My journey from a market stall to peddling hate
IN 2008, a man called Ray, a newcomer to Manchester, began hanging around a dawah (preaching) stall at Longsight Market. Stalls of this kind have become a familiar sight in urban areas - typically a table laid with pamphlets promoting Islam, and a couple of men keen to talk to anyone who will stop and listen.
Many of these stalls are perfectly legitimate; run by men who feel called to evangelise. But this Longsight stall was different, because it was used to promote jihadist ideology by the three men who ran it: Munir Farooqi, a local property developer who had fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan, Israr Malik, a petty crook, and Matthew Newton, who had converted to Islam.
In time, another newcomer to Manchester, a man called Simon, would begin hanging around at the stall as well. Like Ray, Simon presented as vulnerable - he was inarticulate and looked scruffy. Anyone would think the two men were a couple of down and outs with a drink problem. In fact, both men were undercover counter-terror officers. They played their role so well that neither knew that the other was undercover. It was only when they started to report back on each other that their superiors revealed to them that they were both on the same side. The two officers ended up recording hours of conversations which led to would-be radicalisers Farooqi, Malik and Newton being convicted of encouraging them to fight jihad against British troops in Afghanistan.
In 2011 Farooqi, Malik and Newton were jailed. And yet, six years on, according to the testimony of the charity worker the MEN has
spoken to, extremists on the streets of the city are still targeting the vulnerable.
It isn’t just the vulnerable who can fall prey to this type of seduction, as Adam Deen can attest. Looking at Adam, a clean-cut, articulate anti-extremism campaigner in a suit and tie, it’s hard to believe he was a close aide to some of the country’s most notorious ‘hate preachers’ and an ally of Hassan Butt, who became notorious as a Manchester extremist in the 2000s before renouncing the warped views. But, for seven years, Adam was at the centre of the extremist group al-Muhajiroun.
His recollections are a window into the radicalised mindset, which is typified by its justifying of violence against civilian targets, support for terrorist groups, promotion of violence against members of the armed forces, and disrespect for the norms of British society. Adam was just 19 when he joined al-Muhajiroun. It gave him a catch-all narrative to explain all his grievances but warped his moral code. He says: “I come from a nominally Muslim, Turkish background, but had a very
secular upbringing. I didn’t know I was missing anything in my life before I met al-Muhajiroun in the street. They presented Islam in a way I’d never heard before. They were very good at referencing, taking verses from the Qu’ran to support their views, almost scientifically. When I left the group I was completely ostracised”, Adam says. “They saw me as a traitor.”
Adam’s descent into Islamic extremism is less surprising in the context of research which found the minority who hold sympathy for ‘violent protest and terrorist acts’ are more likely to come from relatively comfortable backgrounds.
Taking a sample of 608 people of Muslim heritage aged 18 to 45, Professor Kam Bhui, of London’s Queen Mary University, found only 2.4 per cent showed some sympathy for violent protest and terrorist acts. Prof Bhui found young Muslims wanted to help fight extremism, but instead found themselves ‘dismissed as a suspect population’. But, where the research did find extremist views, they were more likely to be expressed by those under 20, those in full-time education rather than employment, those speaking English at home, and ‘high earners’.
He found people born and raised in the UK were more likely to hold these views than recent migrants. In June 2014, 16-year-old twin sisters and highperforming students, Zahra and Salma Halane, left their home in Chorlton to become ‘jihadi brides’ for Islamic State fighters in Syria.
Both are since believed to have groomed other girls online to leave their homes. A 2015 report into female ISIS recruits, titled ‘Til Martyrdom Do Us Part’, found women like the Halane twins bought into the idea of the group offering an alternative form of female empowerment’. This ‘reverse feminism’ embraces motherhood and marriage, and celebrates the burqa as a way of escaping being ‘sexually objectified’ to young women and teenagers . Prof Bhui believes having a strict background can also be a factor. “Sometimes careful parenting is helpful and protective, but if it becomes harsh parenting, particularly around young girls feeling taboos or restraints, or being asked to be more conservative, it can lead to distress. Adolescence is a time when people are trying to get free of parents’ influence and authority, and it may be some kids end up going down this (extremist) path, rather than other sorts of extreme behaviours like drugs or gangs.”