Former militant renounces extremism

Sunday, 07 Jun, 2009, The Dawn

Ten years ago, Maajid Nawaz came to Pakistan to recruit for an extremist group intent on a global Islamic state. Now he's on a different mission — to steer youth away from militancy.



Nawaz's message is one rarely heard in Pakistan, where the response to extremism has been overwhelmingly military, with little attempt to try to rehabilitate insurgents or keep young people from turning to militancy in the first place.


In speeches to thousands of university students across the country, Nawaz emphasized the urgent need to renounce radicalism.


‘We must reclaim Islam,’ the British citizen of Pakistani descent told some 100 students on a campus close to the capital last month. ‘We must reclaim Pakistan.’


While Pakistan has poured troops and weaponry into its fight against the Taliban and other extremist groups, it has adopted few of the softer measures aimed at dissuading militancy. And critics say that is a major weakness in Pakistan's strategy against terrorism.


‘There is no country where such a program is more important than in Pakistan,’ said Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert who chaired the first international conference on militant rehabilitation in Singapore in February.


‘In parallel with the kinetic fight to catch and kill terrorists, there needs to be a parallel policy to fight the ideology.’


There are signs Pakistan is considering such a program. Senior officials recently went to Saudi Arabia to study the effort there, considered the world's most comprehensive. Egypt pioneered the idea of militant rehabilitation in the 1990s, and Yemen, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia have also followed suit.


The programs involve counseling by moderate clerics and former extremists. Militants who renounce their old ways can receive financial support or help finding a job. Parallel programs in schools and mosques are aimed at young people.


A former Guantanamo Bay detainee, Saad Iqbal Madni, said he would welcome such a program in Pakistan.


‘If I had a little support, I could tell them that killing innocent people is not from Islam,’ said Madni, who was freed last year. Madni, who was never charged, denied engaging in violence, but said he would have credibility with fellow Pakistanis.


The results from such soft tactics have varied, said Christopher Boucek, who recently published a report on the Saudi program for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.


Indonesia has persuaded prominent terrorists to disavow violence and counsel others to do the same. But 23 of 117 Saudis who returned from Guantanamo and passed through the Saudi system have been re-arrested or are on the government's most-wanted terrorist list, said Boucek.


Shazadi Beg, a London-based human rights lawyer who has studied the need for such programs in Pakistan, said they are important because most militant recruits are young men with a limited understanding of Islam and no other way to earn a living.


A further complication is that for years the Pakistani government actively sponsored extremists to use as proxies in Afghanistan and Kashmir, a territory claimed by both Pakistan and India.


‘In Saudi, you're dealing with relatively small groups, but in Pakistan the jails are full with these sorts of detainees,’ said Mohammed Amir Rana, a terrorism expert at the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies. ‘The problem is the number of people the government wants to be rehabilitated.’


Most of Pakistan's 180 million people follow a moderate form of Islam influenced by local traditions, but hard-liners have made significant inroads since the 1980s. Anger at the US invasion of Afghanistan and support for a succession of Pakistani leaders seen as corrupt and illegitimate have swelled their ranks.


Another problem, said Pakistani lawmaker Mushahid Hussain, is that Pakistan is late to realize how serious a threat militants pose. Bureaucratic inertia is strong, he says, along with an aversion to new ideas and a state of denial.


‘Unless (the programs) start, we don't know how successful they will be,’ Hussain said. ‘It is not a battle of bombs and bullets. It is a battle of ideas.’


Nazar, the extremist turned inspirational speaker, used to belong to Hizb ut-Tahrir, which claims to have hundreds of thousands of members around the world working on establishing an Islamic caliphate. The group pledges nonviolence, but Nawaz alleges that in some countries — including nuclear-armed Pakistan — a key strategy was to foment a military coup.


Pakistan has formally banned the group, as have several other Muslim countries, but authorities are not really enforcing the ban. Its members take part in demonstrations, hold public meetings and hand out leaflets largely unobstructed.


In 1999, Hizb ut-Tahrir paid for Nawaz to go to Pakistan, ostensibly as a student, to recruit members. He traveled all over the country doing so.


Later, he went to Egypt, where he was imprisoned for four years for recruiting for the group. He met other radicals, studied Islamic texts in jail and gradually changed his opinions, he said. He now believes that Islam calls for the separation of the faith and politics.


Imran Yousafzai, deputy spokesman of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Pakistan, said he was aware of Nawaz's activities in Pakistan.


‘I heard he was once an active member in Pakistan,’ he said. ‘I am sad to say that he is now working against Islam.’


During his recent appearances on college campuses, some students questioned why Nawaz was ‘attacking’ Islam and not US foreign policy in Pakistan and Afghanistan. One hard-liner, whom Nawaz accuses of being a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, punched him in the face after a talk in the eastern city of Lahore.


Nawaz said he hopes to start a network of moderate Pakistani Muslims to speak out against extremism. He gets a salary as director of the Quilliam Foundation, a mainstream think tank that challenges extremism and promotes pluralism, and is partly funded by the British government.


Pervez Hoodbhoy, a university lecturer and vocal critic of militancy, said students responded positively to Nawaz but that he did not expect to see ‘any movement building up behind him.’


‘It is a great job he is doing and it's important that people hear him, he said. ‘But it wasn't a life-changing experience.’


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