What's right with Malaysia

Previous entry(ies) here referred:
http://flinflan.blogspot.com/2010/09/to-address-whats-right-with-malaysia-we.html

So, where to Malaysia?
Essentially looking forward, the debate can simplistically be said to be status quo, ie Malay political dominance (rather than hegemony) vs goign to the far extreme of harsh Islamic Taliban-style state or the other harsh-extreme of laissez-faire secular-liberal valueless 'Western model', the type that Islamists of the 60s fight hard against.

To be fair, the two extremes dont appear likely. Islamists have veered to the centre now, as evidenced with Ikhwan's positioning in the Egyptian crisis and Rashid Ghannouchi's in Tunisia. What could have been seen as the right opportunity to stake a claim for Islamic statism, was forgone for a centralist position. Islamists political stance has matured. Abu Iman even goes so far as to say impossible for this to take place (although this may have been a misreported quote) and incited the ire of his party members.

Liberal and secular leaders know there's no way they can get support of the Malays, because of the imagery of Chinese chavs or purely against Islamic principle. Status quo appears to be more likely in the long-run, and that is without factoring in PKR's desperate and confusing positioning ever since Anwar becomes so embroiled in his sodomy trial that his deputies just cant help shooting themselves everywhere. UMNO needs to reform itself, but without full support from their non-malay partners who cant save themselves either, look like they too will have problems. Malay society will continue to be split for some time.

On the other hand, as the stand-off continues on the political ideologies of the 2 biggest malay parties, and I would think an integration is a viable outcome if the threat of backstabbing can be mitigated ie certain personalities were to change,then debate will occur on administrative policies.

So here I list certain debates I'd like to occur and see some strong willed opinion-shapers emerge to lead this to the best possible solutions:
1. Administration of Justice, restoration of impartiality
- removal of scent of partiality
- removal of threat of abuse, fear and insecurity
- justice and fairness in policy application to all cultures, religions and social classes
- inculclating meritocracy and removal of cronyism, including open tender systems and such
- stengthening institutional independence

2. strengthening economic growth
- creating a vibrant wide-based economic base, that adds value to commodity resources we are currently very strong in
- fulfilling social welfare needs, esp urban living. ie transportation - get this MRT project right the first time - where's the bloody masterplan. Then improving infrastructure connectivity throughout Peninsular, (what about East Coast) and East Malaysia. develop fairly.
- emphasise old, weak, infirm, handicapped etc. Why is Bersamamu so dependent on society? where is government role in supporting this?
- emphasise innovation
- reduce frivolous govt spending

3. Social reformation
- masyarakat madani - for the malay-muslim society. Esp for UMNO
- incorruptible
- respectful
- harmonious
- allow social mobility - support, but only for the deserving
- low crime rates - stop this silly buang anak, zina, kicking of cats / dogs

4. Education
- respect for all cultures
- language development for everyone
- academic emphasis but competitive sports and extracurricular portion

Looking at the above criteria, I can give my KPIs to the following Ministries and the PM now.
1. Justice - PM - 2/10
2. Economy - PM/MOF, EPU, other large ministries- 2/10
3. Social reformation - PM 1/10 (Permata program is barking up the wrong tree)
4. Education - 1/10

I'm sorry if I'm too harsh in my assessment, but there is an appeal process possible. It's called political will for policy change.

Review of Gladwell's Books - Tipping Point, Blink

1.       I finished “The tipping Point” and “Blink” over the weekend. He’s got good narrative structures for what is essentially heave collection of research and academic papers in social science, but repackaged them into layman’s terms, interwoven into a storyline which provokes thoughts. Freakonomics was written in a similar vein, and again, there are items which we could dig and raise as gold findings – such as the message that we can offer bettermwnet to the world, but overall there’s a cynical part of me that thinks we do need to sort out the simplification and exaggerations out, and reconnect and understand the context of our situation better before jumping headlong into some of the shared findings and narratives from the books. Although it can be argues that this was the assertion that the Tipping Point was making.

2.       My comments are that there’s only so much we can absorb from what is fundamentally a biased narrative, even if the messaging and the writing is solid and convincing. It is at the end of the day, still the opinions of Gladwell. Note: I bought the books with my money, and I have the right to comment on it the way I like.. J

3.       I remember Aznir’s attempt to list out the mavens, connectors and salesmen in TNB from his position as Chief Skunkworks (sorry, cant remember the name of the Unit / Dept, but that is the role – and the position has very positive connotation in the realm of change management in the US, although Malaysians not familiar to the language may take offence). I remember the fact that he tried to keep the message sticky by having the T7 messages everywhere (even behind toilet doors) except on the toilet seats. But messaging is everything and context failure was evident. In the end, measured from the perspective of the T7 initiative, it was unclear if it achieved its intended success.

4.       The point is that in the context of stickiness, it worked in the initial stages. But it failed in the context of getting thinking and commitment going hand-in-hand to get the transformation going. There was a lack of getting people into the right places, giving support to people capable of getting things going, and in he end it was a missed opportunity. Change management is always a people business to get to the tipping point. In the end, there was just too little to get the stickiness. The tipping point opportunity was lost. It was lost because CMU thought getting enough people scented with the idea of change was enough. It wasn’t because there were still huge efforts required to get change happening on a secondary, tertiary level for the stickiness to endure. Context was absent.

5.       In a way, the above seemed to vindicate Gladwell. But I would think also that this wasn’t the application that it was meant to be. Say we wanted to address the baby dumping issue. Where do we start using Gladwell’s model? It doesn’t appear to be a PR problem alone, and he seemed to address the issue also with the evidence on the needle distribution program, even though he tried to offset the weakness of that example with some side benefits. Again, asking the question as before, how effective is the needle distribution program in combating AIDS?

6.       We all want a simplified model where our version of truth lies victorious, and that model helps us to achieve our objectives. I guess that the dakwah approach, of studying our relationship to God and society, organizing our society according to the tenets as ordained by the Almighty, gives a more powerful model for change and stickiness to grow. How did Islam grow within such a short period of time after the first revelations? Growth of the empire after the Prophet’s Death? Growth of Islam in Europe and US? It is a combination of funding, power of communication, and above all strength of the message. I’m prevaricating, and again I suppose this vindicates Gladwell. It’s just that as a matter of preference, I don’t like simplifying models of huge issues, like Freakonomics and Tipping Point. I also fell asleep more that a few times while trying to finish the latter.

7.       I like Blink. It makes no recommendations. It was just a roundtrip of what our intuitions tell us and the need to be careful, to cultivate the right positive thoughts about people and first impressions. Above all, be careful of what others think of you is perhaps the message I take the most.

8.       Good writer. Blink better than Tipping Point. Having said that, I’ll come back to reexamine some of the things in there at some point in the future hopefully.

 

 

Week just ended review: Eid, People, RE

1.       Lessons from socialising, berayaing, and generally meeting other people

a.       Eid – of the one month variety is a great concept when it involves visiting and learning of the ways of others, their fears and concerns, their comforts and thoughts. I oppose the open house concept other than having an opportunity to gather the right ‘gang’ and clique at the right place at the right time. So, thus I guess our 3 “mini-open” houses this year.

b.      This past weekend was a pretty good one. After the kids Kumon, we kicked off firstly with Villa Sutera, where lessons of articulation and speaking a lot more than expected can be distilled. Then, it was a Kinrara trip, where a property investment opportunity presents itself. And also, the fact that I have a marketing agent to turn to in the future should I need one.

c.       The night ended with a Raya-cum-residential meeting, the post-mortem from a recent break-in just 2 days before, baying loudly for the security guards to strap up and do work properly. Sitting back, the baying of blood from the masses is a source of concern to me, primarily when I don’t feel it serves its purpose of enhancing security. First, is the fact that neighbours need to be vigilant and keep a lookout for each other. Secondly, security needs to be in your face, and no resident should raise an objection to this. Thirdly, technology solutions should be optimised. This is a position I should stand firm on, and kacau the rightful AJK constantly of the need to go beyond the superficial mingling. I see a mini-open house for the gang, Nik, KJ, J etc is in order.

d.      MAD followed the next day. Again, after not doing anything in JDC for the last 2 years despite sitting on the committee, and from a larger picture, not doing anything for the last 8 years, I contributed to drafting a resolution for dissolution of the branch. Ironic! But after giving it much thought, it is the best alternative, and when put to the vote, it was accepted by a thumping 20-10. Key learning points, Menang dimension is in effect, and it feels good to be able to lead in the though process when everyone else is trapped in the miasma.

