Once Were Radicals: My Years As A Teenage Islamo-fascist

REFLECTION: A Muslim view of Jesus the Refugee

2010-12-22T23:56:00.000-08:00

My old school chaplain at St Andrews Cathedral School taught me that the word 'Christmas' is really a combination of two words — 'Christ' and 'mass'. So it is Christ's mass. Being a low church Anglican, he made sure we understood that by mass, he didn't mean Mass. Then again, he also made sure we remembered that the word 'catholic' meant universal.

And so, with that in mind, I'd like to offer a very non-universal reflection of Jesus. It's my own personal theory of who Jesus was and why he is a very good reason for this season.

The first pertinent thing to say is that Jesus probably looked like someone who'd be on the wrong side of the Cronulla riot. He was born in a place called Beyt Lahm on the West Bank, which today has a giant wall passing through and around it. Many Western Christians are blissfully unaware of why the wall exists and how it makes a 'Two State Solution' to the conflict there virtually impossible.

Because Jesus was what one might call a Jewish Palestinian, he may have had olive skin and curly brown or red hair. When I was at school, the baby Jesus was always played by a blonde headed white skinned doll. Joseph and Mary looked very Anglo, while I played one of the three wise men from a faraway place called 'the East'.

My two wise colleagues were played by a Chinese girl and a boy from New Guinea.

Jesus was born into a family of internal refugees. His mother had to seek refuge, fleeing Herod's nasty dictatorship. I doubt even Saddam Hussein or the Taliban would have had a policy involving the industrial-scale slaughter of male infants.

Despite coming from an aristocratic family, Mary was forced to flee her home. It's uncertain whether she used the services of satanic people smugglers to get her to safety.

I believe Jesus' humble beginnings (not to mention the fact that I believe he was divinely inspired) led him to understand what it was like to be marginalised. He was born to a virgin, and in the Koran there is a passage which mentions the first time the baby Jesus made a public appearance.

Mary had made a vow not to speak in her own defence if asked how she could produce a baby when she wasn't married. The religious men present accused her of sexual impropriety. She pointed to the baby in the cradle who performed his first miracle by speaking out in defence of his mum.

I am indeed a servant of God: He hath given me revelation and made me a prophet. And he hath made me blessed wheresoever I be, and hath enjoined on me prayer and charity as long as I live. He hath made me kind to my mother, and not overbearing or miserable. So peace is on me the day I was born, and the day I die, and the day I shall be raised up to life again!

For me, this was the essence of Jesus the Messiah. Jesus was someone who spoke for those whom the rest of society marginalised. We see this in the New testament Jesus who was happy to spend time with tax collectors, fishermen and ladies of the night.

Who was Jesus' closest female companion? Who was the one who went to the Garden where his tomb was to rub herbs on his body in accordance with Jewish custom? Who was the one who spent so many hours and days with him? Who was the one who shared his own blessed mother's name?

Jesus had two Marys in his life. One was his mother, the one who miraculously conceived him while she was still a virgin. The Qur'an says she was chosen over and above the women of all nations.

And the other Mary? Some say she was a prostitute. I'm not sure if she was, but the point is this: Christ didn't waste time with wealthy Middle Eastern despots or the even wealthier neo-Conservative thinktanks of his day, seeking measly riyals or US dollars in return for loyalty. I doubt you'd find Jesus appearing in WikiLeaks.

Muslims believe Muhammad was known to make time for a woman in his city who suffered from schizophrenia. He also had a close friend Julaybib who had no known ancestry and apparently suffered from some physical deformities.

The word Sufi comes from the name given to poor starving semi-naked refugees who lived on a bench in the mosque and who became known as the People of the Bench ('ashab as-suffah'). They are the equivalent of today's street people.

Muhammad also spoke of the prostitute who finished her shift and went to the well. She saw a dog that was dying of thirst. She took pity on it, dropped her shoe into the well and dragged it out full of water for the dog. For showing kindness to a dog, the prostitute earned God's mercy and forgiveness.

Real Islam, real Christianity — indeed real religion — wants to rid us of pomposity and self-righteousness. God's prophets (including the Son of Man) made time for those whom society pushes away. Jesus, the child of a refugee, was there for everyone. I just cannot picture him, the son of a refugee, standing up and preaching for us to stop the boats.

First published in Eureka Street on 21 December 2010.

Beautiful Brisbane ...

2009-09-14T10:26:00.000-07:00

I just got back from the Brisbane Writers' Festival. It was a superb festival held an a fantastic location. I mean, what better place to hold a festival of authors and books than in a library?

I've been to Brisbane a few times, and always wondered what all the fuss was about. It seemed so dreary. But that's because I had not discovered the Brisbane River and South Bank or seen the Brisbane CBD at night. This is a city able to rival any in Australia.

The Festival organisation was impeccable. We were housed at the Mantra on Southbank, a short walk from the venue.

I had two fabulous sessions. One was moderated by ABC journalist and author Matt Peacock who has just released a fantastic book about the James Hardie fiasco based on his years of reporting and researching the issue. Also on the panel were Abbas El-Zein, Joris Luyendijk and Lana Šlezic.

The other panel was an in-conversation with the very funny Robyn Williams, a radio announcer who looks nothing like this dude ...

