Ed Husain

had several issues with the wider world.

The first issue was he opposed the abolishing of the caliphate in Turkey in 1924, which had just happened four years previously.

He wanted a kind of Muslim presence and Muslim dominance, a Muslim-led empire that confronted the West and confronted what was then Russia's stroke Soviet Union.

So he had that kind of confrontational bug within him.

practising Muslim, observant Muslim.

The second issue that he had was he complained in his letters about the presence of American evangelicals across the country, that why are these evangelicals preaching in Egypt, which is a majority Muslim country, and why do we allow this to happen?

Where is our Muslim sense of manhood that we let these Americans in?

And the third point that really offended him was seeing Egyptian men, Egyptian women dancing, drinking alcohol,

spending time on the cruises, and Egypt becoming so westernized to the point that he, as someone from the Egyptian countryside, felt that this westernization, globalization disturbed him.

So those three issues, the destruction of the Turkish caliphate, the presence of the Americans and the Brits in the evangelical movements, and third, the westernization of Egyptian society in Cairo, led him to then go to various Egyptian religious institutions.

the Al-Azhar, which is a prominent university in Egypt, a religious institution.

It's been there since the 1950s, so our Oxford, if you like, since before Oxford.

Al-Azhar, the greatest prominent Sunni institution.

He goes there and says, you're a religious institution.

You have thought leadership over every Muslim Sunni country.

You should do something about this problem.

And Al-Azhar say, we're going to approach this in our own wise,

nuanced, complicated way, give us time.

And he says, no, we must set up a movement.

We must confront this problem head on.