e.       Then, it was a lightning trip to Putra Hts, and again the GIH connections loom everywhere, before a quick trip to FZ’s. Nice prime property, highly in demand etc, but so dead in terms of life and society. Give me Primaya any day. Quick mental note on next home, overlooking Masjid, security, corner at least.

f.        Amran’s was next – Mum is now 2 weeks with an ailment from whose description I’m guessing its septicimea, the same that brought down Arwah. His dedication to my old place is exemplary, but I get the nagging feeling that in the greater scheme of things that this is extremely misleading and suboptimal. You don’t get educated at the best Ivy league universities to negotiate CAs and become union activists – leave this to the proper MTUC types and use the gifts of intellect and articulation where it is best suited. Engineering sector in Malaysia is extremely stagnant, and no one has made a proper stab at marketing our  intrinsic capabilities thus far. As much as I hate to say it, Francis Yeoh has been one of the few who has managed this extremely well (leaving aside the lop-sided sweetheart deal he is the beneficiary of). Note – pls make dua for his mom, and dus that I have the strength to conduct and do what is right for the engineering fraternity who opts to stay in the technical line, rather than leaving to work in the more lucrative financial sector, or leaving to the Middle East.

g.      Wan Roslan was dropping a hint that his employers will be proceeding with an ETP identified mega project soon. Worth checking out this lead.

h.       Mak was still waiting for Fiza, but at the same time, I felt sorry that I did not participate in providing a valid excuse for her to recuse herself from joining CIk Yah’s trip to Gambang.

 

2.       Lessons from others

a.       And then there was this morning. I should appreciate my wife more, she’s helpful despite not feeling the best of health.

b.      My own slipping iman, as seen from solat times, is a concern. More of the Ramadhan spirit needs to be invigorated. Mujahadah this week to finish off the Syawwal fasts, zakat to JDC, and qurban to Kemboja.

c.       Hodgson – good or lousy? I quote buy the player power sidestory, as even a crappy 442 formation should still be good enough to overpower Blackpool, as we did in the 2^nd half. But the late / inadequate subs, the wrong personnel, the lack of a plan B, the lack of drive and motivation.. on the whole as of now, we’re slipping fast and need urgent remedial action. Professorial dithering isn’t good enough, sorry.. we have too much of that in the workplace already.

 

3.       RE interests and opportunities

a.       There is a reason why engineers shouldn’t do sales, marketing, and it was evident this morning. Siemens had as their conference launch gimmick a dance troupe wearing reflective costumes, then cornily raising highlighted promo phrases associated with climate change, you know the phrases that jumps out in the powerpoints. Message lost. Don’t bother next time.

b.      Dinner tonight, but I’d need to understand who to target and questions to ask. Perhaps can start with questions on what are the opportunities when the industry is so fragmented. Service integrators, legal and regulatory advisers / consultants?

 

 

 

what's right with Malaysia

Continued from before:

11.    Understanding the weaknesses allows us to pinpoint the areas of our contribution, the priority points if you like.

12.    Education, first and foremost. Academic as well as inculcating characters. Academically, middle eastern universities are flourishing eg KAUST, Jordan U, even IIUM etc. Character building will have to be supplemented by usrah based on ukhuwwah and ilm. Hafazan schools with emphasis on sciences would be excellent.

13.    To be on the lookout and prepare for meta-trends of permaculture as a sub-genre of sustainability and earth stewardship, Islamic finance as a viable alternative to shenanigans in the prevailing economics of financial ecosystems, to be foremost in self-promotion and relationship building in an age of narcissistic primadonnas utilising the latest disruptive technologies of the internet, and to be ready to participate in the growth of these sub-genres as a possibility of commercial enterprise and livelihood.

14.    To supplement these actvities with promoting, leading and thinking about societal needs in education and offering the products necessary to stem the flow of gradual but inevitable decline of the existing societal worldview in Malaysia, whose alternative and successor at this moment is still unclear. The void needs to be filled by an Islamic principle based solution especially in the fields of education and funding. It is within these two realms that applied dakwah and offerings must be focused on.

15.    To think of ways and means to participate in shaping the political thinking that can help to expedite the changes to push it to an environment, a paradigm that could help the country to flourish and society to co-exist peacefully.

 

 

To address what's right with Malaysia, we need to stocktake things that are wrong with Malaysia now

1.       Titled as above so as not to look like this is trying to rundown this little country, my country, our country. Granted that the following is a rant that probably needs a lot more thought in categorization and such.

2.       Gradual decline of societal values, rise of violent crimes, petty crimes everywhere, porn vcds (pirated some more) available by the roadside, liberalism competing against rising extremism, murders most foul of a group, individuals, and helpless and weak babies. The list goes on.

3.       Abdication of responsibilities by our political leaders allowing racism, inequalities and injustice to prosper for the sake of self-interest and extension of political might, leaving their constituencies (their amanah it must be said!) to lead in the fight for civil rights (GMI, etc), charity (Mercy Malaysia) and the media’s gross over-sensationalisation of poverty and suffering in favour of commercial benefits, overemphasis on rights and privileges over developing internal capacity and capabilities.

4.       Increasing polarization arising from number 3 above.

5.       Declining economic competitiveness. Forget the rankings, surveys and stuff. When a survey is constructed and aggregated at such macro-level it has no value to the human spirit of competitiveness and innovation. What matters is at the personal level, what is the output, contribution that can be expected from the individual. Looking at the outputs from our high-level academic institutes now, there can only be depression at the lack of apathy, inarticulate, lack of moral standards and such. Those who could escape such a damning environment find that in the work environment lack of role models amongst their superiors to teach simple character-building, strong, principle-centred mujahid dakwah, or at the very least, good mentors to lead. The system just fails to produce enough critical mass for nation-building and cohesive society building.

6.       As a result of 5, bureaucrats, employees and the labour force turn to their survival instincts in the face of insufficient income levels to match with growing needs and demands and the various offerings available to the upper crust of society. Inflationary pressures by itself has created a need for the ‘proletariats’ to supplement their income stream with earnings from mlm and various other moon-lighting jobs (foot patch, score A, zhulian, stuff). Who can blame them?

7.       A whole generation of Malays are just lazy fat cats rolling around waiting for their rights and privileges to fall from the sky. Perkasa is just so wrong, so wrong on so many levels. By extension, so is Tun M. His time has passed, and maybe he should be passing time, although some are saying he should be doing time. The present leadership should stand up, look him in the eye, say the above and politely ask Tun M to stand down. The other implication is to tell our children that nothing falls down from the sky if we don’t work for it. Let’s not blame our inabilities on the wrongs perpetrated by others, as we are responsible for our own fate. Allah will not burden us with things that we cannot bear.

8.       Economic policies, subsidies etc. Yes, these are the rights of society upon the government, as this is the essence of Saidina Abu Bakr’s proclamation speech on his elevation as Khalifah, … speaking about the rights of the weak, the responsibilities of the strong, the essence of a democratically elected “representative” of a “popular” vote on the basis that he is the best to carry out the functions and purposes of a just, strong government… The Government should stop talking about the need to reduce subsidies and conduct an investigation into where the revenues coming from Petronas has gone to. At the end of the day, is there leakage and misallocation? How much? Where is it flowing to? How should the network of dependencies and patronage be decimated, or at the very least reconstructed so that merit prevails, and not patronages and corruption.

9.       Restructuring of society, allowing for the flourishing of Islamic sciences and research, allowing for the creation and sustainance of a proper Islamic industry so that there are no undue concerns and fears of compromised halal-ness, be it for food or even for funding and financing. Allowing that Muslims and non-muslims, all Malaysians respect the cultures and traditions of religion, the ummatic principle, the rational and tolerant basis of religion and spirituality and not the rituals and fear-mongering of religious adherents. Agree with LKY on the percentages of new townships so that there are no longer Kepong or Cheras Baru, which are antiques and should be removed as such. To begin with the decimation of Chinese schools and the reconstruction of Chinese private schools with curriculum that emphasizes Malaysiana.