... and everything like this chap ...

God-willing, I'll be returning to Brisbane for the EidFest! Can't wait!!

Awesome Byron ...

2009-08-29T07:01:00.000-07:00

I have to admit that at first I wasn't exactly looking forward to heading up to Byron Bay for a writers' festival. I wasn't sure what to expect from a place which had a reputation for being a hangout for hippies, a kind of middle class Nimbin. Boy, was I wrong!

This was a superb festival held at a fantastic venue and with a fun crowd. It was a family carnival atmosphere, and there was no shortage of writers and books for kids and young adults sharing the big stages with authors catering for bigger kids.

One of the stars of the festival was Imran Ahmad, whose terrific book Unimagined (which I reviewed here) managed to sell in bucketloads. Here's a pic of Imran standing next to a somewhat less prominent writer.

The authors had their own separate space called the Green Room. At Byron, our room consisted of a separate white tent.

It was amazing who you could bump into at the Green Room. Here is author and speechwriter Bob Ellis ...

... and here is historian Thomas Keneally ...

... and here is the very funny Gretel Killeen seated on the left ...

... and here is the also very funny Mungo MacCallum standing next to one of his biggest fans ...

All in all it was a superb way to spend a long weekend. I feel like writing another topical book just so that they will call me back next year! More details and photos later.

Learning tolerance ...

2009-08-28T23:15:00.001-07:00

During a second session at the Crime & Justice Festival in Melbourne, I managed to find time to discuss tolerance with a young local philosopher named Damon. I can’t quite remember what we spoke about but there was a fair degree of laughter. I know I probably didn’t get a chance to discuss the matters I’d written down beforehand, which I’ve summarised below. All bracketed page references are from the book.

[01] Sheik Hilaly was an example of both tolerance and intolerance. He showed us his tolerant side in his lack of sectarianism between Sunnis and Shias at a time when this kind of stuff was rife. He also showed us his tolerance in the way he handled the woman dressed in a bikini at our campsite in 1990 (pp 264-265). However, his intolerance toward Jews during a speech in 1988 wasn’t the best example of tolerance.

[02] The young man Hilmi whom I met during my last days at Macquarie University showed enormous tolerance toward violent intolerance. He introduced me to the magazine Nida’ul Islam, a magazine which was published in both Arabic and English. I occasionally wrote for the English section, and like probably most of the magazine’s readers, I didn’t have much of a clue about what the Arabic section actually said. Hilmi seemed to think that killing civilians who didn’t belong to your faction was OK. At least that is how he justified the actions of the so-called “Armed Islamic Group” in Algeria (pp 270-271).

[03] I rely on Martha Nussbaum’s explanation of the “clash within societies” (her alternative to Huntington’s “clash of civilisations”) to define fascism (pp 299-300).

[04] We need to be able to work for justice even with people we otherwise disagree with. I learned this (pp 283) from the example of Muhammad’s establishment of the Hilf al-Fudul (Alliance of Virtue) and from the Indian sufi scholar Ahmad Sirhindhi’s notion of khidma (service) being the highest stage of one’s journey to God, even higher than feeling totally immersed in God (wahdat ash-shuhood).

And now for an illustration of the kind of thing my mum would never wear now even if you paid her a few million rupees.

A piece of fan mail ...

2009-08-15T07:09:00.000-07:00

Here's some fan mail I received on Friday 14 August 2009 ...

Dear Irfan, whose name I can't properly pronounce,

After hearing, and of course seeing you, at Eltham New Voices Festival, I made sure I read your book: Once Were Radicals.

I found it a very interesting faith journey. My life has been and is still a faith journey.

I am Catholic. I'm a lady approaching late 60's [enough information] and the greatest adventure in my life has been the journey inwards. I am a 4 times a week Mass Catholic and a once a week Anglican meditator. [actualy @ St Margaret's where you spoke.]

I have learned that my church, meaning universal church, lacks in so much, but it's part of my identity and I am dependent on the Eucharist, so therefore I am committed. Fortunately there are many wonderful writers and thinkers who sustain me in my beliefs.

Your story fascinates me and I'm grateful to you for sharing it. If only the wisdom of time could catapult us all into understanding each other, but then the lessons of life wouldn't happen.

How grateful I am for having discovered as Gandhi did, that we are all on the same journey, leading to the same destination, but taking a variety of routes. May God bless you, and your beautiful parents, abundantly.

If the rest of the book leaves me with nothing more to say you will receive this as is, but if I need to make further comment it will be a PS.

Yours in our shared God,

TT

PS. I'm a 4th generation Australian of Irish and English stock. The book just got better and better. A favourite writer of mine; Richard Rohr [Fransciscan]] says on one of his tapes that religion is a necessary means to an end but not the end, and if you manage to progress far enough you will probably feel okay about leaving it behind and embracing the in-dwelling God.

And here is a completely unrelated cartoon.

Learning Justice

2009-08-14T20:47:00.000-07:00

One of the highlights of the Aussie literary calendar is the Crime & Justice Festival held in Melbourne at the gorgeous Abbotsford Convent in July. This year I was lucky enough to go along and participate in two events.

