Yvonne Ridley – From Captive to Convert
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
And
to say that the British people are not
represented
by president's
by time and time and time to declare
that he's,
for his
new document.
Miss Miller Arrahmanir
Rahim.
Brothers,
sisters,
friends,
assalamu alaykum.
Welcome.
It gives me tremendous pleasure
to be in New Zealand
and to share my story with so many
of you tonight.
Now I can see
a lot of non Muslims in the room.
Just relax, I'm not Islam's answer to Billy
Graham.
I want to share this story with you
so you can enjoy it, maybe understand a
little bit more about Islam.
The title of the story is From Kabul
to Kaaba, but
I want to take you
back a few weeks before I entered Kabul.
I want to take you back to
September 11.
I bet everyone
in this room
can remember
exactly where they were,
who they were with,
what they were doing
when they heard about September 11.
The Muslims that I have spoken to
who saw the horrific
events unfold on television
told me
that at the moment
of the second plane going into the Twin
Towers and realizing it was a terrorist strike,
their first reaction
was,
please God, don't let this be the work
of Muslims.
I was in my
newsroom in Fleet Street
in London
when I noticed
people gathering around
the television
sets
that were there.
And I shouted over to somebody at the
Sunday Express and said, what's going on?
And they said, oh, there's been a terrible
accident. There's a plane crashed into one of
the Twin Towers in New York.
And there's something compelling, isn't there, about
live news
breaking and live pictures.
And I went up and joined everybody else
and watched the drama
unfold.
And then we saw the 2nd plane going
in.
I've told you about the immediate reaction
of Muslims.
My immediate reaction was
this is a big, big story. It's bigger
than the assassination
of JFK,
could even be bigger than man landing on
the moon.
I've got to get out to New York.
My reaction
was different to those of the Muslims
certainly.
By the time I got to Heathrow Airport,
the twin towers had imploded,
the Pentagon had been hit, a plane had
gone down in Pennsylvania,
America was at war, it was under siege.
Her airspace had been closed down, her borders
had been sealed,
and I physically couldn't
get into the country no matter which airline
or which route I looked at. It was
impossible.
And so I hung round Heathrow
in and out for the next 4 days.
Finally,
I got that ticket for the first flight
out to New York.
And as I was making my way
to the departure lounge,
my phone went and it was my boss,
the news editor.
He said there's been a change of plans.
We want you to go to Pakistan.
I was furious.
The contacts that I had been making were
in New York.
My clothes that I had packed were for
New York.
I'd never been to Pakistan.
I probably needed injections.
You know, what is this country? Why do
you want to send me there?
This is a Middle Eastern thing. Why don't
I go to the Middle East? And he
said, no. The story is going to unfold
in
in Pakistan
and neighboring Afghanistan.
Within 12 hours I arrived in Islamabad
dressed for New York which went down very
well as you can imagine.
And over the next few days
I
started writing about people's hopes and fears for
the impending
war which was going to happen
in neighboring Afghanistan
where the richest country in the world
was going to bomb the poorest country in
the world.
By the end of the week, 3,000
journalists from around the world
had joined me.
They were in Peshawar,
they were in Islamabad,
and they were down in Quetta.
Thousands of journalists from all over the world
from print, radio,
TV, the Internet, every form
of communication
you can imagine.
I worked for a Sunday newspaper. I was
the chief reporter of the Sunday Express,
and I was trying to second guess
what the news would be at the weekend.
You get a chance to be more analytical.
And I'm not a journalist who has ever
been spoon fed
from governments.
I don't trust them.
And so I began to think that the
best story was probably in Afghanistan.
From the ordinary people, the ordinary Afghan people,
I wanted to know what their expectations
and fears
were.
What life was like for them living under
the Taliban.
We'd read a lot of news.
According to Bush and Blair, the Taliban was
the most evil,
brutal regime in the world.
They subjugated
and oppressed women.
They killed them randomly.