10.   The reconstruction of education curriculum that emphasizes objectivity and respect. No such thing as a 5,000 year old civilization being superior to those which are newer and such. Base everything on the basis of scientific inquiry, rationalisation, curiosity, evidence-based, and infused with God-given spirituality to compensate for the limits and boundaries of scientific knowledge. Infuse national schools with learning of scriptures, hafazan, and deen-based knowledge as the overarching philosophy that binds all bodies of knowledge at a philosophical, pedagogical level that leads to the above.  

11.   Priorities, priorities. Leadership needs to take stock of all these weaknesses. Leadership needs to understand the destination of leading society. At a lower level, middle managers, executives need to understand the big picture. We all have a role to play in this.

 

 

Tolled Roads and National Embarassments!

Tolled Road Solutions

1.       Asas Serba has come up with a RM50b dividend bond proposal to fund its takeover of all the expressways in Malaysia, and also promises a 20% reduction of tolls as part of the proposal. Is is feasible? Sure. But that is not the question.

2.       Why are expressways lucrative? Most international funding agencies cite the PPP / PFI arrangement of tolled roads as workable. BUt the real question was how it was structured that was positively lopsided so as to create a disadvantaged party in the Government.

3.       Malaysia's structure allowed for the concessionaire to cite a construction cost, which already included a substantial margin. In return for the financing risks undertaken by the concessionaire, the toll concession will be for an agreed period, say 20 years, with builtin adjustment formulas to compensate the concessionaire for the maintenanc, upgrading, operations and also for inflationary pressures over the period.

4.       This is not dissimilar to the first-generation IPP structures, and certainly provides the concessionaire with an advantage for it to diversify into other areas such as YTL's forays into global markets knwoing that there is a stable, recurring cash cow back home that could protect it from risks inherent in foreign deals. Anyways, YTL's foray into regulated markets meant that it was still cautious enough, and the sweetheart deals it could conclude with dodgy clauses about appointing key personnel from the other party to juicy posts meant that it could live well off the initial deal.

5.       Quite why UEM, Renong, and now Khazanah has been unable to take advantage of PLUS is another

5. issue. The latter may well need PLUS to cover for the other dodgy deals that it has inherited.

6.       Where's the sweetheart deal in toll roads that Asas Serba is so interested in? The secret probably lies in the capital structure. Why bonds? This will be a fully leveraged deal - but the finer details is where Asas Serba is hoping to clinch it. And beware the valuation for all the expressways and the concession period that it is asking for. In all probability, the public would do well to consider if it intends to forsake the multiple generations beholden to tolls for a 20% reduction Asas Serba is throwing about.

7.       For whatever the deal’s worth, the question is who’s paying? Government saves on compensation payments, and lest we forget, it’s not the Government’s – it’s the rakyats. Now who will pay for the sweetheart deal for Asas Serba? For sure, the existing private shareholders for the toll concessionaires will receive a premium to facilitate their decision to sell for the profitable routes, and the less profitable ones will still walk away with their money’s worth.

8.       The solution isn’t replacement like-with-like. The solution is for expropriation, and the rakyat owns it. If Asas Serba, without track record and just a few sheets of A4 people can expect to raise RM50b, why not sovereign government of Malaysia?, Let it be that once toll concessions end, we can expect that there will no longer be continual payment in perpetuity, whereas now exits are deferred by concession extensions.

Musa Hassan - the embarassing IGP, Syam - the more embarassing Minister in charge

9.       The issue here is justice. If you can dispense justice, and there is integrity and professionalism in how you dispense your responsibilities, there are no embarassing questions you need to fend off. And if the IGP of Malaysia 'merajuk' - bloody hell, what hope do we have? We may as well have Rafidah Aziz there. And if the Minister echoes and supports this embrassing turn of events - ei... malu la!

10.   I have serious reservations abt Syam and his pronouncements. More often than note, he just hits the wrong nerves. He’s just so out of touch – and if this is the best UMNO can offer… bloody hell!

People and their set ways - resetting is not easy

Bismillah

1.       Society is so badly fragmented these days, and any thoughts of leaving a permanent impact on positive change leaves such an immense sense of the gargantuan effort required. Take for example, brutal killing and murder of babies, for that is what they are. Try changing that, and immediately you get the sense of the hopelessness of change. Where is the hope? When people raise the moral code as a preventive measure, there is a general outcry deriding imposition of Islamic values on liberals and non-muslims. Yet, the initiatives of handing out condoms are seen as the panacea for rampant zina amongst teenagers. The general paralysis analysis is too great that any effort as those done by raudhatusakinah needs to be given fullest support. Cynicism must be dampened fo hope to flourish. The littlest contributions must be promoted to give hope that these efforts are not done in vain.

2.       Then you have Islamic finance – trying to build upon the ruins of a capitalist system that breeds unfettered greed. CDS, CDO, derivatives, arbitrage, etc – positive purpose of risk management offset by lack of regulations allowing speculators to build upon loopholes, seen as backed by the rigour of an intellectual analysis but in truth no more than gambling against uncontrolled circumstances. Islamic finance allows for the risk of participating in these transactions with an asset-backed capital as a solution, when you lose you lose your own pants, not as part of a leveraged debt now termed as OPM, the loss is somebody else’s. Obama chasing after the miscreants in Goldis is a fantastic piece of news of clear thinking. Let the investors shit in their pants. They have had it easy for far too long.

3.       NEM promoting innovation et al. Already cynics are moving out of the woodwork when this initiative should be supported and expanded where able. Such is the crisis that we have in Malaysia that a major crossroads such as this is being seen as mere sloganeering, but failure to execute could have dire implications. A slowing economy will leave powerful forces tugging at the fraying strands of social cohesion. IN a way, I agree with Dr Halili if the opinion he expresses are true. In this case, weaken the empty “sloganeering” opposition, and strengthen the forces to keep Malaysian society intact for as long as we can.

4.       Tech development isn’t easy. Tech transfer leakages are occurring where people see opportunities to benefit. The system needs to change. MOSTI are regulators, not beneficiaries.

5.       New neighbours seem to be a bit nosy too.

Indicinelive review

1.       Context: I don’t have that much experience in the artsy type social scene, but I do love a good jokey skit once in a while. Having experienced Harith live before, I decided Indicinelive was worth a shot.

2.       Not having any expectations was kind of good, though I did take Ad’s warning there will be indecent parts upfront.

3.       The location is kind of difficult to find at night, but the crowd and the location in the middle of YTL’s Sentul park did remind me of London’s artsy scene. I was sort of looking forward to the performance by the time the doors were opened at 8.20.

4.       Thereafter, it was a madcap type of sketch after sketch, skit after skit.. and before I go into deep analysis, I must say I did enjoy the hour I spent there. Though there were questions on the liberality worldview of the cast and writers when they came up with sketches, I’d say for a fun night out willing to be poked fun suspended the need for any indulgent serious perspective on things.

5.       Would I recommend it? If people can be excited at slapstick Western comedy movies and had no such qualms to support those endeavours by buying movie tickets, there should not be any hesitation for recommending this light hearted parodying of Malaysian society and politicians.

6.       We could learn a few things as well on how we look like from the outside in. If a bit tight on the wad, then use your money on your own identified priorities and save your criticisms.

Thoughts and reflections on da'watuna fi majmu' ar-rasail

Da’wah and Islam

1.       we spent last night going through Da’watuna from Majmu’ al-Rasa’il, a collection of writings from Hassan Al-Banna. An interesting du’at borne out of the chaos enveloping Egypt in the early 20^th Century, where muslims were under severe pressure from European colonial influences, loss of Khilafah Uthmaniyyah (though interestingly, in my readings, the idea of a centralised Khilafah may not be as widespread throughout Muslim history as thought before). His collection of thoughts formed strategic imperatives for the muslim personality and character, muslim organisation and amal jamaie and Islamic political thought. No doubt, he has left a lasting legacy, and may he be given the blessings and forgiveness of Allah for his contribution towards Islamic awakening towards the rightful path of Islam throughout the world.

2.       Also, implications are – what are the strategic imperatives for society racked by confusion and materialism as we are seeing now in Malaysia. As HAB himself lost sleep thinking of the direction of his society, what of Malaysian society where in extremis, we are seeing babies disposed, children killed, widespread zina and identity confusion, political and societal fragmentation. What of our responsibilities and activities? Are we also confusing the issue by separating our da’wah into muslim and non-muslims? Has not Ibn Khaldun pointed out Islam’s role as savious of mankind?