On Saturday 18 July, I joined Jude Bourguignon to chat about ideas of justice. We decided before the session that we wouldn't try to get too esoteric and stick to simple stuff. No doubt those attending and expecting some profound insights would have been bored out of their brains.

For me, learning about justice was an essential part of my journey into and then out of what some people call “radical Islam”. Hence at my first Muslim camp in 1985, I wanted to fight for justice in Afghanistan and expressed my wish to the imam of the camp. He tried to talk me out of the idea. I learned from our discussion that justice isn’t always what it seems.

To properly recognise what justice is and how you can contribute to its establishment, you need to understand the unjust situation. You also need to understand your own limitations and the consequences of your joining the fight for yourself, those around you and the cause itself.

We also need to understand that a situation isn’t just unjust when it happens to us. When it happens to others, we must show solidarity with them. My mother set this example (at pp 34-35) to me when I was young. As soon as she heard that Catholic school kids were getting teased in our neighbourhood, she went and befriended all the Catholics in our street! It was her simple way of showing solidarity with a fellow oppressed minority, even if most people living in our street were Catholic.

Sometimes justice can be rough. My own mother’s regime of linguistic fascism (at pp65-66) wasn’t something I terribly enjoyed. Her use of a car cassette player to torture her kids with Bollywood songs wasn’t the highlight of my childhood.

Justice also involves understanding other people’s limitations and why they cannot always follow the rules in exactly the manner you deem appropriate. I was perhaps one of the biggest hijab messengers when I was in my late-teens, always lecturing and hectoring the women of my family to cover their heads. But I had to learn (at pp198-200 and 241-242) that people have their reasons for doing what they do.

There is also spiritual justice which I learned during my early exposure to orthodox Islamic spirituality. I learned from Imam Rabbani Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindhi about the concept of wahdat ash-shuhud, the idea that as you rise up to various spiritual levels, you reach a stage where you feel immersed in God. At this stage, everything around you and even inside you looks divine. It’s like sticking a torch in the path of the sun and trying to separate the torch’s light. Sirhindhi said that this state of spirituality was not the highest level of proximity to God. Rather, there was an even higher level than that which arose when you returned to earth and devoted your life to service to others (at pp290-1).

Service to others must not be limited to those who agree with you and believe in the same things you do. We all have an innate sense of justice. I learned that the Prophet Muhammad was a key player in the establishment of the Hilf al-Fudul or Alliance for Virtue (at p273) designed to defend the rights of merchants in his city who had no access to the system of tribal justice as they didn’t belong to and have access to the support of a powerful tribe. The alliance would advocate on behalf of such people.

In a separate session, I joined a young Melbourne philosopher to talk about tolerance. I'll write about that later when I get a chance. Now here's a totally pointless photograph of someone taking a totally pointless photograph.

Stuff recently published elsewhere ...

2009-08-13T06:22:00.000-07:00

Since the beginning of August, I've been a little busy on the keyboard. The result has been a few articles and pieces published here and there. They include:

1. an article in the Canberra Times about freedom of speech, national security and the responsibility of pundits. You can read that by clicking here.

2. A piece in the popular news and commentaru website Crikey on the push to ban al-Manar TV in Australia. You can read that piece by clicking here.

3. Another piece in Crikey about the immediate aftermath of anti-terror raids carried out in Melbourne. You can read that piece by clicking here.

And here is a silly cartoon I had nothing to do with.

Rock ‘n’ roll cab ride in Byron ...

2009-08-10T22:50:00.000-07:00

I just got back from spending four days in gorgeous Byron Bay care of the Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre who organised what would have to be the best writers’ festival I’ve been to thus far. It was my first trip to Byron, and my image of the place wasn’t helped when I received this text message from a Sydney-sider mate known as Gazza:

KEEP OFF THE GRASS!

The festival was held at an open field and the only grass I could see was growing out of the soil. One night I had to meet a mate at a resort where he was staying called the Byron on Byron. I had to catch to catch a cab from Byron town centre. I was walking upto the cab rank when I heard some awfully loud music coming from the first cab on the rank.

The driver was testing out his new iPod and asked if I minded the music. I said I wouldn’t mind so long as I got to choose a song and he turned the music up full blast. He told me he had one AC/DC album called Back in Black.

It would have been a pleasant Friday night drive along the coastal marshes to my destination. Instead, it turned into a 2-man rock ‘n’ roll party with driver and passenger head-banging away to these glorious (and somewhat sacrilegious) sounds:

Suffice it to say that I arrived at my destination much refreshed!

Auckland in winter ...

2009-08-10T19:44:00.000-07:00

It’s been a busy few months for Once Were Radicals (OWR). There was a busy New Zealand tour in late June which went well. We had some 4 media appearances in 2 days in Auckland.

Among them was a lengthy recording with Bharat Jamnadas from the TVNZ show Asia Downunder. The recording took place at a Dymocks store in Newmarket, a rather trendy part of Auckland. The product was broadcast on August 2 2009.

Then there was an equally enjoyable live interview on the New Zealand Sunrise program on TV3. You can view that interview here.

I also got a chance to visit the studios of 95b FM and chat with Paul Deady about the book. The interview can be heard (and downloaded if you love the sound of my voice) in two parts here and here.

