Ed Husain

So Azhar turn him away.

He goes to a group of Muslim mystics.

Egypt has this huge mystical orders, Sufi Turuk we call them.

And the mystics also turn him away and say, you know, you're going to be dangerous.

You're too politicized.

That is not the way of the Prophet Muhammad.

You've got to be calmer.

You've got to accept reality for what it is and change yourself first and then change followers.

And it's not our business to confront America and to confront the Soviet Union.

So they disagree with him.

And this is the issue that he's a breakaway from mainstream Islamic norms, that he decides to take it upon himself.

He rejects Al-Azhar.

the thousand year old Muslim institution that's still there.

He rejects the Muslim mystics that are dated from the time of the Prophet Muhammad, old orders.

And he says, I will create my own movement and I will work towards recreating the caliphate, bringing back Sharia as state law and thereby confronting the West, correcting the misdemeanors that I see.

So the bug of the Islamic State

whether it's ISIS or Al-Qaeda or Hezbollah, and it's also connected to Iran, by the way, or Hamas, started there in Egypt in the Suez Canal area called Ismailiya in 1928.

So you were just saying earlier, Francis, we're gonna be facing the 100-year moment in a couple of years' time, but the organization still sticks with us and hasn't left us.

But there are other points that he then absorbed.

Those were the three kind of starting points.