The Gadfly: How I became one of Britain’s most hated Muslims

‘When people see an oppressor but do not prevent him from doing evil, it is likely that Allah will punish them all.’ — The first Caliph of Islam and companion of the Prophet of God

When a Palestinian man named Ibrahim Ibaza finally woke me up from colonized version of Islam I had been taught, I found myself wishing I was still asleep. Waking up was not all that it was cracked up to be, I felt I was in a nightmare that I was far happier not knowing about.

The old Palestinian agitator, set about trying to educate what he considered was the worst student he had ever had — me. I recall him once asking, if I ‘knew what a Gadly was?’ My dumb blank look betrayed me. Irritated, he explained that a gadfly was a creature that agitated people, woke them up and because of that, they hated it. People killed to stay asleep.

He explained that Muslims were in mortal danger, that the world was moving against them and that unless they were awoken from their inactive state, they were doomed. It was every Muslim's duty then, to do all they could, to shake Muslims awake before it was too late.

His words spelled doom for my care free life. Even if he was right, why tell me? I was no reformer!, no gadfly! I was a bum, a drop out, a failure in pretty much everything I ever did. I enjoyed bumming around as much as I enjoyed sinning! As clever as he was — he had clearly lost his mind!

The poison of colonized Islam was deep in my psyche. Being a Muslim to me, meant nothing more than praying and learning — never doing.

I remember one particular day how his words had left me reeling. I had been reading ‘Imam Al Ghazzali’ on that day and had it under my arm, in my own pompous mind, I was a learned student of Islamic classical knowledge, and I wanted him to know it. I wanted his respect and thought that a weighty Islamic book would send a subliminal message of my intellectual prowess.

He took one look at the book, took it from me and said “You read these books to lie to yourself that you are learning something, but if there was one drop of true Islam running through your veins, you would not be able to sleep at night for what is happening to this Ummah. Everything you have ever read and ever done, hasn’t made you sincere to God— it is all for show!’ — because if it had changed you, made you realise what Islam was — you would have done something by now, instead of lying to yourself, you use piety to cover your cowardice.

The truth hit harder than a punch in the gut. It swam around and around my mind for months. I remember going home dizzy not just that day, but every time I met him, due to the raw, painful, truths he told me. He shattered every illusion I had of who I was, the lies I had built to tell myself I was something I was not, make myself feel important, a somebody. All my life I had thought myself a pious muslim, but his truths made me realise it was a fool's deceit.

He had shown me something none of my religious peers had ever shown me — honesty. What he gave me was painful, but it was pure. His harsh truths were too brutal to be a lie. There was no comforting falsehoods, nothing to hide behind. I could finally see the false idols I had built the foundations of my faith on. I woke up. And what I saw horrified me.

The road to Islam meant sacrifice. I didn’t want to believe what I knew to be true. That if I really believed, I would act — to help those most in need. A true believer proves his faith by deed not platitudes, else it was just another easy lie. I told myself there must be another way to believe, an easier way, a way without loss, without sacrifice, without deeds. I didn’t mind talking about their pain, but I didn’t want to help them out of it. I did not want to take the way of the Gadfly. I had seen how they had treated Ibrahim and I didn’t want that to happen to me.

“Do people think that they will be left alone because they say: ‘We believe,’ and will not be tested. And We indeed tested those who were before them. And Allaah will certainly make (it) known (the truth of) those who are true, and will certainly make (it) known (the falsehood of) those who are liars, (although Allaah knows all that before putting them to test)” — The Quran

Tears on an old man's face

Those organised to keep the Muslims passive and asleep (Jewish Zionists) were aware of Ibrahim and the danger he posed, so they hunted the old man, finding ways to ways to harass him, breaking into his home and even beating the 80 year old man up. The Muslims sensing, what I did, that this mans Truths, would lead you to make sacrifices — couldn't get away fast enough. He was always alone.

He never got married and had no family. He would tell me ‘I am married to the cause of freeing this Ummah from oppression’. The Ummah he loved so much, would betray him and he knew it. He lived alone, with no one to help him in his old age, not even me.

Truth is, none of us wanted to act, we wanted his amazing knowledge, to feel intelligent, show off in a debate, (he knew it too, telling us all we wanted was ‘trinkets’ of knowledge). Instead he showed us a road to real Islam and that was nothing but a road to pain. We all walked away and tried to sidestep his words and what they meant for us. My friends who met him with me, blamed him for their own cowardice — he was too harsh, too this or that. It was easier to walk away that way. If it was not their fault, they didn’t have to carry the guilt. Few things in this life are harder for men to carry, than guilt.

But I couldn’t find it in myself to lie that much, so I lived with the guilt of knowing I had walked away from the Truth of his words and abandoned him to his enemies. That guilt would tear me apart for the next five years. 
 