There was one more interview with Radio Live - The Asian Radio Show which is hosted by Tarun Mohanbhai produced by Dr Sapna Samant of Holy Vow Media.

Auckland CBD is a gorgeous place, very much like Melbourne but without the trams. Sadly I didn’t take any photos. I guess you'll have to make do with some gorgeous photos taken during a previous trip to South Island, taken by one of my travel companions Sajjad Ali.

As son as I returned from Kiwistan, I was bedridden for around 10 days with plenty of painful coughing. At first I thought it could be swineflu, but my doctor assured me it wasn't. I guess I'll have to call it kiwiflu.

REVIEW: "Once Were Radicals" reviewed by Gabrielle Rish in the Sunday Tasmanian ...

2009-05-17T23:31:00.000-07:00

To the core of Islam
GABRIELLE RISH

DESPITE the jokey cover, Sydney lawyer, writer and one-time Liberal political candidate Irfan Yusuf has a serious intent in his memoirs.

In an easy-to-read, if sometimes disorganised fashion, he manages to tease out the religious, political and cultural strands that entangle the concept of Islam so that each strand can be illuminated.

By the end of this process, he concludes that Islam is primarily a matter of personal spirituality, and that a Muslim's quest is to change him or herself, not to remake the world.

It's a conclusion that suggests how to embrace Islam and being an Australian at the same time.

Yusuf, born in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1969, was brought to Sydney by his university lecturer father and Urdu scholar mother as a baby.

His early days growing up in the middle-Australian suburb of Ryde -- John Howard's electoral base -- involved a colourful extended family of "aunties" and "uncles" of all religious persuasions from the sub-continent -- Sikhs, Parsees, Christians, Jews and Muslims.

It also involved bullying at the local primary school because of his name and skin colour.

A move to St Andrews' Cathedral School brought a flirtation with Anglicanism, motivated in part by his disenchanted view of Islam as administered by the working-class Arab migrants and non-English-speaking imams who dominated the Sydney mosque scene.

Young Irfan also experienced the Pakistani style of religious education as a six-year-old on a visit back to Karachi, where the Arabic alphabet was instilled in pupils with the aid of a stick across the back.

To him, Christianity seemed a civilising religion by comparison.

But as he enters his mid-teens, Irfan begins to ponder his identity more deeply. His great aunt, a prominent member of Pakistan's Jamaat-i-Islami (Islamic organisation) sends him books about Islam by former journalist Syed Abul Ala Maududi, which spurs his politicisation.

There is a thrilling meeting with visiting British Muslim education proponent Yusuf Islam, who was once the '60 pop star Cat Stevens. At Muslim youth camps he encounters imams from other parts of Australia.

Later, his university Muslim group organises another camp, under the spiritual leadership of the imam of Lakemba mosque, Sheikh Hilaly.

Hilaly, so repellent in his anti-Semitism, turns out to be much more tolerant and progressive in other respects.

As well as starting up a women's group at Lakemba [other mosques had no women's activities, according to Yusuf] he offers the students a case study in tolerance at the camp, held at a coastal campsite, when a woman in a bikini wanders into their group.

Sheikh Hilaly chats to her and after she departs, tells his scandalised acolytes: "Ostraalyan beebul goodh, nice friendhly beebul. Vee Muslims fighth thoo mush. Vee should lurrn from za Ostraalyan beebul how show rrespect."

Despite the gun-wielding image on the cover, Irfan never gets any more militant than asking the Dean of Sydney a curly question about original sin at a public forum.

But his formative years had, as a background, the Iranian Revolution, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the war in the former Yugoslavia, the Palestinian Intifada and other events that helped shaped young Muslims like him into jihadis.

"Had I been 15 years younger, I may have shared a jail cell with David Hicks," he says.

First published in the Sunday Tasmanian on 17 May 2009.

REVIEW: "Once Were Radicals" reviewed by Peter Kirkwood in The Sydney Morning Herald ...

2009-05-16T09:47:00.000-07:00

Portrait of a young radical
Two Muslim men chart the path from youthful turmoil to mature moderation.

Once Were Radicals: My Years As A Teenage Islamo-fascist
By Irfan Yusuf
Allen & Unwin, 300pp, $26.99

Leave To Remain
By Abbas El-Zein
University of Queensland Press, 288pp, $32.95

THESE two very readable books share a common theme of great concern to many Australians. Each relates the story of a Muslim male negotiating the troubling years of youth and young adulthood and both could easily have gone off the rails. But the authors explain well how they worked through deep cultural and religious conflict to become productive citizens.

The two books are very different in style and detail. Irfan Yusuf is Sunni, was born in Pakistan and, though he is a devout Muslim, his outlook is more political. Abbas El-Zein is from a Lebanese Shia background and while he's a secular Muslim, his sensibility is more poetic, philosophical and spiritual.

Once Were Radicals, Yusuf's first book, won the 2007 Iremonger Award "for works of political, social and cultural commentary with contemporary Australian relevance". He is a Sydney lawyer and commentator. His opinion pieces appear regularly in newspapers and he is a prodigious and provocative blogger.

In the prologue he jumps to the heart of the matter. In 1985, at age 16, he "decided the time had come to join those prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice". He believed the best thing he could do as a Muslim was join the mujahideen in Afghanistan to fight the Russian invaders. He was prepared to die and "go straight to paradise".

