, in October of 2013 Nawaz proudly boasted of his success in ‘decapitating’ the English Defence League of it’s leader – which is a conspicuous choice of words considering only a few years prior he was devoted to implementing sharia which includes actual beheadings. Robinson’s head is metaphorically sitting in Nawaz’s trophy cabinet.

A think tank on tackling ‘Islamism’ yet they tackle the ‘far right?’ Makes sense I guess when you see the number of far right churches and organisations calling for the death of Muslims. I mean they are opening up all over the UK.

Quilliam are also looking to reform Islam. A think tank organisation named after a convert who wanted a caliphate are hoping to reform Islam? Consider this, during the four years he spent in an Egyptian prison, Nawaz committed half the Koran to memory. Imagine the devotion necessary to memorise 40,000 words! Following his release he was quoted as saying, “I can now say that the more I learn about Islam, the more tolerant I become.”

Does that sound like someone who believes Islam is need of urgent reformation?

Quilliam ask us to accept their preordained language, replete with euphemism and vague platitudes about the ‘need to reform,’ labelling anyone who strays outside of these definitions or dares to question the feasibility of reformation as bigots, racists, fascists, xenophobes and far right extremists – which coincidentally is the very thing they accuse the so-called ‘regressive left’ of doing to stifle debate. They attach these labels to marginalise and discredit anyone with the audacity to hold Muslims accountable for their beliefs.

As a matter of fact Nawaz applied this very tactic while at university in Britain as the following quote from his book ‘Radical’ verifies, “We knowingly presented political demands disguised as religion and multiculturalism, and deliberately labelled any objections to our demands as racism and bigotry.”

Non-Muslims look at Nawaz and see a smartly dressed, well-spoken man, not displaying any overt signs of his Muslim faith. They see him rubbing shoulders with the likes of Sam Harris, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Douglas Murray and a host of other notable public figures. The hear him speaking out against the myriad of Islamic terrorists groups and falsely assume he is a trusted voice in the fight against Islamic extremism. That couldn’t be further from the truth. By attempting to decouple Islam from its political imperative, he seeks to salvage the notion that Islam is inherently good attributing these motivations to Islamism.

There are many Muslims who publicly speak out against ISIS, professing ISIS and similar groups have nothing to do with Islam.

Nawaz’s rhetoric is slightly different. He’s prepared to acknowledge the plausible link between the text and the actions of terrorists groups. His explanation for this is that Islam has been perverted by “extremists” to fulfil their self-serving political ambitions, whereas in his opinion, prior to their involvement, Islam was a benign, peaceful and personal faith.

On Quilliam’s website they ask the question, “What is Islamism?”…then provide the following answer, “It is the belief that Islam is a political ideology, as well as faith. It is a modernist claim that political sovereignty belongs to God, that Shari’ah should be used as state law, that Muslims form a political rather than religious bloc around the world and that it is a religious duty for all Muslims to create a political entity that is governed as such.”

This isn’t an off the cuff remark. This is their official position. The premise of this definition is categorically false and deliberately misleading.

Everything about the words contained in the Koran and life of Islam’s founders is the antithesis of free will and autonomy. The literal translation of the word Islam means submission.

Islam is a highly structured system of governance with roughly 6,000 sharia laws that dictate the actions and behaviours of its followers, both in public and private life. It’s a holistic system that commands Muslims to obey the will of Allah and follow the example of Mohammed as the path to eternal salvation.

Secularisation is a betrayal of Islamic teachings, as it is unambiguously detailed in the Koran, Sura and Hadiths. The instructions make clear that each and every Muslim should strive to live in accordance with Islamic law. To reject, criticise, or attempt to undo codified Islamic jurisprudence is considered highly blasphemous – a crime carrying the death penalty. This is the main reason the majority of Muslims are so hostile to any talk of reformation.

In essence Islamic ‘reformers’ such as Nawaz, are asking Muslims to denounce the life and teachings of the Prophet of Islam and the words of the creator of the universe.

The Koran is believed to be the literal and perfect word of Allah. The text is said to be immutable (unchangeable), timeless.

Said to be God’s final messenger, Mohammed is revered by Muslims, and hailed as the exemplar for human behaviour. A man who coordinated 67 armed battles, beheaded 600 Jews in a single afternoon, raided towns and looted travelling caravans, raped the widows of his victims, had 15 wives in total, the youngest being six years old, sanctioned spousal necrophilia, ordered the stoning deaths of adulterers, apostates, homosexual and blasphemers. This is the man Muslims are supposedly meant to emulate? This is the highest standard of human behaviour?

Mohammed is said to be an example for ALL times, not merely the pre-modern era. If his teachings aren’t fit for the 21^st century and beyond, did Allah choose the wrong person?

This debate is far too important to concern ourselves with sparing Nawaz’s feelings. His proposals are counter productive and extremely dangerous. While his plans continue to fail spectacularly thousand of sharia compliant Muslims are flooding into the west each week.

Using Nawaz’s definition “An Islamist is someone wanting to impose a version of Islam over society.” That would encompass anyone in favour of Sharia law.

Polling data indicates two-thirds of Muslims globally want to live under Sharia law. Therefore 1.1 billion Muslims fall under Nawaz’s definition of an Islamist, (even though he’s have you believe its only a tiny minority).

This idea that Muslims would readily adopt Nawaz’s new-age liberal version of Islam is absurd. Considering the widespread hate and mistrust Muslims have for him and his organisation and the zero credibility within the community, you have to ask who is his target audience?

Exactly what, or who, are you actually trying to reform, Mr Nawaz?