Knowledge and execution

3.       NN has various threads of beneficial knowledge- some contemporary, some classical Islamic text and tazkirah. I’d need to make full use of this existing repository, and utilise this for ummah’s benefit. More importantly, the ability to change personal direction, opinions and position based on what the truth is. After all, is not Islam purely based on what is Haq? Ref: Saifulislam’s blog on Laura’s journey to become a new revert.

Leading and managing people - starts with me

1.       Recent events have focused my mind towards stepping forward and taking the responsibility as a leader. Events which had happened, were among others,

-          Taking up a personal stand on the formation of IM to replace J.IM, as openly discussed in the discussion nets

-          My constant harping to Naeem to take the responsibility

-          Realisation that not standing up to my own thoughts and opinions will make me a perfect subordinate to a conniving, manipulating superior

-          Taking up a position on the present carping and conflict between spouse and her siblings, mirroring a previous experience between spouse and my siblings

-          Realising that I am taking a lead role in the group that will be travelling to Egypt and the Holy Land in less than 3 weeks

2.       The analysis / diagnosis is that I’ve been content to be play the observer role, when I should be playing the lead role all this while. Some events I could remember were:

-          Fear of conflict: in primary school, someone threw a used icecream stick and challenged me to fight. My response was to ignore, although I remembered that I wasn’t afraid. And then, there was the Concord guys vs gals conference, where I was the one trying to dangle an olive branch while Ramzi was displaying his full aggression.

-          Only when my self-interest was jeopardised, do I react: ie at the TNB interview, under duress from the interviewers, although I remember at Fitzwilliam’s interview how I just gave up.

-          Compromise and discussion seems to work well: I never had reasons to fight to the end. Whatever momentum I had from Penang, which allowed me to join the Reformasi movement, joined and spoke on a political stump, functioned as a Deputy YDP in an urban district, gradually disappeared when faced with family demands. First to go were the jamaah prayers, then the activities, then the jamaah, then everything else outside work. At no point in time did I stand my ground.

3.       The impact is that I remained patient and steadfast while the world continued to revolve at breakneck speed:

-          I took 5 years to leave TNB, and if MBA was the excuse, I only left 2 years after graduation

-          I took 16 months to move out from TTDI despite growing problems and certainty that it was causing more harm than good

-          I’m still here

-          I only managed to reconcile property investments after many many years – and even then I have my wife to thank for

4.       The things I need are:

-          Picture of what needs to happen on a *personal* basis, not on a family basis – in a leading role, I should determine what needs to happen, and not to abdicate my responsibility

-          Guts to stand my ground – no one is going to physically beat me up, the only bruises would be to the ego when I take the wrong position

-          Aggression to speak on behalf of the truth – the cause has charisma, not the person, and aggression can only be justified when the truth is being manhandled. In this case, data, information and knowledge are supreme.

-          Spiritual help – and to Allah return all things, and He alone determines what happens or not, and it is necessary to beseech Him for His supreme Power to bestow what His powerless makhluk wants. And the wants should be aligned with what He wants.

And all these reflections above should cause me many sleepless nights,

The fitnah of the Jihadis

My dear brother, Usama Hasan, seems to be targeted by the radical muslims he used to be friendly with. To these people, anyone who does not toe the harsh lines of fiqh, seems to veer towards the fringe borders of iman and islam. From my own experience, these idealistic concepts find their resonance most in callow youths, only almost embarking towards life. I’m 37 this year, I doubt I’m wise enough or mature enough to judge people, or even if put under strain and pressure of people questioning my most deep-seated beliefs, whether I’d possess the internal strengths to identify, rationalize, and defend them. Between these two observations, my admiration for this dear brother only increases, as I can sympathise with the viewpoint of a softly approach, rather than the hardline one, here in Muslim-dominated Malaysia.

Harshness only increases the vocal groups of liberalism, and I believe Islam does not reject pragmatism of da’wah, where evidences exist in Caliph Umar’s actions, and the reported ways Islamic administration immediately following the conquests of Middle Eastern territory by the sahabi-led military. I will not detail them out here, but they exist for reflection for us all in this age of fitaan.

Source: http://forums.islamicawakening.com/f18/johann-hari-interviews-usama-hasan-maajid-nawaz-anjem-choudhury-30380/

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/renouncing-islamism-to-the-brink-and-back-again-1821215.html

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Ever since I started meeting jihadis, I have been struck by one thing – their Britishness. I am from the East End of London, and at some point in the past decade I became used to hearing a hoarse and angry whisper of jihadism on the streets where I live. Bearded young men stand outside the library calling for "The Rule of God" and "Death to Democracy".

In the mosques across the city, I hear a fringe of young men talk dreamily of flocking to Afghanistan to "resist". Yet this whisper never has an immigrant accent. It shares my pronunciations, my cultural references, and my national anthem. Beneath the beards and the burqas, there is an English voice.

The East End is a cramped grey maze of council estates, squashed between the glistening palaces of the City to one side and the glass towers of Docklands to the other. You can feel the financial elites staring across at each other, indifferent to this concrete lump of poverty dumped in-between by the forgotten tides of history. This place has always been the swirling first stop for immigrants to this country like my father – a place where new arrivals can huddle together as they adjust to the cold rain and lukewarm liberalism of Britain.

The Muslims who arrive here every day from Bangladesh, or India, or Somalia say they find the presence of British Islamists bizarre. They have come here to work and raise their children in stability and escape people like them. No: these Islamists are British-born. They make up 7 per cent of the British Muslim population, according to a Populous poll (with the other 93 percent of Muslims disagreeing). Ever since the 7/7 suicide bombings, carried out by young Englishmen against London, the British have been squinting at this minority of the minority and trying to figure out how we incubated a very English jihadism.

But every attempt I have made up to now to get into their heads – including talking to Islamists for weeks at their most notorious London hub, Finsbury Park mosque, immediately after 9/11 – left me feeling like a journalistic failure. These young men speak to outsiders in a dense and impenetrable code of Koranic quotes and surly jibes at both the foreign policy crimes of our Government and the freedom of women and gays. Any attempt to dig into their psychology – to ask honestly how this swirl of thoughts led them to believe suicide bombing their own city is right – is always met with a resistant sneer, and yet more opaque recitations from the Koran. Their message is simple: we don't do psychology or sociology. We do Allah, and Allah alone. Why do you have this particular reading of the Koran, when most Muslims don't? Because we are right, and they are infidel. Full stop. It was an investigatory dead end.

But then, a year ago, I began to hear about a fragile new movement that could just hold the answers we journalists have failed to find up to now. A wave of young British Islamists who trained to fight – who cheered as their friends bombed this country – have recanted. Now they are using everything they learned on the inside, to stop the jihad.

Seventeen former radical Islamists have "come out" in the past 12 months and have begun to fight back. Would they be able to tell me the reasons that pulled them into jihadism, and out again? Could they be the key to understanding – and defusing – Western jihadism? I have spent three months exploring their world and befriending their leading figures. Their story sprawls from forgotten English seaside towns to the jails of Egypt's dictatorship and the icy mountains of Afghanistan – and back again.

I. The Imam

My journey began when, sitting in one of the grotty greasy spoon cafés that fill the East End, I heard a young woman in hijab mention that the imam of one of the local mosques was a jihadi who had fought in Afghanistan, but is now facing death threats from the very men he once fought alongside. His "crime"? To renounce his past and call for "a secular Islam".

After a series of phone calls, Usama Hassan cautiously agrees to talk. I meet him outside his little mosque in Leyton. It sits in the middle of a run-down sprawl of pound stores ("Everything only £1!!!"), halal kebab shops, and boarded-up windows at the edge of the East End.

Usama is a big, broad bear of a man in a black blazer and wire-rimmed glasses. He greets me with a hefty handshake; he has a rolled-up newspaper under his arm. He takes me upstairs to a pale-green prayer room. This building was once a factory, then a cinema; now, with Saudi money, it is a Wahabi mosque. Men are kneeling silently towards Mecca, rising and bending in reverential waves. "On Fridays, there are Islamists who stand outside and warn worshippers that their prayers won't count if they are led by me," he says as we squat in the corner, "because I'm supposedly an apostate. A fake imam." He looks away. "I get phone calls late at night. Threats. It's painful. You see, I was like them once."