He usefully sums up the inner conflict driving this decision:

As a young man growing up in a spiritual and cultural pendulum swinging between being Indian, Pakistani, Muslim, Australian I was confused. Political Islam, in the form of the Afghan jihad, provided some certainty and direction, even if it meant potentially cutting my life short.

Fortunately, he and his friends, then on a Muslim youth camp, talked this through with the gentle and wise religious leader Sheik Fehmi el-Imam. Using Islamic arguments, he steered them away from this course. This is a recurring theme in the book: how the headstrong young Yusuf's views are tempered by influential and moderate relatives and mentors.

After the prologue he backtracks and relates his life story: coming to Australia as a baby and growing up in the security of a close and rambunctious extended family, trips back to Pakistan including an extended stay when he went to school there St Andrew's Cathedral School in Sydney and university, where he became a vocal Muslim activist.

The book bears the marks of the polemical blogger. It is stream-of-consciousness in style, feisty and satirical in tone, and it uses direct street language. For instance, he describes one of his teachers in Pakistan as believing ...

... the best way to teach kids how to make the proper sounds of the Koran was to bash the shit out of them using either a very hard cooking utensil or a stick of some sort.

Leave To Remain has a different feel. It is obviously the work of a more sensitive and artistic soul. Though El-Zein is a scientist, now working as a lecturer in environmental engineering at the University of Sydney, he is an accomplished essayist. This is his second book, the first being a novel set during the Lebanese civil war.

El-Zein charts his life growing up in multicultural Lebanon and his wandering career as an engineer, studying and working in England, the US and Japan and finally settling in Sydney and starting a family. The descriptions of his early family life are most evocative, including the shocking death of his grandmother in an Israeli bombardment. So he gives a very personal account of the connections and tragic fault lines between different cultural and religious groups in Lebanon.

His Shia background provides a fascinating window into that troubled minority faction of Islam. His grandfather was a highly regarded sheik from the Shia sacred city of Najaf in Iraq. I suspect something of his religious spirit and insight lives on in his secular grandson.

El-Zein's writing is spare but elegant and he's adept at working the telling metaphors of his life. For example, the title of the book, Leave To Remain, is the term the British use for a residency visa. This combination of the seemingly contradictory words "leave" and "remain" becomes a symbol for the author of his deep ambivalence of belonging but also not belonging to his family, homeland, adopted countries, culture and religious heritage.

The concluding chapters of both books are moving as the authors tell of their position in maturity, a position that's less dogmatic and more introspective. For Yusuf it's the discovery of Sufism, the mystical side of his religion:

My journey inside Islam moved beyond what Muslim states should become. I was now concerned about what I should become. To use Gandhi's words, I wanted to be the change I wanted to see.

For El-Zein it's the tentative holding together of contradictory elements of his life:

For what is one's life but the story at once painful and sublime of coming to terms with the savage intimacy between self, history and culture?

Irfan Yusuf and Abbas El-Zein will be guests at the Sydney Writers' Festival; see swf.org.au.

(First published in the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 16 May 2009.)

MEDIA: Once Were Radicals on Radio NZ ...

2009-05-06T03:33:00.000-07:00

Irfan Yusuf, author of Once Were Radicals: My Years as a Teenage Islamo-fascist, recently appeared on Radio NZ's popular Nine To Noon Show with Kathryn Ryan.

You can listen to the program by clicking here. You can also download the interview by clicking here or here.

VIDEO: Learning Urdu the Bollywood way ...

2009-05-02T09:38:00.000-07:00

My parents resumed their fascistic language regime which involved us not being allowed to speak English at home ... My linguistic education included a regular regime of Bollywood movies.
(from Once Were Radicals: My years as a teenage Islamo-fascist)

Bollywood movies like Namak Halal, starring Amitabh Bachchan. Here is the big man playing the character of Arjun Singh, a villager who has just arrived in the city for a job interview.

REVIEW: Richard Begbie in the Canberra Times ...

2009-05-01T10:57:00.000-07:00

The following review was published in the Canberra Times on Saturday 2 May 2009.

**********

Getting to wisdom through the Muslim maze

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could barely stand to have the old man around. When I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
Samuel Clemens (probably)

Irfan Yusuf was really just another Aussie kid. He loved cricket, listened to AC/DC and U2, and lived in the electorate of Bennelong.

In most things his family were conservative. They sent him to Sydney's St Andrews Cathedral Choir School, a good church school. He even went to church camps lots of them. But there the stereotype ends.

These camps were run by the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, and Once Were Radicals offers a window into the complexities and often hilarious confusions of a Muslim boy growing up in Australia in the late 20th century.

Yusuf, who went on to do law and become something of a commentator on religion, culture and politics, has lived in Australia since his Pakistani-Indian parents migrated when he was five months old.

The book, winner of the 2007 Iremonger Award for writing on public issues, explores most areas of Islam in both its political and spiritual dimensions. For Muslim readers the territory will be familiar, though large parts of Yusuf's experience will surely bring both encouragement and relief to younger Muslims dealing with their faith in a Western, secular context. The non- Muslim, on the other hand, will find here a mass of detail and unexpected diversity that can verge on the bewildering.

