However, whilst charisma and eloquence in the English language have been cited as Abu Muntasir’s mainstay for inspiring a vibrant youth movement among a burgeoning second generation of British Muslims, [1] his daʿwah failed to strike a resounding chord with us all. For instance, in the Essex University ISoc’s effort to proselytise Muslim youth on campus, I too was invited to attend lectures delivered by him in the early to mid-nineties—and on one occasion, we were also taken to meet his family at his home in Ipswich—but like my peers, felt an air of arrogance and pomposity from Abu Muntasir. Rather, it would not be until the mid-to-late nineties via the more relatable daʿwah activities of the head of the University of Essex ISoc, namely Amjad Rafiq, also known by his kunya, Abu Iyād (whose contribution to the Salafi Daʿwah is further discussed in another article), that I and others like me, would discover an ‘authentic’ interpretation of Islam, Salafism.
The former founders of OASIS (and ex-JIMAS members) also recall that by 1995, Abu Muntasir and his JIMAS group had begun to display signs of diverging from the core principles of Salafism’s creed, noting that ‘any connection to Salafiyyah and assertion of a Salafi creed was largely academic (i.e., it never transcended above mere academic discussion).’[2] This crucial aspect of Abu Muntasir’s religious outlook, that has also been described as nothing more than just a ‘nominal type of Salafiyyah’—which in any case was heavily reliant on knowledge procured from the late Shaykh Abu Talhah Dawūd Burbank (whose contribution to the Salafi Daʿwah is further discussed below)—[3] eventually caused OASIS’s founders to filter him out by establishing OASIS. [4] This left Abu Muntasir—along with his ‘egotistic tendencies’[5]–to propound his increasingly dangerous ideas under the banner of JIMAS.[6] In doing so, British Salafis showed just how hard they were willing to fight to establish and maintain the credal consistency of their Daʿwah as that of the Saved Sect right from the very outset.
[1] Bowen 2014:60.
[2] Abu Iyād recalls the history of JIMAS in his eulogy of Abu Talhah Dawūd Burbank (2011: Salafitalk.com).
[3] Ibid.
[4] Abdul-Wāhid 2013:1.
[5] Abdul-Wāhid 2013b.
[6] Abdul-Wāhid 2013:1.
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