Later I heard he had died, alone, in a shabby rented room. His room had been broken into and things had been taken they told me. I keep wondering on his deathbed how lonely he must have felt —before Allah took his soul. If tears had rolled down the old man’s face, at knowing the people he spent his life trying to save, had left him to die this way. Out of all the evil things I have done and continue to do, if there is one thing I deserve to burn in hell for, more than all the others, it is that.

Narcotized

Back then and nothing has changed, Muslim scholars, speakers and leaders were only interested in cheap, small-issue Islamic discourse. Packing out audiences with cheap regurgitated Islamic talks that would sell tickets — ‘Where is Allah - is he in heaven or all around us?!’.

Religious Muslim's couldn’t get enough of it. The community wanted to be drugged into a state of pious highs, it made them forget they were a despised underclass. They were taught that it wasn’t a priority to change that condition. Instead they were fed a religion that made them feel spiritual and blessed, but didn’t make any tough demands on them.

Islam was changed to mean perfection of rituals, nothing more. You see colonial powers & later dictators forced religious preachers to strip Islam of its political content, and replaced it with an apolitical version. It narcotized Muslims better than any drug.

The fruits of this colonised version of Islam, was a community that was always passive, never reacting to any of the challenges it faced.

Today one can see this. A billion dollar Islamophobia machine springs up — the Muslim response — organise a talk on why Muslims needed to dress correctly!. Sixteen times less likely to get a job — no problem — we must grow our beards brother, like the Prophet! Four million murdered Muslims since the war on terror began — ‘perfect yourself first brother!’ ….and on and on it went…nothing practical, nothing that would bring any change..which is how they wanted it.

A politically conscious society

Ibrahim was a genius. He taught us, that the war against Muslims was now systemic. Whole organisations were dedicated to it and they could draw upon an active community who understood what had to be done. He explained that Jewish Zionists were the top of the pyramid, they were the people behind the war.

I was later to have personal experience at the hands of some of these people.

Those who opposed us understood what they wanted. Reader do we even know what we want? — if not how are we were going to get it? We don't even have a single demand for the systems of power oppressing us — we haven't even demanded they stop denying our freedom!

Ibrahim explained that to respond effectively, Muslims needed to systemise their defense. They could not rely on individual activists to be able to stand against such large systems of war. Look at it this way, imagine a multinational company that makes car’s, can a passionate car enthusiast compete with it?

You see the company employs a thousand car enthusiasts and it does not stop working when one of them gives up, gets old, or moves on. It carries on doing what it was created to do.

So Ibrahim ingrained in me, that Muslims would ultimately suffer, if a reform did not take place. We needed a society which could at least understand why it needed to defend itself in a practical fashion and everyone needed to play a part, from Mosques teaching children and letting people organise, to scholars shaking and waking the people up . Neither however did anything.

Only politically conscious societies thought in this way and they were busy doing everything in their power to ensure they stayed unconscious!

The Whole Islamic System Was Colonized

The theory was genius, but the change in society would be a herculean task. Every single Muslim institution was apolitical, and they would churn out young Muslims in their thousands, who were only slightly more active than a corpse.

Mosques for example taught nothing to Muslims that would give them any sense of the trouble that was coming or why they needed to organise.

The student Islamic societies were worse! I am not making this up. I will give you two example of talks given around the time Palestinians were massacred and later the war on Iraq. Kings College University ISOC organised “Why women marching against a war was forbidden — because they ‘stomped their feet!’ and the School of Pharmacy matched this idiocy with “ If God had an actual hand or a metaphysical one.”

Even Islamic books ensured young Muslims were waylaid into focusing their minds on lesser matters. Anyone who enters a Muslim book shop today will know full well there are a hundred more books on Jinn than there is on Justice!

The whole system, from A — Z, every single place a Muslim could learn Islam was geared at putting them to sleep. These colonized systems repeated endlessly that Islam was nothing but a set of rituals — it had no other mission on this world.

And yet the very Quran rejected their pacifying lie:

“We sent Our Messengers with clear signs and sent down with them the Book and the Measure in order to establish justice among the people…” (Quran 57:25)

Nearly every single story is about Prophets (pbut) who fought systems of tyranny, challenging them and if need be, overthrowing them, in order to bring about some Justice for the downtrodden — and yet a billion Muslims were being taught to be more interested in, if the Prophets had long or short beards. That is what colonial powers did to Islam — castrated it.

In my mind, it was the most evil thing we can be taught. That human beings didn’t matter just as long as you got rituals right.

For the first time, I could see the problem. I was awake. All this buzzed around my mind, agitating me, guilt ate away at me, year after painful year, never letting me go back to my narcotised passive state. I stopped praying, I knew any prayer I did would make me feel better, allow me to lie to myself that I was pious and I didn’t want any more lies.

