A Long Jihad. Muhammad Abdul Bari
the world's population was a subject of the British Empire, and until the end of the Second World War it directly ruled many countries; many are now part of the Commonwealth. Britain may have lost its imperial glamour, but it still punches above its weight in the international arena with intellectual dominance and diplomatic skills.
What made Britain great and how she rose so high in the world community often occupied my thoughts. Feelings of envy and amazement reigned at the beginning of my Cranwell period. As a keen reader of history, I knew something about Britain. But I wanted to know more and directly 'from the horse's mouth'. I wanted to see it from the inside. How could a small island country, with a population far smaller than Bangladesh, rise so high? What was the catch? The answer to me was in its people: their vision, ambition, hard work, resilience and sense of pride. In its heyday, the British nation manifested this enterprise, adventure, determination and courage to catapult it to the farthest corners of the planet. It was the quality of leadership in all walks of life; professionalism, adaptability and the ability to create institutions and their sustainability that helped them to direct the course of human history. Far-placed lands like India, Australia, and America became nearer. With English as the lingua franca, and world class institutions such as the BBC and Oxbridge, it became a diplomatic super power; Britain's soft power is still the envy of many nations.
On my free weekends I would travel across this England. Away from my family I had plenty of time to write poems in Bengali, some of which were later published as a book. There is a joke about Bangladeshis that everyone has some poetic juice. 'Why should I be an exception?' I thought. I would make the 135 mile journey to London to see the seat of what had once been the world's first global super power. Apart from visiting Westminster, the popular London shopping areas and higher educational institutions and museums, I also spent time in London's East End: especially along Brick Lane and Whitechapel High Street, where many Bangladeshis had started to live.
The East London Mosque (ELM) in Whitechapel, which was already known to many people back in Bangladesh, was just a small pre-fabricated prayer place at the time, perched on a patch of scrubland adjacent to the Fieldgate Street Great Synagogue and near the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. The ELM's history started in 1910, when it was founded by an Indian émigré in the Ritz Hotel, and so it was the oldest mosque in London. One weekend I came to the mosque and tried to find someone I might recognize (I knew a couple of individuals from Bangladesh who later settled in east London). One, Aziz Rahman (Aziz Bhai), did his MPhil in Physics at Imperial College.
In the mosque I met a few people who were slightly younger than me. They were very hospitable, especially when they learned that I was in England for training, and after the midday prayer invited me to a nearby youth club opposite a multi-storey hospice. The 'club' turned out to be in a basement flat, with an arrangement of table tennis tables. Towards the end of our chat I asked if anyone wanted to play. We kept on talking and started a friendly match. By the time I finished the games I realized it was time for me to leave London. This was the start of my relationship with the group. We exchanged telephone numbers and they invited me to come whenever I was free.
I quickly learned that sport brings people closer together, and from then on the youth club became a focal point of my visits to London. I became close with several of these East End Bangladeshis; they would take me sightseeing in London during my weekend visits. Through this interaction I learned that most of them had come to Britain in their childhood with their parents, mainly from the Sylhet region of northeastern Bangladesh. They were either working in factories or restaurants. During my stay in 1978–1979, and later on in 1981, I would often spend time with these new friends. This sowed the seeds of my future youth and community work over the coming decades.
A quarter of a mile from the ELM, not far from London's economic heartland, was the Brick Lane mosque (Brick Lane Jamme Masjid, or Brick Lane Great Mosque). During the 1970s, the whole area was subject to heavy immigration from Sylhet, many of whom then attended either the ELM or the Brick Lane Mosque, depending in part on their political and religious affiliations back home. Those who founded the mosque on Brick Lane bought and refurbished a synagogue (which had been a Huguenot church before that) as the area's once-dominant Jews continued to move on and out of the area. Brick Lane today is synonymous with diversity and modern London; it is Britain's Banglatown and London's curry centre. Back then it was still poor, and would later suffer from National Front violence.
★ ★ ★
Soon the British autumn was ushering in winter, and watching trees shed their leaves was a whole new phenomenon to me. The days were getting shorter and the chilly air forced us to adopt more suitable clothing. The first day of snowfall was hugely exciting. Even with my thick clothes I was shivering in the classroom. But I still loved the look of the trees, now enveloped by snow. When I got back to my warm room, I spent quite a long time watching the beauty of snowfall from my window.
As 1979 began, the weather took a turn for the worse. There were blizzards and deep snow and we were told it was the coldest winter since 1962–1963. The weather had an impact on consumer spending and hit the economy badly, but it was not the cold or faltering economy that surprised me, but the 'Winter of Discontent' that paralysed almost all of Britain, with widespread strikes by public sector employees demanding larger pay rises. The ongoing pay cap by Jim Callaghan's Labour government was challenged by the powerful Trades Union Congress (TUC), but no agreement could be reached. The situation took a turn for the worst when cemetery gravediggers also took industrial action; this left 150 bodies unburied at one point, with twenty-five being added each day. This caused huge public concern, then to add insult to injury, many bin men (the local authority waste collectors) went on strike and local authorities up and down the country ran out of waste storage space and were forced to use local parks. Reports of rat infestations and bad smells were splashed across the news headlines. The Labour government's inability to handle the situation was one of the main reasons for its defeat to the Conservative party in the following May national election (that brought Margaret Thatcher to power).
Elsewhere, the Iranian Islamic Revolution in February 1979 had reverberations that shook the world. Iranians were already unhappy with the ruling Pahlavi dynasty, but a new phase of the uprising started against Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in October 1977, with persistent demonstrations by various leftist and Islamic organizations, as well as Iranian student movements. This developed into a civil resistance that intensified in January 1978. From August onwards, coordinated massive strikes paralysed the country. The Shah left Iran for exile on 16 January 1979 and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had been in exile in Iraq and France since 1964, was invited back to Iran by the government. He was greeted by millions of Iranians in the capital Tehran. On 11 February, guerrillas and rebel troops took control of Tehran, bringing Khomeini to power.
The UK general election of 1979, held on 3 May, was another event that caught the world's attention. For the first time a woman, Margaret Thatcher, leader of the Conservative party, became prime minister of the British government; the first of four consecutive election victories. As Margaret Thatcher stepped up to power, our time in Britain was coming to an end. One more BAF Officer, Flight Lieutenant Bashir, had joined us at Cranwell, and Mostafa and I were occasionally travelling to other cities in the north of England. I still harboured ambitions of going back to my physics research, although I did not have any clue how this would ever materialize.
Mostafa eventually became one of my closest friends. His integrity, sense of humour and wisdom were enviable. Even after I had left the BAF in 1982, we remained in close touch. His personality reminded me of a beautiful saying of Prophet Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace: 'The example of a good and a bad companion is like that of a perfume seller and a blacksmith. The perfume seller either puts the perfume on you or tries to sell it to you, but in the blacksmith's workshop you will either burn your clothes or you'll be blackened by the soot'. I have been blessed with quite a few trustworthy friends like him.
We finished our final exams and completed our course by the end of July 1979, with excellent results. The Base Commander threw a party for all the departing overseas officers, and officers from some other branches joined us. We shared our addresses and promised to keep in touch with one another. Our friendship with the Nigerian officers was deep, though we never knew if we would ever meet again. Overall, it was a jovial atmosphere. We had a few free days before we would