While Australia likes to think of itself as multicultural, our chance brushes with other cultures pale alongside the boy Yusuf's experiences. His first awareness was of an Australian culture, refracted through the eclectic community in which his parents had immersed themselves. Practising Muslims both, they nevertheless encouraged their children to join in every aspect of the new life.

So that by the age of six, when Irfan returned with the family to Karachi for an extended visit, the experience was almost as alien to him as it would have been to most Aussie kids. The traffic, the toilets, the beggars, and especially the local madrassa (Islamic religious school), came as a shock. His Molvi Sahib (teacher) "had three sticks. One was short and hard, to cause pain. The second was long and malleable to cause a stinging sensation. The third was both long and hard. To provide us with the necessary incentive to memorise the Koranic sounds faster."

Since Arabic was as impenetrable to the boy as the Latin Mass to most Catholics, the experience was not a fruitful one. ''Little wonder,'' Irfan writes, "I began to associate Islamic learning with big boofy-bearded blokes brandishing sticks." And little wonder that his ever-sane mother removed him from the school.

Another school awaited the boy in Princeton, New Jersey, where his father was bound for a sabbatical. There he discovered orthodox Judaism through friends who, for some confusing weeks, he identified as Muslims. Once again his parents were able to enlarge the little
fellow's world to embrace and accept the followers of another ancient faith. "It was only years later, when I attended my first Muslim youth camp,'' recalled Yusuf, ''that I was first exposed to anti- semitism."

Back in Australia for his formative growing-up years, he was exposed to a great deal more than that. The highly diverse and, in that period, very fragmented pockets of Muslim culture around his native Sydney left the boy with a confusing hash of often-contradictory belief and practice.

The divide between those who focused on spiritual practice and those for whom Islamic politics were all-consuming formed a kind of ground bass to his development. By paths far too tortuous to trace here the rather brash young man makes his way through the maze of sects, theologies, value systems and political ideologies informing the tangled labyrinth of Muslim cultures.

In his late teens he becomes heavily involved in the politics of Sydney's Islamic youth, and in line with the book's heavily ironic subtitle, flirts only briefly with fatwas, fanatics, and political Islam in its more extreme forms.

Yusuf's narrative tends towards the meandering and repetitive, and this reader at least would have preferred a firmer editorial hand. However, it is the content of the book that will shield the interested reader against any stylistic failings.

For in Once Were Radicals we are introduced to the extended family warmth and cultural richness of the Muslim world. This is a narrative to draw the sting for many who have only really become aware of Islam in the wake of September 11, 2001. And it will help the non-Muslim understand that when it comes to shades of belief and practice, Islam is about as variegated and complex as they come.

Like Mark Twain, Yusuf reinforces some of his stronger views with a wry and occasionally laugh-aloud view of human foible. And it is Twain who actually brings us to the book's recurring counterpoint. Like the spirited offspring of sane and loving parents the world over, by the story's end Yusuf has travelled old Sam Clemens's full circle of discovery.

"Enforced monoculturalism. Enforced homogeneity. There lies the real fascism." So Irfan Yusuf concludes his story. And so he echoes the openness with which his parents embraced their new life Down Under, while retaining all that was culturally and spiritually important to them. This was their and now their son's real gift to us all.

Richard Begbie is a Canberra writer and farmer. Once Were Radicals will be launched at Paperchain Bookstore, Manuka, on Sunday, May 31, at 3pm.

ARTICLE: What I'm Reading

2009-05-01T09:42:00.000-07:00

The following "article" by me is in fact authored by Stefanie Menezes and was published in The Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 2 May 2009.

**********

Irfan Yusuf, writer and lawyer

"I've always had a childhood fascination with cricket, so I've been reading Ian Botham's Head On - Ian Botham: The Autobiography. It's interesting because Botham was playing around the time I was growing up in the '70s and '80s, so it's like taking a walk down memory lane.

"When I was young I was really obsessed with The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain. I could almost memorise it [IY: Actually, I had memorised huge chunks of it]. I loved the idea about this young boy who was so free and lived in a place where he was meeting new people all the time. His interaction with his mum was also very similar to mine so I related to him.

"I enjoy reading political books, and recently finished P.J. O'Rourke's Give War A Chance. He's an irreverent writer. Few American writers can poke fun at the conservatives like he does [IY: What I actually said was that few conservative American writers poke fun at people on their own side]. This book tackles everything from communism to Saddam Hussein as he writes from his coverage of the 1991 Gulf War. His writing is not terribly sophisticated [IY: actually what I said was that his writing wasn't exactly high-brow] but it makes politics fun and I enjoy making that reading light sometimes.

"I'm a regular reader of Mungo MacCallum, who's a writer for Crikey. He's on the opposite side of the political spectrum and does the same thing as O'Rourke but uses fewer f-words.

"I've found over the last few years I've been reading a lot more online blogs and news websites than I do books. It's a pity, though, and it's something I hope to change. With everything going online and becoming electronic these days, it would concern me if books stopped sticking around. There is a real charm to actually holding a book. Writing a book takes discipline. If people don't value that and writing is only measured by the amount of hits, well then everything would just turn into which celeb slept with who."