And so Usama begins to tell me his story. He arrived in Tottenham in North London in the mid- 1970s, when he was five years old. His Pakistani father was sent here by the Saudi Ministry of Religious Affairs, which aims to spread its puritan desert strain of Islam to every nation. His family led a locked-down life, trying to adhere to Saudi principles in a semi-detached house in the English suburbs. "We weren't allowed music or TV or any contact with the opposite sex," he says. "We were very sheltered. I didn't go out a great deal." By the age of 10, he had memorised every word of the Koran in its original Arabic.

He had a strong sense of the Britain beyond his walls – the Britain where I was growing up – as a hostile, violent place. "You have to understand – it was the time of the Tottenham riots. It felt violent in the streets," he says. "I got used to expecting white people to use the Paki word. We used to have a fear of skinheads the whole time."

But Usama was offered a scholarship to the heart of the English elite – the City of London Boys' School, where he could practice cricket at Lord's. He bonded with the Jews at the school as outsiders and supporters of Tottenham Hotspur football team. He still speaks like the public schoolboy he was – in long, confident sentences.

Some berobed men are staring at us, so he takes me down to the mosque's office. "At that time, being a Muslim meant being an Islamist. It was taken for granted," he says. So when he was 13, he joined an Islamic fundamentalist organisation called Jimas. At big sociable conferences every weekend, they were told: you don't feel at home in Britain, but you can't go "home" to a country you have never visited. So we have a third identity for you – a pan-national Islamism that knows no boundaries and can envelop you entirely.

It sounds familiar. This is the identity I hear shouted by young Islamists throughout the East End: I might sound like you, but I am nothing like you. I am Other. I belong elsewhere – in a place that does not yet exist, but that I will create, with my fists and my fury.

Jimas told their members they were part of a persecuted billion, being blown up and locked down across the world. "It was a bit like a gang," he says. "And we had a strong sense of being under siege. It was all a conspiracy against Islam, and we were the guardians of Islam. That's how we saw ourselves ... A lot of my friends would wear the army boots, and carry knives." I realise now that for a nebbish intellectual boy, it must have felt intoxicating to be told he was part of a military movement that would inevitably conquer history.

For his summer vacation in 1990 – as a break from studying physics at Cambridge University – he went to wage jihad on the battlefields of Afghanistan. He arrived with two friends from Jimas at an Arab-run training camp in the mountains of Kunar in Eastern Afghanistan. It was a sparse collection of tents and weapons left behind by the CIA in the snow and blood. They spent the days running up and down mountains learning how to fire Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers. "When you fire a Kalashnikov, it echoes all around the mountain," he says. "After this boring life, you feel the adrenaline pumping."

The Arab fighters wore four layers of clothes and still shivered. They had never seen snow before, so every now and then, they would lay down their weapons to have a long, gleeful snow-fight. Once they had all learned how to kill, they were taken to the front line to shell the communist hold-outs. "One of the shells landed very close to us, about 100ft away." He fired in retaliation. "I hope we never killed anybody," he says quickly.

Usama tells his story fluently and fast, and rides over these difficult moments – a killing – like a speed-bump. He thought an earthly paradise would rise from the rubble he was creating – and remake the world in its image. "The expectation was that Afghanistan would become this dream Islamic state," he adds, "which would then spread all over the world." He returned to Cambridge University determined to convert as many of his fellow Muslim students as possible to Wahabism. "It was relatively easy to persuade them," he says. "People were looking for group identity. They were very confused: what does it mean to live as a Muslim in society like this? We had easy answers. Go back to the original sources, and [follow it] literally."

At the centre of this vision was the need to rebuild the caliphate – the Islamic state under sharia law persisted from the time of Mohamed until 1924. "It was a very dreamy, romantic idea," he says. "If anybody asked questions about how it would work, we would just say – the people that will make it happen will be so saintly, they will make the right decisions." It was the old promise of the revolutionary down the ages: there would be a single revolutionary heave in which all political conflict would dissolve forever, and a conflict-free paradise would be born.

Usama's job was to persuade people to go to fight in Afghanistan and, from the mid-1990s, Bosnia. He was one of the best – and he says, again very fast, that one of his successes was to radicalise Omar Sheikh, the man now on death row in Pakistan for beheading Daniel Pearl. "I set him off on his path to Jihad," he says. He looks a little excited, and a little appalled. The first thing he remembers about Sheikh – who he met at a Jimas study circle – is the fresh lemonade he made in his university rooms. "It was delicious. And we drank and drank. My first impression of him was that he was a clean-shaven, well-educated British public schoolboy. A lovely bloke."

Sheikh was furious about the massacres of Muslims in Bosnia, and demanded the study group lay down their Koranic debates and act. Usama told him: "If you're really serious, you can go and fight. I know people who have gone and fought. I can introduce you to them." And so his journey to torturing and murdering a Jewish journalist – simply because he was a Jew – began.

Usama doesn't want to talk about him any more: he changes the subject, and I have to bring him back to it. "Nothing is proved against him. He's fighting extradition," he says, after a long pause. "But ... " He has an awkward smile. An embarrassed smile. He quickly carries on speaking, ushering us away from Daniel Pearl.

People come in and out of the mosque office, and Usama lowers his voice a little. He says that as he was persuading young men to go and kill, he noticed something disconcerting: the Afghan mujahedin he had fought for were not building a paradise on earth after all. Instead, they were merrily slaying each other. "This great, glorious Islamic revolution – it didn't happen, at all ... they just killed each other."

As he watched the news of the Luxor massacre in Egypt or Hamas suicide-bombings of pizzerias in Tel Aviv, "It just became more and more difficult to justify that." He found himself thinking about the Jewish friends he had made at school. "They were just like me – human beings. And we had a lot in common. The dietary laws, and the identity issues, and the fear of racism." As he heard the growing Islamist chants at demonstrations – "The Jews are the enemy of God," they yelled – something, he says, began to sag inside him.

The stifled language Usama is using to describe his past reminds me of a recovering alcoholic trying to piece together his fragmented memories and understand who he was. When he talks about anti-Semitism, he is clearly ashamed; he giggles almost randomly, looks away, and looks back at me with a puckered, disgusted look.

We have talked enough; we arrange to meet again. The second time I see him, in a café, he seems more guarded, as if he revealed too much. He shifts the conversation onto theology – the area where, I discover, every ex-jihadi feels happiest. He says the 7/7 bombings detonated a theological bomb in his mind: "How could this be justified? I began to wonder if parts of the Koran are actually metaphor, and parts of the Koran were actually just revealed for their time: seventh-century Arabia."

Once the foundation stone of literalism was broken, he had to remake the concepts that had led him to Islamism one-by-one. "Jihad has many levels in Islam – you have the internal struggle to be the best person you can be. But all we had been taught is military jihad. Today I regard any kind of campaigning for truth, for justice, as a type of Jihad." He signed up to the pacifist Movement for the Abolition of War. He redefined martyrdom as anybody who died in an honourable cause. "There were martyrs on 9/11," he says. "They were the firefighters – not the hijackers."

He says he found himself making arguments he once thought unthinkable – like arguing that women should be allowed to show their hair in public. Jihadi websites run by his old friends started to declare him an apostate, a crime that under their interpretation of sharia is punishable by death.

There have been demands that he should be ousted from the mosque, but his father is its founder and chief imam, so he is protected for now. He says – leaning forward, his voice losing its public school composure – that the threats have only made him more sure of the need for reform. He has started to call for Muslims to abandon the "medieval interpretation of the sharia" that calls for the killing of apostates and homosexuals. He has said there should be a two-state solution in the Middle East. He has reached the conclusion that evolution is "a scientific fact".

And for the first time in his life, Usama has begun to allow himself to listen to music. "I was taught to believe it shouldn't be allowed. But now, I listen on the car radio." I ask him what music he likes, and he lets out a high-pitched giggle. "You'll get me killed!" he says. "Everything in the charts." He gives me some names, but then calls later and asks me not to print them: "That would be a step too far."

As the threats against him rattle across the internet, I like to think of this as my last image of Usama – a 39-year-old man slowly slipping off the Puritan chains in which he has been bound and finally, in his fourth decade, beginning to dance, as he is circled by the angry ghosts of his younger self.

II. The Prisoner

The most famous former Islamist fanatic in Britain is Maajid Nawaz – a high-cheekboned 31-year-old who walks with a self-confident strut. I make an appointment with him through his personal assistant, and he strides into the hotel lobby where we have arranged to meet in an immaculate and expensive suit. He seems to blend perfectly into the multi-ethnic overclass who use expensive hotels like this as their base; I have to remind myself with a jolt that, not so long ago, he was caught up in a murder in London, helped to plot a coup in nuclear-tipped Pakistan, and served three years in the most notorious prison in Egypt.

