I was a witness in Ahmed Faraz's trial – this is the first time anyone involved has spoken about what really happened
The trial and conviction last December of a Muslim bookseller, Ahmed Faraz, for incitement to acts of terrorism, generated a great deal of suspicion and misunderstanding within the Muslim community.
People with little or no first-hand knowledge of the proceedings spun the events surrounding the trial into a freedom of expression issue. I was an expert witness in Islamic theology called to Faraz's trial and until now, no one directly involved has spoken about what really happened. I am doing so for the first time.
The indictment against Faraz (under Sections 1 and 2 of the Terrorism Act 2006) comprised 30 counts regarding material contained in books and video tapes, many of which had been found in enormous quantities in premises connected to a bookshop, Al-Maktabah, that Faraz managed in Birmingham. Many of these items had also been found in the possession of the 7/7 bombers and other recent terrorists whose attacks mercifully failed or were foiled.
Of the eight books under scrutiny, only one looked like the type that might possibly be found in a school or university library. The other editions were amateurish productions with garish covers, including images of scimitars, machine guns, carrying politicised sub-titles and littered with typographic errors.
The editions went under the names of well-known Muslim figures: these included Ibn Taymiyyah, the 14th-century theologian and jurist; Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian modernist thinker who was imprisoned by Nasser; and Abdullah Azzam, an ideologue of the Afghan resistance during the Soviet invasion in the 1980s. However, most people – including most Muslims – do not realise that the proportion of the original texts in these editions was often surprisingly small.
For example, of the indicted edition of Milestones: Special Edition by Sayyid Qutb, only 44% was a translation from the original Milestones. The rest was long separate texts included as appendices. Only 39% of The Religious and Moral Doctrine of Jihad by Ibn Taymiyyah was a translation of the original. A great deal of textual material by other writers was presented under the auspices of these well-known authors.
This is important. Much of the media discussion of the trial treated the texts as if they were translations of originals.
In fact, all of the original texts had been doctored or adulterated in extremist ways. For example, appended to the text of item one in the trial, Milestones: Special Edition, was a fatwa by a medieval imam, Ibn Nuhaas, translated by the late al-Qaida ideologue Anwar al-Awlaki. It was a full-scale homily to the cult of "martyrdom". This extra fatwa included sections such as The Virtues of Killing the Non-Believer, which legitimised throwing oneself at the enemy against all odds, using the types of arguments that have become the stock-in-trade of those who promote suicide killing.
Forty-four per cent of item five, The Azzam Edition of The Lofty Mountain by Azzam was, in fact, an added homage to Osama bin Laden praising him in eulogistic terms usually reserved for key Muslim figures such as the Prophet Muhammad. I discovered after the trial that this particular book was found in the possession of Mohammad Siddique Khan, the leader of the 7/7 plot, after he had died. It was also found on both of the leading figures in the 2006 transatlantic airlines bomb plot, Abdulla Ahmed Ali and Assad Sarwar.
The videos featured in the trial employed a toxic mix of propagandist speeches by known terrorists alongside footage glorifying extreme violence. For example, item two was a video entitled Malcolm X – Bonus Disc. It had nothing to do with Malcolm X. It began with a caricatured portrayal of all American forces in Iraq as barbaric torturers and continued with extended footage of a young man being driven on a suicide mission singing songs glorifying his impending "martyrdom" – and then showed him blowing himself up.
Other items included long suicide "martyrdom" videos of the 9/11 bombers Ahmad al–Hawazi and Al Mu'taz Billah, goading the faithful to kill Christians and Jews as "the descendants of apes and swine". Their speeches were interspersed with emotionally harrowing footage of the "infidels" oppressing innocent Muslims in India and Palestine and repeated footage of the "victorious" 9/11 attacks.
Throughout, the authority of the Qur'an and the Hadith (sayings of the Prophet) was invoked in false, de-contextualised ways to justify acts of violence against innocent people. The texts and videos divided the world strictly into the realm of "pure" Islam – godliness, virtue and knowledge – and the world of "pure" disbelief (kufr) – vice, godlessness and ignorance (jahiliyyah). This realm of kufr or jahiliyyah was consistently portrayed as the realm against which "proper" Muslims must be in eternal opposition and committed to destroy by whatever means necessary (without regard for the sharia, international law or basic human decency).
Faraz's case has been falsely spun by those with little or no first-hand knowledge as a trial of freedom of expression. Nothing could be further from the truth. Far from endangering freedom of expression, the outcome of this trial may help protect freedom of expression by protecting the integrity of core Islamic texts, as well as protecting society from acts of gratuitous violence.