A former Islamist radical has warned that a key extremist group operating in Australia and the UK numbers many doctors and engineers among its leadership.Ed Husain was raised in a traditional Muslim home in London in the 1980s and by the age of 16 he was active in three fundamentalist organisations, including Hizb ut-Tahrir, an extremist group which advocates jihad in the name of Islam.
| Yup, that's what they do allright. |
| Wouldn't think it would take Gordo that long to make a decision. Perhaps he has to consult with Gorgeous George. |
"That organisation functions in Australia and its leadership takes its call and its literature and the London based Hizb ut-Tahrir.
"So that's a threat in the making that I think your policy-makers and people in the media need to identify and educate the wider Australian population about.
"On a final thought, even here [in the UK] the leadership of Hizb Ut Tahrir, as well as the leadership of Wahhabist organisations, are filled with engineers and doctors."
Police are questioning eight people with links to the medical profession, including Gold Coast doctor Mohammed Haneef, in connection with the botched car bomb attacks in London and Glasgow.
Mr Husain said Islamist radical organisations around the world had many highly-educated recruits. "The vast majority of Islamist organisations right across the world from the Muslim Brotherhood to the Jamaat Islami in the Indian subcontinent have their rank and file filled with people who are highly educated in medicine and engineering facilities from some of the finest universities in the world," Mr Husain continued. "Their identities are very complex. Being a doctor is a means to an end.
"Many of these people were asked to become doctors simply because that's what their parents wanted them to be. Many of these young Asian people born and raised for the first time here in Britain and their parents have a strong influence. Among Arabs and Asians there's a preference for doctors, lawyers and engineers. Their being doctors is default, it's not a career choice for them that they've deliberately made out.
"It just so happens that while they're at university, while they are isolated from mainstream communities and while they have this identity crisis, they're recruited into extremist organisations at a very young age."