Maajid begins to tell me his story as if he is delivering a PowerPoint presentation. He has offered it before, and he will offer it again; it is his job now. He has distilled it into a script. When I try to poke beneath it with questions, he seems irritated, and returns to the comfortable form of words he has established as soon as he can.

His journey towards Islamism began, he says, at the sandy edge of Essex, in the dilapidated coastal town of Southend-on-Sea. It is an old, elegant Victorian resort town drooping under a century of disrepair, reduced to a smattering of tatty arcades and a long, neglected pier that reaches into a filthy sea. Maajid's parents were mildly prosperous first-generation immigrants from Pakistan. "My upbringing was completely liberal from the start," he says. "In fact, I didn't even have a Muslim identity." He went to mosque only once, when he was 11, and an imam hit him with a stick for speaking too loudly.

Asian families were a rarity there in the 1980s, but he had a large group of white friends and felt no different to them. Yet when Maajid turned 14, a strange political shift was taking place in Southend. It began – for him, at least – one evening when Maajid, his brother and his friends were at the funfair, leaping on and off the rides and eating candy floss. A group of young skinheads spotted them and started making Nazi salutes and shouting "Seig Heil".

Maajid and his mates "ran the hell out of there", but a white van pulled up and seven skinheads piled out, wielding machetes. They cornered Maajid and one of his white friends. To his astonishment, they turned to the friend and stabbed him repeatedly with a carving knife, shrieking: "Traitor! Traitor! Race traitor!" They drove off, leaving Maajid covered in his friend's blood.

The story of what happened next is buried in yellowing cuts from the local newspapers. A pack of unemployed young men who had been kicking around on Southend's beaches had joined the Neo-Nazi group Combat 18, named after Adolf Hitler's initials: A is "1" in the alphabet, H is "8". They targeted Maajid's friends one by one for befriending a "Paki". Over the next two years, three of his friends were stabbed, and one was smashed up with a hammer. Maajid began to distance himself from his white friends, out of guilt. He drifted instead towards a group of young black people who were also being terrorised by Combat 18. They would meet at house parties and marinate themselves in hip-hop, Public Enemy, and cannabis fumes. He says: "Feeling totally rejected by mainstream society, we were looking for an alternative identity, and we found the perfect, cool, fashionable identity through listening to hip-hop and speeches by Malcolm X."

One day, his brother came home bearing a sheath of leaflets saying Muslims were being massacred all over the world, from India to Bosnia to Southend. He had stumbled on a stall in the High Street manned by a group called Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT). They said he would never be accepted in irreparably corrupt, decadent and racist Britain: Combat 18 were the snarl hidden behind every net curtain. Western society was merely a purgatory for Muslims, and the only escape could be to migrate to a renewed and perfect caliphate somewhere in Arabia. He joined up that day.

Maajid climbed the ranks of HT fast, because – with his easy eloquence – he was especially good at recruiting new members. After a year, they sent him to live in London and conquer a sixth form college. Newham College is a sprawling glass-and-concrete school for 16- to 19-year-olds in the most depressed slab of London. There, Maajid found himself in a majority-Muslim environment for the first time. "I was like somebody who has been craving chocolate for a long time who ends up in Belgium. I thought: these are my people. I knew exactly how to manipulate their grievances. And I did it. We took over that college."

We are served tea by the kind of effusive waitress who works in high-end London hotels. Maajid does not acknowledge her. He says it was "unbelievably easy" to recruit young Muslims to Islamism at that time. He would start with lectures that "broke down the concepts they had been told they should hold dear – like freedom and democracy", he says. It was only in the second or third talk, once humanism lay in rhetorical rubble, that he would announce: "God is in a better position to set those limits than you are, because you'd always contradict yourself, being an imperfect human." So then he would announce: "Let me tell you what God says."

When Maajid enrolled, there were hardly any girls wearing headscarves; by the time he was thrown out a year later, most of them were. The stand-alones were jeered at and harassed.

Maajid was elected President of the college's student union and he was prickling with a Messianic sense of mission. He saw Newham College as a microcosm of the changes that were swelling in the world. "It literally felt revolutionary. We had taken over the campus, and that we were soon to take over the world ... We really believed the caliphate would be established any day soon." On the school's open day for prospective pupils and parents, they staged a massive prayer demonstration. Dozens of them stood in the main hall, yelling to Allah for vengeance. "We wanted to show the parents that if you're sending your kids here, these are the people in charge," he says.

I ask if anybody was arguing for a more liberal form of Islam. Maajid laughs. "Absolutely not. No way. In fact, the only people who were young that were articulating any form of Islam were the Islamists."

The only substantial push-back came from rival religious groups – especially students with a Nigerian Christian background, known universally as "the blacks". There was a racist hysteria that they were muggers and rapists and "somebody had to stand up to them", Maajid says. "Along came us, these crusading Islamists, who didn't give a shit. We'd stand in front of them and say – we don't fear death, we don't fear you, we only fear God." Allah was in their gang, and they were invincible. Young jihadis from outside the college started to hang around there, to defend the Muslims from "the Christian niggers". A tall, aggressive recruit from Brixton called Saeed Nur was appointed as their "bodyguard". He intimidated everyone into silence.

The news reports from the time confirm what happened next. One afternoon, a row broke over the use of the college pool table, as Maajid stood watching. A Nigerian student wanted to push the Muslims off it, and began making derogatory remarks about Islam. Somebody called Saeed to "sort him out". As soon as he arrived, the Nigerian student pulled out a knife – and Saeed produced a Samurai blade and thrust it straight into the boy's chest. As he fell, the other Muslim students set on him with hammers and knives and pool cues. They beat him to death.

How did he feel about the victim? Did he think about his family? He prods the questions away with a grunt. Maajid says he felt "indifferent" to the victim, but was pleased "the Muslims prevailed in the end". He adds: "We were heroes in HT ranks." And he is back to his story. He doesn't want to retrieve his emotions.

He was expelled, and spent the next few years ascending the ranks of HT, while pretending to study at various colleges. But he wanted to be at the heart of the jihad – and in 1999 he found a way. Abdel Kalim Zaloom, the global leader of HT, issued a command from his hidden base somewhere in the Middle East. Pakistan had just unveiled its nuclear weapons to the world. Zaloom wanted them to seize Pakistan, so when the caliphate came it would be nuclear-tipped. Maajid enrolled at Punjab University as a cover – and jetted off to the country his parents had left a lifetime ago.

In the sprawling slum-strewn chaos of Karachi, Maajid found "the first crack in my ideological armour ... I thought – oh, my God. I had idealised Muslim societies, but the people here know less about Islam than we do. And look at how disorganised it is."

He met with a slew of junior Pakistani army officers who had been training at Sandhurst, Britain's elite officer training academy. "They seemed like quite decent, amiable chaps, who believed in our ideology," he says. They had been recruited by other members to HT, "and I told them to rise up the ranks of the army, and when we had an opportunity, to mount a coup and declare the caliphate in Pakistan."

And then, in the strangely bland CEO-speak these ex-Islamists often lapse into, he adds enthusiastically: "It was a very exciting project. We thought it would happen in the medium-term."

Maajid won't be drawn – not now, and not in our later conversations – on the details of this coup plot. Perhaps this is because he is worried about compromising his ability to visit Pakistan. The Pakistani military spokesmen say it's a lie. The officers were, Maajid says, quietly arrested by Pervez Musharraf's government in 2003, and are currently in prison. Maajid decided to move on to Egypt, and arrived to study in Alexandria on 10 September 2001. When he saw the news from New York City, he felt – that word again – "indifferent". HT technically opposed the attacks, on the grounds they were carried out by private individuals rather than by the army of a renewed caliphate. But Maajid says "There was a huge wave of internal sympathy for [Bin Laden], because he's an ideological comrade, isn't he?"

He started to recruit other students, as he had done so many times before. But it was harder. "Everyone hated the [unelected] government [of Hosni Mubarak], and the US for backing it," he says. But there was an inhibiting sympathy for the victims of 9/11 – until the Bush administration began to respond with Guantanamo Bay and bombs. "That made it much easier. After that, I could persuade people a lot faster."