Finally, I couldn’t take hating myself anymore, the pain of pretending to be asleep outweighed the pain of doing something and I decided to act. The old gadfly had changed me. He would never know the impact he had on me, or that his worst student had woken up.

The Universe Is Not Enough — Flying Mango’s

Understand reader, the size of my daunting task. These groups had all the money, all the manpower and controlled all the infrastructure to reach people. They could have made a difference, they could have woken millions of people but they were more interested in making sure I didn’t. Still I held three cards that would outdo them all — a mind and a mouth and God.

The first and foremost consideration of any reformer is how to be heard. If no one is listening, you are not changing anything.

Social media hadn’t been invented back then, but Muslims did send information to each other by email. Muslims would forward each other, what a fellow activist termed ‘Mango emails.’

Basically what these were, were religious idiots who sent pictures of some fruit or vegetable etc with a name of Allah miraculously written inside it, to them this was some sort of proof of God — like creating the infinite Universe wasn’t enough!

And you would not believe how these ‘miracles’ would fly!

People would forward these damn, dumb emails to each other, thousands of times, they would go all over the world. That was how I got my database of emails. I spent countless hours copying emails and putting them in a database! I ended up with about 80,000 of them!

Despite being able to reach many thousands of colonised muslims. I soon realised that very few Muslims, forwarded stuff that asked them to be practical. It was totally alien to Muslims, they didn't get the same religious high from doing anything that mattered in the world. If I had sent a pretty picture of Mecca, it would have gone around the world ten times!

I was asking a sleeping apolitical society to act. So I changed tactics. I tried to wake them up, make them conscious first.

The 2nd Rule Of Change — Agitate

You cannot change the status quo without agitation. It is impossible. People often fail to realise, the reformer is not just bringing a new idea. What he is doing is challenging power. The vested interests of the old belief system were going to have to fall to bring in the new order. By overthrowing the old idea, he is overthrowing the whole existing power structure that upheld it.

Why do you think they tried to murder Moses, Jesus, Muhammad (pbut) and the other great reformers — if it is just a difference in opinion of which idea is the Truth, why not just agree to disagree with them in a polite conversation?

No! Agitation against power means war. For an idea to triumph over the established order, someone, somewhere loses power. Nothing to do with how you say it. Polite or impolite. They will fight you regardless, because if they don’t — they lose power.

Can you think of a single reformer they didn’t try to silence — was it all because they just were not polite enough! Of course not.

That is why reformers do not politely ask to have their idea discussed, they force their idea onto the agenda. Some overturned the money lenders table (Jesus), others broke idols (Abraham)and others marched around the most sacred places of the existing order, proclaiming that it had to be overthrown (Muhammad).

And by creating noise, they made people talk, and by extension — Think.

They were at constant war with those who uphold the old ideas. They are in today’s language ‘trouble makers’. You can’t be a reformer and not be a troublemaker, you troubled the status quo! Trouble was also a direct outcome of a challenge to power. No trouble — no challenge! — no change!

In the eyes of the old system, the agitators most dangerous act was he gave people a choice, where before there was only the status quo and the system would do anything to stop the people hearing the other choice.

People of course blamed them for it, for before the reformer appeared, everything was peaceful. It was the gadfly that ruined it all! Why couldn’t they just leave it as it was, let them sleep!

The way I did was to be as incendiary as possible, as often as possible and to as many people as possible.

I blasted the old ideas, every day I assaulted the ideas and those who upheld it. I ridiculed them for being unable to offer a solution to our problems, insulted them for being heartless by allowing the suffering of women and children to continue and worst, claimed their version of Islam was colonised, that it was not Islam at all.

The result was instant, tens of thousands of people were getting a message that directly challenged everything they considered as religious.

Let me make myself clear — I stated that Islam itself was political and if a Muslim was not involved in the struggle to free people from oppression — they were not involved in anything they could call Islam. The exact reverse of what they were being taught by a colonised education system.

And these emails were forwarded all around the world.

I know you don’t believe me, but I will give you an example of how powerful in those early days of the internet my blogs became. I once put an email out saying Robert Fisk, the Independent journalist, was being fired and put the newspapers email at the bottom, asking people to email them — within 24 hours their server had crashed and they made a public statement denying it.

It was an alternative way of looking at Islam that was not detached, an Islam that was powerful rather than an Islam that was powerless. An Islam that had something to say about the world. Islam had a mission to establish Justice on this earth — be part of it.

The shock tactics , rocked the Muslim power structure. Hundreds of thousands of people read these emails, it became gossip amongst all the religious circles in Britain and elsewhere! Faced with being unable to stop me being heard, the Muslim establishment, almost to a man closed ranks, barred me from every venue you could imagine and then — attacked me — and they still do sixteen years later!