Once Were Radicals: My Years As A Teenage Islamo-fascist by Irfan Yusuf is published by Allen & Unwin, $24.99. He will be a guest at the Sydney Writers' Festival.

REVIEW: "Once Were Radicals" reviewed by Mahir Ali in The Australian ...

2009-05-01T09:18:00.000-07:00

The following review of Once Were Radicals: My Years as a Teenage Islamo-Fascist was written by Maher Ali, a senior writer for The Australian.

************

IT is a very multicultural moment. At a camp for young Muslims in northern NSW, a bikini-clad woman strolls into the prayer hall during an afternoon congregation.

Some of those present mutter among themselves, but their spiritual guide hails the intruder and, after ascertaining that she is seeking directions to a nearby lake, goes out of his way to assist her. On returning to the gathering, he reminds the youngsters that they ought to respect all Australians.

Sometime later, while out fishing in a lake, he again runs into the same woman, who greets him with a "G'day mate". "Goodhay luv," he responds. "Howya goin'?" she wants to know. "Brittee goodh. How you go-in?" he says. "Ah, pretty good. Listen, thanks for showin' me the fishing place the other day."

"No broblem, dearr. You have goodh Christmas." Once she's plunged into the lake, he turns to the two young men with him and tells them that Australians could teach Muslims a thing or two about how to show respect.

"This was the ... only camp where I saw an imam conversing with a woman in a bikini, let alone teaching us how to learn respect from her," writes Irfan Yusuf. And this was no ordinary imam either. Well, he was at the time, but subsequently became the mufti of Australia. That's right, the same one who notoriously compared women in revealing attire with uncovered meat.

Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali has only a bit part in Yusuf's memoir of a misspent youth, and he isn't by a long stretch the strangest character in an intriguing and frequently entertaining -- but occasionally disturbing -- account of the evolution of a young Muslim in Australia.

In several respects, the phenomenon Yusuf describes is remarkably similar to the British experience whereby a large number of second-generation immigrants from the subcontinent turned out to be a great deal more radical in religious terms than their passively pious -- and often secular-minded -- parents.

To some extent, this was a consequence of the alienation they experienced. Their parents weren't spared the sense of being outsiders but, having volunteered to place themselves in societies that they knew would be very different from the milieu to which they were accustomed, they were not unduly alarmed by the disparities they encountered.

Many of them were determined, however, that their children should not be estranged from their ancestral culture. This often led to a focus on inherited religious concepts and values, facilitating a state of mind that caused youngsters confronted with overt or covert racism to pounce on faith as the primary point of difference helping to sustain their self-esteem. This may not in itself sow the seeds of extremism but it can serve as fertile soil.

By Yusuf's account, his parents, although reasonably devout, could hardly be blamed for his radicalism. His father, a Pakistani who decided to settle down in Australia after winning a scholarship to the Australian National University, is wary from the outset of what he characterises as the Islamic industry: the network of mosques, Islamic clubs and centres, halal butchers and the like that feed on Muslim vulnerabilities and insecurities.

His mother -- who grew up in India and whose lack of fluency in English is parodied relentlessly by her son, to the point where it gets jarring -- is somewhat more religious than her husband, but at least equally disturbed by her son's drift towards fanaticism. She wants him to concentrate on his studies and certainly has no objection to him following Islamic strictures at the same time, but whenever a discrepancy surfaces between the two aims, she comes down firmly on the side of academic excellence.

And she makes no secret of her resentment when Yusuf, during a particularly morbid phase in his religious journey, berates his elder sisters for not covering up adequately in front ofstrangers.

This, again, is part of a global phenomenon, and one that's by no means restricted to immigrant societies; it helps to explain why in recent decades various forms of hijab have become a great deal more common in Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia. Yusuf's sisters probably benefited from their chronological advantage: a younger brother's rants are a lot easier to dismiss than similar pressure from an older sibling.

It is intriguing to discover, meanwhile, that the teenage Yusuf was attracted by the idea of joining the mujaheddin in their US-sponsored war to liberate Afghanistan from its Soviet occupiers, but also flirted more than once with the idea of converting to Christianity. He was able to resist both temptations, in the first case thanks to sensible advice from a spiritual elder at a Muslim youth camp. His account is nonetheless a salutary reminder of the Afghan jihad's crucial role in firing the zeal of young people across the Muslim world.

Yusuf's peregrinations through all manner of theological disputes at the theoretical level and factional altercations on the practical plane convey a sense of wastefully squandered youthful energy. Chances are his intellectual exertions -- in grappling with the texts of Sayyid Qutb and Abul Aala Maududi, for instance -- would have proved more productive in a non-confessional context. After all, any quest for one true Islam is intrinsically futile, given that the purported word of Allah has always been open to conflicting interpretations. (Which is by no means to suggest, mind you, that any competing theology offers a surer path to salvation.)

Yusuf's frequently amusing account of his intellectual development, interspersed with healthy doses of (possibly retrospective) irreverence, is nonetheless valuable for its insights into the Muslim mind, not to mention its potential as a cautionary tale for young Muslims in Australia drawn to politically motivated exegeses of Islam.

The leap of faith that propelled Yusuf from political Islam into the arms of the Young Liberals is left unexplained. But that, he says, is another story for another day.