Then, at 3am one morning, a cadre of soldiers smashed into Maajid's bedroom bearing machine guns and grenades. He was taken, blindfolded and bound, to an underground bunker below the state security offices in Cairo. There were around 50 other men penned in. For three days, he kneeled, and heard the men around him being tortured with electric cattle prods.

"I thought, 'This is something I have been mentally preparing for, for a long time. I knew this day would come,'" he says. On the third day, the guards dragged him into an interrogation room with another British HT member. They punched him in the face and whacked him with batons. They produced the cattle prod. Maajid told them they wouldn't dare to torture a British citizen. "So they took the cattle prod and began electrocuting my friend in front of my eyes."

The British Embassy called looking for its citizens. The interrogation stopped suddenly, and transferred them to prison. Maajid felt no gratitude. "All I thought was – why did it take them three days to find us? They obviously didn't care about the rights of Muslims." He laughs now – a cold laugh, at his former self.

In Mazratora Prison, Maajid was held in solitary confinement for thee months. It was a bare cell with no bed, no light, and no toilet: just a concrete box. Then he was taken out suddenly and told his trial for "propagation by speech and writing for any banned organisation" was beginning in the Supreme State Emergency Court. But Maajid's Islamist convictions were about to be challenged from two unexpected directions – the men who murdered Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and Amnesty International.

HT abandoned Maajid as a "fallen soldier" and barely spoke of him or his case. But when his family were finally allowed to see him, they told him he had a new defender. Although they abhorred his political views, Amnesty International said he had a right to free speech and to peacefully express his views, and publicised his case.

"I was just amazed," Maajid says. "We'd always seen Amnesty as the soft power tools of colonialism. So, when Amnesty, despite knowing that we hated them, adopted us, I felt – maybe these democratic values aren't always hypocritical. Maybe some people take them seriously ... it was the beginning of my serious doubts."

For the duration of the trial, he was placed in a cramped cell with 40 of Egypt's most famous political prisoners. There were row after row of beds with only a thin crack between them to inch through. Maajid was thrilled to discover two of the men who had conspired to murder Anwar Sadat – Omar Bayoumi and Dr Tauriq al Sawah – had recently been moved to this dank cell. "This is like meeting Che Guevara – these great forerunners and ideologues who I can now get the benefit of learning from," he says. But "they were very fatherly, and they had been spending all these years studying and learning. And they told me I had got my theology wrong".

After more than 20 years in prison, they had reconsidered their views. They told him he was false to believe there was one definitive, literal way to read the Koran. As they told it, in traditional Islam there were many differing interpretations of sharia, from conservative to liberal – yet there had been consensus around once principle: it was never to be enforced by a central authority. Sharia was a voluntary code, not a state law. "It was always left for people to decide for themselves which interpretation they wanted to follow," he says.

These one-time assassins taught Maajid that the idea of using state power to force your interpretation of sharia on everyone was a new and un-Islamic idea, smelted by the Wahabis only a century ago. They had made the mistake of muddling up the enduringly relevant decisions Mohamed made as a spiritual leader with those he made as a political ruler, which he intended to be specific to their time and place.

Maajid's ideology crumbled. "I realised that the idea of enforcing sharia is not consistent with Islam as it's been practised from the beginning. In other words, Islam has always been secular, and I had been totally ignorant of the fact." But he says he found this epiphany excruciating. "I knew if I followed these thoughts wherever they would lead," he says, "I would go from being HT's poster boy to being their fallen angel."

His trial was finally ending with the inevitable verdict: guilty. When he emerged from Mazratora Prison into the damp half-light of Britain, he was dazed. HT hailed him as a hero. "After four years of ignoring me, they wanted me to be their rock star ... I was asked if I wanted to be the leader." But in March 2007, he sent out a mass email saying he was resigning from HT, threw away his mobile, and went home to Southend.

He spent a long summer eating his mother's cooking, watching television, and seeing the school friends he had shunned more than a decade before. "It amazed me. These were ordinary British guys and they knew what I had become – that I had hated Britain. And yet when they saw me, they showed me such warmth," he says. "They remembered me as I was. They didn't care what I had done. They had time for me."

In September 2007, Maajid appeared on Newsnight – the BBC's flagship current affairs show – to announce that he recanted not just HT, but Islamism itself. "What I taught has not only damaged British society, it has damaged the world," he said.

With a small band of other ex-Islamists, Maajid decided to set up an organisation dedicated to promoting liberal Islam and rebutting Islamism. They named in the Quilliam Foundation after William Abdullah Quilliam, an English businessman who converted to Islam in the late 19th century and set up the first British mosque. They are taking the organisational skills and evangelical fervour of HT, and turning it against them. They are also taking nearly £1m from the British government – the only way, Maajid says, to do their work effectively.

The last time I speak to Maajid he is on the refugee-strewn North-West frontier of Pakistan, touring the country's universities. He is lecturing to huge audiences about his own experiences, and arguing against literalism in Islam. The massed ranks of the neo-Taliban are not far away. "People here and in Britain keep saying – we've been waiting for something like this for such a long time," he says over the telephone. "They're so happy people are starting to speak out. They're terrified to do it themselves, but this emboldens them."

A large audience of young Muslims is waiting for him. Maajid says assertively: "You know, back when I was an Islamist, I thought our ideology was like communism – and I still do. That makes me optimistic. Because what happened to communism? It was discredited as an idea. It lost. Who joins the Communist Party today?" I can hear the audience applaud him as he walks onto the stage, and with that, Maajid hangs up.

III. Lost in liberalism

As the summer arrives and London begins to swelter, I sit with most of the "out" ex-jihadis in a slew of Starbucks across the city. We sip iced lattes and discuss how, not long ago, they tried to destroy Western civilisation.

They have different backgrounds: one is a Yorkshire girl with Hindu parents, another is a Northern boy whose father was a Conservative ultra-Thatcherite. Yet they are startlingly similar: they have all retained the humourless intensity of their pasts. And when they describe their Islamist former selves, they are distant and cold, as if describing a rather unpleasant acquaintance they did not entirely understand.

They wreath their stories in clouds of pointless detail: they talk for hours about the intricacies of seventh-century Meccan society, or the fine distinctions in the hierarchy of HT, willing you to understand it. It's a way of avoiding answering the hardest question – why? But from their scattered stories, I can trace something that seems genuinely new: an ex-jihadi way of looking at the world, that carries lessons about how to stop Western Muslims sinking into jihadism.

As children and teenagers, the ex-jihadis felt Britain was a valueless vacuum, where they were floating free of any identity.

Ed Husain, a former leader of HT, says: "On a basic level, we didn't know who we were. People need a sense of feeling part of a group – but who was our group?" They were lost in liberalism, beached between two unreachable identities – their parents', and their country's. They knew nothing of Pakistan or Saudi Arabia or the other places they were constantly told to "go home" to by racists.

Yet they felt equally shut out of British or democratic identity. From the right, there was the brutal nativist cry of "Go back where you came from!" But from the left, there was its mirror-image: a gooey multicultural sense that immigrants didn't want liberal democratic values and should be exempted from them. Again and again, they described how at school they were treated as "the funny foreign child", and told to "explain their customs" to the class. It patronised them into alienation.

"Nobody ever said – you're equal to us, you're one of us, and we'll hold you to the same standards," says Husain. "Nobody had the courage to stand up for liberal democracy without qualms. When people like us at [Newham] College were holding events against women and against gay people, where were our college principals and teachers, challenging us?"

Without an identity, they created their own. It was fierce and pure and violent, and it admitted no doubt.

To my surprise, the ex-jihadis said their rage about Western foreign policy – which was real, and burning – emerged only after their identity crises, and as a result of it. They identified with the story of oppressed Muslims abroad because it seemed to mirror the oppressive disorientation they felt in their own minds. Usman Raja, a bluff, buff boxer who begged to become a suicide bomber in the mid-1990s, tells me: "Your inner life is chaotic and you feel under threat the whole time. And then you're told by Islamists that life for Muslims everywhere is chaotic and under threat. It becomes bigger than you. It's about the world – and that's an amazing relief. The answer isn't inside your confused self. It's out there in the world."

But once they had made that leap to identify with the Umma – the global Muslim community – they got angrier the more abusive our foreign policy came. Every one of them said the Bush administration's response to 9/11 – from Guantanamo to Iraq – made jihadism seem more like an accurate description of the world. Hadiya Masieh, a tiny female former HT organiser, tells me: "You'd see Bush on the television building torture camps and bombing Muslims and you think – anything is justified to stop this. What are we meant to do, just stand still and let him cut our throats?"

