Leaving Islamism

After attending the Rally for Islam, I began to feel disconnected from the social world around me. Above all, I struggled to form a stable identity during this period, which coincided with the natural challenges of adolescence. I sought to acquire a position that would relate my teenage life to what I had encountered before in an effort to gain meaning. As I previously revealed, I had a secular upbringing; in fact, religiosity was not stressed in any way. As I matured, I could not develop a unified understanding of all the varied facets of my life. Religion and ethnicity were detached from my social identity, inhibiting me from forming a cohesive identity.

Furthermore, I found it challenging to construct a meaningful connection to my ethnicity, mainly since I lived in a predominantly White area. In spite of rejecting my ethnicity, I still experienced social alienation from the White working class friends I had made at secondary school. There were two explanations for this feeling of exclusion. Firstly, I grew up in a middle-class household, which generated conflict with my White working class school friends, especially as I struggled to relate to their social world. Secondly, regardless of gaining some degree of acceptance amongst my White friends, I could not wholly surmount their negative view of belonging to a distinct ethnic group. This subsequently strengthened within me the feeling that my identity was artificial.

When I enrolled at Hammersmith College, I fell upon a multicultural setting for the first time in my life. This experience pushed me to reconsider my negative perceptions about race and ethnicity. This new social environment enabled me to discover a dormant side of my identity. Initially, I felt socially insecure, so I went in search of the familiar. According to Bukowski et al. (2018), similarly structured peer groups present individuals with secure social surroundings, drawing people who often share similar social characteristics such as age, gender, ethnicity and religion.

After several weeks of intense indoctrination within the Halaqa, I started to propagate the ideology of HT. I fully adopted the ideological aim of HT. HT seeks to re-launch the Dawlah Islamiya (Islamic State), an idealised utopia that has not been present since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1924. According to HT, Islam is an intellectual fusion between the religious and political, within which authority resides exclusively with God. This means human beings do not have the power to govern, making non-divine ideological systems invalid. When I attended College, I began to contribute to HT activism. Initially, despite some doubts, I felt like an activist. As an HT activist, I wanted to change British society, as I thought the foundation of British law emanated from a corrupt source. This gave me a somewhat combative disposition, as I felt ideologically superior to the other because I seemingly thought I acquired access to a higher form of knowledge. Consequently, HT began to skew my social identity and interactions, distorting my opinion of the other.

According to HT, once the recruit instigates activism effectively, making the thoughts of HT his own, then he or she is ready for membership. Yet, before obtaining membership, the recruit must yearn for membership by impressing the leadership committee. When I joined HT, I recall this period with vivid detail. In particular, novices competed with each other to gain the recognition of members. Senior members would often encourage this type of competition amongst young recruits. This melodramatic rivalry provoked some controversy among the recruits, as they questioned the morality of such internal policy. Within the group, senior members considered it a social norm for novices to compete for good deeds. However, this created a negative ambience, as recruits tried to outdo others, but for the leadership, it exhibited dependency on HT and a desire for membership.

At university, I began to immerse myself in the philosophical works of western intellectual thinkers, which helped me question the nature of HT ideology. The exposure I received to alternative modes of thinking during the first year of my politics and philosophy degree gave me the confidence to challenge Islamist ideology. In essence, I lost my initial fascination with HT ideology. I began to view HT ideology within the combative and divisive context in which it formed. As the founder, Al-Nabhani (1953a, p. 4), declared: ‘The Western culture was the dagger drawn by the West in the face of the Islamic State and by which it fatally stabbed her.’ The dogmatic undercurrents of HT ideology cannot escape the narrative of confrontation. Al-Nabhani identified the West as the source of conflict because he saw it as a battle between good and evil, with Islam representing the forces of good.

I quickly began to loath the hostile interaction my fellow HT members had with non-Muslims. When I joined HT, it allowed me to relocate my negative social experiences onto those I perceived as rejecting me. The appeal of HT in my early youth started to erode once I overcame my identity struggles. This is why I initially was attracted to Islamist ideology; it created a ‘we’ versus ‘them’ dichotomy. Therefore, HT was appealing as it offered a sense of recognition, security and identity. On reflection, I joined HT because I failed to attain a sense of identity from society, which caused me to develop a deep psychological need for belonging.