Mahir Ali, a senior journalist on The Australian, grew up in Pakistan but resisted the temptations of faith.

Irfan Yusuf will be a guest of the Sydney WritersFestival.

MEDIA: "Once Were Radicals" on Radio National's Life Matters ...

2009-04-29T21:18:00.000-07:00

No, not that ABC!

The author of Once Were Radicals: My years as a teenage Islamo-fascist featured on the Radio National Life Matters show on Thursday 30 April 2009.

You can listen to the interview by clicking here.

You can also download the interview by clicking here.

Though apparently you won't be able to do this for long. And we're still trying to figure out how to upload the recording that we ourselves have downloaded!

AUDIO: Interview on SBS Radio Urdu service - Part I

2009-04-29T03:31:00.000-07:00

Laugh yourselves silly at Irfan Yusuf's Urdu. Why not? His mum certainly does.

To listen to Part 1 of this interview, click here ...

EVENT: Canberra Launch - Sunday 31 May 2009

2009-04-23T01:11:00.000-07:00

Come along to the launch of ...

3pm

Sunday 31 May 2009

Paperchain Bookstore

34 Franklin Street

Manuka

(see here for directions)

The book will be launched by

Virginia Haussegger, ABC News Presenter, award-winning journalist, Canberra Times columnist and author.

To RSVP for this event, please e-mail oncewereradicals@gmail.com.

EVENT: Sydney launch - Monday 4 May 2009 - Granville

2009-04-20T21:47:00.000-07:00

Laurie Ferguson, Federal Member for Reid since 1990 and current Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs and Settlement Services.

Irfan Yusuf, Liberal Candidate for Reid, 2001

In November 2001, Irfan Yusuf and Laurie Ferguson went head-to-head in a fierce contest for the Federal Seat of Reid.

Federal Electorate of Reid in the geographical heart of Sydney

Ferguson defeated Yusuf in that contest by the narrowest of margins - 42,726 votes to 21,165.

Irfan Yusuf out on the hustings shaking hands with someone who probably didn't vote for him.

On 4 May 2009, Laurie Ferguson and Irfan Yusuf will meet again for another head-to-head contest. But will Ferguson defeat Yusuf this time round?

You won't know unless you turn up to watch Yusuf and Ferguson together again for one night only to see who will be Reid's biggest los ... woops ... who can eat more baklav ... er, no ... who will prove to be the more radical ex-radical. Or something like that.

Basically what we're saying is that you're invited to the launch of Irfan Yusuf's irreverent suburban Aussie Muslim memoir Once Were Radicals: My Years As A Teenage Islamo-fascist.

WHEN? Monday 4 May 2009 at 7:30pm

WHERE? El-Sweetie, 73-75 South Street, Granville

WHY? Just shut up and come.

You'll also be able to purchase copies of the book on the night at a special discounted price of $25 each. That's a saving of $1.95 per copy from the normal store price!

Enough to make you want to jump for joy!!

To RSVP for this awesome event, e-mail oncewereradicals@gmail.com

EVENT: Gleebooks - Wednesday 13 May 2009

2009-04-19T23:10:00.000-07:00

Wednesday 13 May 2009

6.30 for 7pm
Irfan Yusuf
Once Were Radicals
Published by: Allen & Unwin
In conversation with Antony Loewenstein

Venue: gleebooks, 49 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe
Cost: $10/$7 conc. gleeclub welcome
For more details, click here.

EVENT: Parramatta punch ...

2009-04-12T07:54:00.000-07:00

Watch the author punch himself in the face at the Riverside Theatres in Parramatta on Wednesday 20 May 2009. Irfan Yusuf will be "in conversation" with Brendan Phelan of NewMatilda fame. Irfan regularly writes for New Matilda, and if you've got nothing better to do then you can read his stuff here.

The Parramatta gig is part of the Sydney Writers' Festival. You can find out more about the gig by clicking here. The most wonderful think about this gig is that it is FREE!

EVENT: Launch of Once Were Radicals ...

2009-04-12T07:42:00.000-07:00

Well, readers, we now have a date for the launch of Once Were Radicals: My Years As A Teenage Islamo-fascist. The launch date is 4 May 2009. The book will be launched in the heart of Auburn, a place where the author once lived and worked and even ran as an endorsed Liberal Party candidate in a federal election.

We even have someone to launch the event. However, at this stage we don't wish to reveal too much about that person. We can, however, provide you with the following two clues ...

1. This person defeated the author in the 2001 Federal Election by around 14,000 votes; and

2. This person very very closely resembles the chap featured below ...

Apart from that, there's not much we can tell you at this stage. Further details will be released anon.

UPDATE I: The launch will now be held in the suburb next door to Auburn. More details soonish.

Welcome ...

2009-03-02T22:15:00.001-08:00

Welcome to the blogsite of Once Were Radicals, the title of the new and highly irreverent memoir of Irfan Yusuf. Irfan is a Sydney-based lawyer, writer and freelance columnist and commentator who writes for Australian and international media on issues relating to a host of political, social, cultural and sporting issues. His work has been published in over 15 newspapers in Australia and New Zealand.

Once Were Radicals was the winner of the 2007 Iremonger Award for Writing on Public Issues.