But the converse was – they stressed – also true. When they saw ordinary Westerners trying to uphold human rights, their jihadism began to stutter. Almost all of them said that they doubted their Islamism when they saw a million non-Muslims march in London to oppose the Iraq War: "How could we demonise people who obviously opposed aggression against Muslims?" asks Hadiya.

Britain's foreign policy also helped tug them towards Islamism in another way. Once these teenagers decided to go looking for a harder, tougher Islamist identity, they found a well-oiled state machine waiting to feed it. Usman Raja says: "Saudi literature is everywhere in Britain, and it's free. When I started exploring my Muslim identity, when I was looking for something more, all the books were Saudi. In the bookshops, in the libraries. All of them. Back when I was fighting, I could go and get a car, open the boot up, and get it filled up with free literature from the Saudis, saying exactly what I believed. Who can compete with that?"

He says the Saudi message is particularly comforting to disorientated young Muslims in the West. "It tells you – you're in this state of sin. But the sin doesn't belong to you, it's not your fault – it's Western society's fault. It isn't your fault that you're sinning, because the girl had the miniskirt on. It wasn't you. It's not your fault that you're drug dealing. The music, your peers, the people around you – it's their fault."

Just as their journeys into the jihad were strikingly similar, so were their journeys out. All of them said doubt began to seep in because they couldn't shake certain basic realities from their minds. The first and plainest was that ordinary Westerners were not the evil, Muslim-hating cardboard kaffir presented by the Wahabis. Usman, for one, finally stopped wanting to be a suicide bomber because of the kindness of an old white man.

Usman's mother had moved in next door to an elderly man called Tony, who was known in the neighbourhood as a spiteful, nasty grump. One day, Usman was teaching his little brother to box in the garden when he noticed the old man watching him from across the fence. "I used to box when I was in the Navy," he said. He started to give them tips and before long, he was building a boxing ring in their shed.

Tony died not long before 9/11, and Usman was sent to help clear out his belongings. In Tony's closet, he found a present wrapped and ready for his little brother's birthday: a pair of boxing gloves. "And I thought – that is humanity right there. That's an aspect of the divine that's in every human being. How can I want to kill people like him? How can I call him kaffir?"

Many of the ex-Islamists discovered they couldn't ignore the fact that whenever Islamists won a military victory, they didn't build a paradise, but hell.

At the same time, they began to balk at the mechanistic nature of Wahabism. Usman says he had become a "papier-mâché Muslim", defining his faith entirely by his actions, while being empty inside. "Wahabis are great at painting themselves [an Islamic] green on the outside, but when it comes to that internal aspect, it's not there. You pray five times a day, but why? Because God's told you to pray five times a day. You pay your charity – why? Because God's told you to pay your charity. This God of yours is telling you a lot. And why does he tell you to do that? Because if you don't do it, you'll end up in a fire. It's all based on being frightened. There's nothing to nourish you."

They had to go looking for other Islams – and often they found it in the more mystical school of the Sufis. "Wahabi Islam is totally sensory: eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth," Usman says. "It lays out a strict set of rules to be followed here on earth, every moment of the day. Sufi Islam teaches instead that the realm of Allah is wholly separate and spiritual and nothing to do with the shadow-play of mere mortals. It is accessible only through a sense of mystery and transcendence." In this new Sufi Islam, Usman found something he had never known before: a sense of calm.

Ed Husain insists: "There are a lot of Muslims who agree with us. A lot. But they're frightened. They see what's happened to us – the hassle, the slander, the death threats – and they think: it's not worth it. But you know what? When I first spoke out, I was alone. I had no idea that, a year on, there would be this number of people speaking out, and many more who are just offering resources and support. Once a truth is spoken, it takes on its own life."

IV. Not Strawberry Season

Anjem Choudhary waves his hand angrily through the air, and says that in the world he wants to create, the people I have been interviewing will be put to death. "They are apostates. I don't consider [them] to be Muslim in any sense of the word," he says. "Everybody knows the punishment for apostasy." My facial muscles must involuntarily react, because he leans forward and asks suspiciously: "Are you Jewish?"

Anjem is one of the last of the famous Islamists from the 1990s still walking London's streets, free and furious. A decade ago, this city hosted a stream of fanatical Muslims who kept cropping up in the tabloid press as semi-comic pantomime villains. But gradually, one by one, they have been deported or arrested, leaving Anjem as their final public face. He has said the Pope and the Mohamed cartoonists should be executed, and has lauded the 7/7 bombers as "the Fantastic Four".

I wanted to see what the people the ex-jihadis have left behind make of them – and to sense if they are seen as a real threat. Anjem suggests meeting me in the Desert Rose Café in Leyton, not far from Usama's mosque. The 41-year-old lives here on social security benefits, paid for by a populace he believes should – in large measure – be lashed, stoned or burned in the hellfires. A long beard covers his chubby face, and long white robes cover his swollen form. I was surprised he agreed to meet me. He rarely speaks to print journalists. The last time he did, he stormed out, accusing the reporter of being a paedophile.

He immediately launches into a lecture about how the ex-Islamists are all liars and charlatans. They are "government bandits, set up by them and funded by them to do their dirty work within the [Muslim] community ... They were never actually practising! They were ignorant of Islam."

When I read him statements by ex-Islamists, he spits: "This is heresy ... The Muslim must submit to the sharia in all of his life. If I start to say things like, 'I don't believe the sharia needs to be implemented,' then that's tantamount to denying the message of Mohamed ... To say that any part of the Koran is not relevant nowadays is a clear statement of apostasy."

Taking any part of the Koran as metaphor will, he warns, cause the text to turn to dust in their hands. "I can't pick and choose what I like from the scripture. This is not strawberry season, where you can pick your own strawberries. You abide by whatever Allah brought in the final revelation with the example of the Prophet. And if there's something that you don't like, then you need to correct your own emotions and desires to make sure they're in line with the sharia."

He describes what is going to happen to them with a grin: "After they've been burnt, their skin will be recreated, and they will suffer the same punishment again and again and again."

I wondered if Anjem's biography fitted with that of the ex-jihadis' – or was there something different about them all along? Anjem says he was born in Welling in South-East London in 1967, where his father was a Pakistani immigrant who ran a market stall. He first realised the One and Eternal Truth when, one day in the early 1990s, he happened to hear a lecture at a local mosque by the Syrian-born Islamist Omar Bakri. Until then, Anjem had been living a life of sin as a young trainee lawyer, known to his friends as Andy. The British tabloids have exposed that he had sex with white women and dropped LSD.

But as he tells it, in the flames of Bakri's rhetoric, Andy was burned away, and Anjem was born. "Yeah, obviously, I had a period where I was not practising ... I have no shame at all in saying that I didn't always use to be like this. And I have great thanks to Allah that he guided me."

Yes, I say – but you would whip and lash and execute the person you were 20 years ago. His eyes flare. He pushes back his chair, half-rising to leave. "What I used to be like and what I used to say before isn't under discussion. If you're going to continue to ask about that, then I'll just stop the interview."

He then launches into half an hour of theological gobbledegook, where any question I try to interject is waved aside with a sneer. He has no interest in persuasion: with dull Torquemada eyes, he advocates the execution of anyone who disagrees. Is he scared of the ex-jihadis and their arguments? He is certainly angry with them – but he is so angry at everyone that it is hard to tell what this means.

He begins to ask – jabbing his finger – what my alternative is. "In the United States, bestiality is legal in the privacy of your own home," he says. Paedophiles are rampant, with the Man-Boy Love Association on the brink of success. Compare that with the 1,300-year long caliphate. In all those years, he says, "there were only 60 rapes".

Do you really believe that if people are not suppressed by a tyrant-God, they will become paedophiles and start ****************************ing animals? Are you so rotten inside? Does Anjum fear Andy that much?

He stares at me, flat and emotionless now. "That is your last question," he says. And as I leave and look back at him through the glass, jabbering on his phone and daydreaming of annihilation, I realise how far all my interviewees – and new friends – have travelled.

They have burned in this fire of certainty. They have felt it consume all doubt and incinerate all self-analysis. And they dared, at last, to let it go. Are they freakish exceptions – or the beginning of a great unclenching of the jihadi fist?