Ed Husain

In an article in the Spectator at the end of 2019, Husain highlighted shifting alliances in the Middle East and the possibility of a new Arab-Israeli alliance. It was discussed widely in the region.

The raison d’être of Islamic civilisations and the shariah for a thousand years was to provide five things: security, worship, preservation of the family, nourishment of the intellect and protection of property. These are called maqasid, or the higher objectives of the shariah. Britain provides these in multitudes for every Muslim today.

Husain is the author of two books: The Islamist, which was a finalist for the George Orwell prize for political writing, and The House of Islam: A Global History, published in 2018.

In 2017, Husain joined the Wilson Center as a Global Fellow in its Middle East Program. He is currently a Senior Fellow at Civitas: Institute for the Study of Civil Society in London, where he runs the 'Islam, the West, and Geopolitics' research project.

Husain is a former senior advisor to Tony Blair and a former senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Husain is a cofounder of the counter-extremism organization Quilliam. In 2014, he was appointed to the Freedom of Religion or Belief Advisory Group of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He has also worked for HSBC Private Bank and the British Council. In 2019, Husain was listed as one of London's most influential figures in The Progress 1000 by the Evening Standard for his role in countering Islamist extremism and advocating for a pluralist Islam.

He was appointed to the Freedom of Religion or Belief Advisory Group of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 2014.

The U.S. government should ask its military allies to return to their barracks and cease killing protesters—and that it should tie these demands to U.S. aid. ... The Arab revolutionaries did not look to China or Russia for a model of government. They looked to four-year presidential terms, inspired directly by American democracy. Islamist leaders such as Tunisia's Mohamed Ghannouchi condemn French secularism but highlight American accommodation of religion as a model of a secular state that is less hostile to religion.

After all, most of its problems – terrorism, poverty, unemployment, sectarianism, refugee crises, water shortages – require regional answers. No country can solve its problems on its own.

He called Bahrain a 'focal point of what is happening in the Middle East today – the battle to find a balance between preserving the best values of the Islamic tradition while the region eases its way into the modern world.'

In an op-ed for the New York Times in 2012, Husain analysed the political unrest in Bahrain in the wake of the Arab Spring after a visit to the reforming Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa. Noting the strong influence of the pro-Iran, anti-democracy cleric Ayatollah Issa Qasim on the Shiite opposition party Al Wefaq (which blocked bills for women's rights and equality that were supported by both the monarchy and Sunni parties), Husain urged the West not to "not provide diplomatic cover for rioters and clerics in the name of human rights and democracy".  

Husain advocates American soft power and leadership in modelling democracy. Countering the US response to the Egyptian military's raiding of NGO offices in 2012, he said:

While at the Council on Foreign Relations, Husain commented on U.S. policy on issues ranging from the 2011 U.S. congressional hearings on radicalization spearheaded by Rep. Peter King (R-NY) to the events of the Arab Spring and the death of Osama bin Laden. Since joining Civitas, Husain has commented on Islam and society, the British political system, the prospect of a Middle East Federation, and the role of Saudi Arabia in the geopolitics of Islam.

In a May 2011 op-ed in The Times, Husain warned against al-Qaeda's success as a brand:

However, Husain criticized the September 2011 extrajudicial killing of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, explaining that it is "counterproductive to defeating terrorism in the long term because it demolishes the very values that America stands for: the rule of law and trial by jury." Furthermore, "An easier, cheaper and more effective way of discrediting al-Awlaki and countering his message would have been to disclose his three arrests for the solicitation of prostitutes ..."

Upon his return to Britain, Husain worked as a senior advisor to former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. In 2008, he cofounded the think tank Quilliam, which "aims to challenge extremist narratives while advocating pluralistic, democratic alternatives that are consistent with universal human rights standards" and "stands for religious freedom, equality, human rights and democracy".

In traditional circles, Muslim women are not allowed to marry non-Muslim men...But in a pluralistic world in 2007, where non-Muslim men and Muslim women are marrying, you can't say, 'You can’t do that.'

After completing his undergraduate degree, Husain worked for HSBC in London for several years. He then moved to Damascus with his wife in 2002, where he worked for the British Council teaching English whilst studying Arabic at the University of Damascus. After two years in Syria, Husain and his wife moved to Jeddah to be closer to the Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina while continuing to work for the British Council.

It was during his studies at Newham College in 1995 that he decided to leave the group, after witnessing the stabbing of a Christian student. Later he joined the Islamic Society of Britain and was influenced by the spiritual side of Islam and later by scholars who helped convince him to leave the Islamist groups.

Mohamed "Ed" Husain (born 25 December 1974) is a writer, senior fellow at the British think tank Civitas, and a global fellow of the Wilson Center's Middle East program. He is the author of The Islamist, an account of his five years as an Islamist activist in Britain, and The House of Islam: A Global History, which discusses the classical tenets of Islam and the ways in which they have been distorted by political Islamists. He regularly advises governments on national security and combatting extremist ideology.

Husain was born and brought up in the East End of London, in a Muslim family. Husain's father was born in British India and his mother in East Pakistan. His mother has Saudi Arabian heritage, specifically in the Hejaz region. His father arrived in the United Kingdom in 1961, and started a small Indian takeaway business in Limehouse.