I even quit going to the mosque in the early years of my activism, it was dangerous. These colonized brainwashed types, were cowards to those who killed their sisters and mothers but to another Muslim — they became brave warriors defending Islam and wouldn’t think twice attacking you.

It didn’t stop me, every single attack on Muslims, every woman who was beaten up, or child that was murdered anywhere in the world, I blamed these colonized Muslims for. They had pacified the millions of Muslims into doing nothing, they were the ones who allowed injustice to go unchecked. They debated about every petty issue but never the great evils of the day. They had castrated, muted the one religion that could have done anything about it.

Instead of freedom fighters they created braying donkeys.

The Directions Of Arrows

“If you want to recognize in which direction the most righteous among the Muslims are then see in which directions the arrows of the enemy are flying”. — Ali RT

Despite the anger from much of the established religious quarter, Allah introduced me to a small and growing number of people, who cared deeply about the struggle to free the oppressed and were keen to see it re-established as the priority in Islam.

Some of these people would go on to create MPACUK and in whose company, I learned how to be effective, in the cause we had joined. If there was one blessing above all the others that Allah sent me, it was the company of these committed brothers and sisters.

But our enemies held us back at every step. It didn’t take long for Muslim watchers to spot us. Jewish Zionists who monitor everything relating to the Muslim community were the first. They hated what we were doing and were smart enough to work out it wasn’t good for them to have an active and awakened community.

They moved to silence us. Think about that Muslim reader for a moment. The most outwardly religious colonized Muslims and Zionists both having the exact same objective — to ensure no one heard us.

The people that were literally committing genocide of Muslim men, women and children in Palestine & today are funding a billion dollar worldwide Islamophobia industry were trying to do the exact same thing as the most religious brothers and sisters of my own community were actively doing — keeping Muslims from getting politically organised.

They wanted Muslims asleep, and colonised, religious Muslims wanted to stay asleep.

If you cannot recognise how evil and detrimental colonized Islam is by reading who its allies were against me — no one can help you.

Zionists mobilised to get us no-platformed by the NUS (National Union of Students) by lying to them! Zionists in Parliament and the Media moved against us too, they would even lie to put me in a police cell, beat me up and when that did not stop me broke into my home — all to shut me up.

They saw the seeds of an idea that could awaken Muslims to become a politically conscious community and tried to crush it — Why couldn’t we see what they could! — it only proved how asleep we were.

Rage Against God

I came close to giving up countless times. I am not ashamed to say. I was driven to despair and tears more times than I like to remember. I was so hurt by Muslims who saw suffering of their fellow human beings as a tertiary issue in Islam, that if it were not for Allah rescuing me along the way, I would have abandoned Islam and become it’s staunchest enemy.

No religion or ideology followed by men, that made its followers so apathetic to oppression, should be attributed to God.

The Truthfulness of a faith is directly measurable by its intolerance to injustice.

I still recall one Muslim leader telling me fighting oppression was not even an obligation from God! I went to sleep with tears in my eyes and rage in my heart against Islam and its god. I figured a god that did not prioritize the stopping of the worst evils on this earth was a god who was false — no true god could be that apathetic to cruelty.

That night I was determined I would leave Islam if it was true. I believe Allah caused me to wake up and moved me to read the Quran at the morning prayer (which I had abandoned doing). I prayed, saying with tears in my eyes, that if He was there, if he was truly a Just God, he would guide me — Allah is my witness, the first page I opened and not for the first time, spoke of God's demand to mankind to establish Justice.

“…Be just, for it is closest to God-consciousness…” (Quran 5:8)

In hindsight all Allah wanted me to do was try. He wanted His message to reach those He wanted to wake up. Men and women far better than me, who would help the most oppressed people on this earth. These people were the blessing Allah sent to the downtrodden — and I just had to wake them.

From this explosive start came MPACUK and more…

Around the world, sincere and beautiful Muslims from Nigeria! Australia, Canada and other places all over the world, contacted me, telling me they too would begin their own organisations waking their people up and defending them — there is even an MPAC Nigeria to this day — over a decade later!

In the UK, I came into contact with hundreds of Muslims that had started to wake up as the message took hold. Some joined mosques and tried to change them, others created organisations that mirrored MPACUK and still others became activists on the web spreading the message far and wide.

The seeds of an idea had been planted. Young people today have a choice, between following a passive Islam that was nothing more than hollow rituals or to join Gods cause to free this world from injustice.

We couldn’t have done more than we did. Every system out there, Muslim and non-Muslim was against us. We did the best we could, with the few cards we had in our hands, with such few resources (the whole of MPACUK ran on less than £700 a month and still does!).

We did what very few Islamic leaders wanted us to do — we gave Muslims a choice, to wake up and fight for their freedom or remain asleep and wait for the inevitable and that is all a Gadfly can do.

For those of my brothers and sisters who are awake, I leave you with this short video. I wish someone had shown me it when I had first started.