When is a Muslim man an “Islamist”? When he disregards the peaceful, intellectual and worshipful qualities of traditional Islam in favour of jihad against non-Muslims — as Ed Husain did.

A close acquaintance of Omar Bakri Mohammed (who called for the assassination of John Major during the first Gulf war) Husain has manned stalls with Eisa al-Hindi (convicted last year of conspiring to explode a radioactive bomb) and knew Asif Hanif, who became Britain’s first suicide bomber when he blew himself up in Tel Aviv.

Husain has held some pretty repulsive views about homosexuals, Jews, and others — in the 1990s he was filmed by ITN hectoring crowds about kufr, or non-believers. But that’s all in the past.

He has renounced his old friends and published a gripping and insightful account of his time inside radical Islam.

In person he’s shortish, clean shaven and wears western clothes. He has a warm smile and a winning, modest curiosity. Under his arm he carries hard-core academic textbooks about the politics of the Middle East, the subject of a PhD he started last year.

“The person I am now finds it difficult to recognise the person I once was,” he concedes in the course of a conversation in a crowded London cafe.

The oldest child of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent, he grew up in East London. His parents were religious and had close ties to an internationally revered Muslim scholar Sheikh Abd al-Latif, whom young Ed (short for Mohammed) called “Grandpa”. Grandpa helped to perfect his Arabic accent.

His earliest childhood experiences included friendly relations with other traditions. But after leaving primary school he found himself almost exclusively surrounded by Bangladeshi Muslim boys. Wanting extracurricular religious education, another student, Abdullah Falik, invited him to join the Young Muslim Organisation at East London Mosque.

Husain knew that his father, who prayed at Brick Lane Mosque, would not approve, so he went along without telling him. He found East London Mosque full of young English-speaking Muslims like himself and decided to keep going. “I was betraying my parents, beginning to lead a double life,” he acknowledges.

His new friends and mentors encouraged him to record his daily activities: how many times he prayed, how much of the Koran he recited, what else he read, how much time he spent with family or dedicated to the movement, how many new members he had recruited. It was a competitive, programmatic approach that would lead others to get involved in jihad.

His new friends introduced him to a world view heavily influenced by Sayed Qutb’s book Milestones and taught him the Arabic term kufr — as derogatory to non-Muslims as “wogs” is to non-whites.

When his parents discovered where he was going, they protested. His mentors warned: “Your parents will be an obstacle.” Eventually his father gave him ultimatum: leave the Islamists or leave my house. Ed left home, taking refuge in the mosque. His mother phoned, accusing activists of kidnapping her innocent son.

“It dawned on me how much pain I had caused,” he says. “I wanted to go home, but that would be seen as backing down. I had to win.”

As president of the Islamic Society at Tower Hamlets College Husain was responsible for securing a base there for Hizb-ut Tahrir, a radical group banned in many Muslim countries. “The dynamism we created spilt out into the community. The sisters who wore the hijab put their mothers and older siblings to shame.”

Some of his friends went to train for jihad in Afghanistan. Others who remained in Britain drove cars without insurance on a point of principle: they refused to support the kufr economy.

But when a Christian youth was murdered by a Muslim, Husain realised it was a direct result of the hateful atmosphere he had helped to create. “I had advocated the ideas of Muslim domination, confrontation and jihad.” That murder marked the start of Husain’s withdrawal from Islamism. He was helped by Faye, a fellow student who later became his wife.

His doubts about radical Islam were reinforced by two years living in the Middle East.

He also regained a spiritual, non-political faith much like that of his Grandpa. “Sufi teachers taught me not to look down on non-Muslims,” he says, “because you never know who is revered in God’s eyes.”

No longer believing in a clash of civilisations, he points out that it was Muslim scholars who kept alive Greek philosophy and science and reintroduced them to Europe. “We form part of western tradition. It’s our tradition!”

What happened to him, and others, is the result of misplaced policies. “In the name of multiculturalism we have created ghettos,” he says.

“In east London you can go to a nursery and then a school and then get a job and almost everyone in your life will be a Muslim. There is a Muslim underworld here, and that is the only frame of reference for young Muslims. We are sitting on a time bomb.”

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