As a child, he had little interest in religion, but at King’s he was approached by a recruiter for the UK chapter of an eastern religious group that was soon afterwards banned from campus.
His old-fashioned clothes set him apart. He put aside the normal social life of a young man at university, no longer visiting bars or going clubbing, and spending so much time studying his newfound belief that his degree work suffered badly. The changes in Omar’s appearance and bearing were commented upon by those who knew him back at home.
In an attempt to make up for lost time in lectures, Omar borrowed notes from a female student. From this encounter, a romance blossomed, and she followed him into the cult. By this time, Omar’s father had died. During his second year, against his mother’s wishes, Omar married the fellow student. Then he dropped out of university.
Omar’s wife finished her degree. She realised that Omar was so obsessed by his cult activism that she would have to support them both. She took a job as a school-teacher and, over the next few years, bravely managed to combine breadwinning with giving birth to their three children. The marriage was rocky. Omar took the family abroad, intending to stay away for a year, but soon cut the trip short. His second trip was taken alone. Soon afterwards, his wife read that his lifeless body had been washed up on a foreign beach. Their youngest child was barely two months old.
Omar’s immersion into a cult follows a sadly typical path, until we realise that the group he joined was far from typical. Omar Khan Sharif failed in a suicide bomb attack sponsored by Hamas in Tel Aviv, in April, 2003. His companion, Asif Hanif, blew himself up and killed four people at Mike’s Place, a popular bar.
Asif Hanif’s friends in England were incredulous. At first they thought that his identity must have been stolen. They could not believe that the ‘Teddy Bear’, a bright and considerate student with a passion for cricket, could have been involved in a suicide attack. He had even spoken out against suicide attacks as a violation of the Qur’an.
The steps of Omar’s induction reveal the path followed by most cult recruits. As psychologists Zimbardo and Lieppe said, ‘...indoctrination into terrorist groups often resembles the Moonie system.’12This is relevant to all patterns of persuasion where the individual’s choice is over-ridden, but, as we shall see later, it is also relevant to those who willingly choose to join a destructive organization.
transition
The first step of any cult journey is dislocation through either physical or psychological disorientation. In one or more ways, the recruit is dislocated whether from the surrounding culture or from a familiar way of life. Most often, the recruit is at a point of transition – in an unfamiliar place or at a turning point – and feels disorientated and unsure.
Omar was the child of Kashmiri immigrants. Derby has a large Muslim Asian population, but they are displaced into a very different culture from their homeland. Omar’s father was penniless when he arrived in England in 1962. Starting from scratch, he created a business empire that included fast food restaurants, a launderette, a health club and an amusement arcade. But his enterprise left him little time for family life or for the niceties of his religion. Although Omar’s father made sizeable contributions to the establishment of a mosque, a fellow student said that when Omar arrived at university, he knew little more about Islam than the formula of prayer.
The children of immigrants who have a different religious culture to that of the host country suffer a particular disorientation with regard to beliefs. Most will integrate into the host culture reconciling the differences. However, a study of 165 Al-Qaeda members has shown that 129 of them – some 78% – were either the children of immigrants or were living abroad when recruited.13
In his important book, The Islamist, Ed Husain explains that most of the Muslim students at his college in London, ‘had no real bond with mainstream Britain,’ even when they had been born and raised in Britain, like Husain himself.14Ed Husain attended state schools and his devout, moderate Muslim family celebrated Christmas and regularly bought cakes from the local Jewish baker.15
College campuses have long been recruiting grounds for cult groups. This is recognised by universities, which ban many such groups, including Hizb ut-Tahrir, the radical Islamist group that recruited Sharif. Hizb ut-Tahrir also picked off members of existing Muslim groups within universities. Ed Husain ran the radical Young Muslim Organisation at his college when he was recruited by the Hizb.