The tales that were coming out were terrible.
I distinctly remember
Tony Blair saying,
these people are so evil
they won't even let their children
fly kites.
And
so I decided, well I need to find
this out for myself.
And I went to the Taliban
embassy
in Islamabad
and I tried 3 times to get a
visa
and 3 times
I was rejected.
And so in the end,
with my guides, I had got 2 or
3 guides who were helping me,
I decided to sneak into
Afghanistan.
The idea was planted in my head by
the BBC's chief correspondent, John Simpson,
who had put on a burqa
and put his toe into Afghanistan
and said, hey look, I've become invisible.
And I thought, well if the BBC's
gargantuan
correspondent
can become invisible,
then surely
it would be easy for me.
And so we devised a plan that we
would be part of a wedding party.
I would go in with 2 guides. 1
from the NWFP
province in,
Pakistan. The other one
was born in Afghanistan.
And we went in as a group. I
put on the burqa. We drove through the
Khyber Pass.
That was another eye opening experience. I imagined
the Khyber Pass to be about 30 yards
long. It was 33 miles
long.
Winding dramatic
mountainous roads.
Amazing
scenery.
Traces of British imperialism
everywhere.
And then we went right down into a
dust bowl known as Torquem,
and there
was no man's land.
We got out of the car and started
to walk towards
the Taliban checkpoint
where some very
scary looking men with great big beards and
big black turbans and Kalashnikovs
were
sitting, waiting.
Suddenly I could hear my heart thump thump
thump in my ears.
And I'm beginning to think maybe this isn't
such a good idea.
I wanted to turn round and run away,
but I'd gone beyond the point
of no return.
But it was as predicted.
I had become
invisible.
I didn't even warrant
a first look, never mind a second look,
as we crossed the Taliban checkpoint.
I think I was across
on someone's
ID papers.
And we went across,
we jumped into a taxi,
and we
headed for the 1st major city which was
Jalalabad.
I was very tense, very excited. I was
going to see
firsthand
what life was like in one of the
major cities in Afghanistan,
in this male dominated
regime
where women were oppressed
and subjugated
according to Bush and Blair.
When we pulled up at the marketplace,
I was really surprised
because there, who was doing all the shopping?
The men.
You can't get western men into supermarkets or
to do the shopping.
And there were all these men doing the
shopping. I thought, well, this is a good
sign.
Of course, the reason for that was under
the Taliban,
regime, women were not allowed to talk to
strange men,
and strange men were any men other than
a husband,
a father, a brother, or a close male
relative.
So doing something as simple as buying a
bag of sugar was virtually impossible unless you
were related
to the trader.
There were women around.
They were all wearing the burqa, and they
were in the company of their mahram or
male
companion
escort.
I sat on the edge of the marketplace
and watched.
And there were lots of Taliban around, and
people seemed very excited
and very happy.
They didn't seem as though they were about
to be bombed by the most powerful nation
in the world.
People seemed relaxed
and I was quite surprised.
Our party then went with provisions
to a tiny village, not even the size
of this hall.
And we went into the village and there
was lots of tears and laughter
as one of their own had returned, and
he brought with him his cousin from the
NWFP,
his wife, his children,
and then they said, well, who's that?
Pointing at me.
And he told them.
He told them in past 2, I didn't
understand the language, but I could tell from
the reaction
that they were not at all happy. Why
on earth have you brought a Westerner into
our midst at a time of war?
That day,
the Taliban spiritual leader, Mullah Omar, had just
announced
that anyone
helping a Westerner
would be executed.
So naturally, they were angry, they were nervous,
they were agitated.
But within half an hour,
the
natural
exuberance and hospitality
and curiosity of the Afghan people
overcame
the villages
and they started talking to me.
The first was a a young girl in
her twenties.
And I said, what do you think about
this
impending war?
And she said, I am so angry.
I should be in a hospital
by now,
qualified as a doctor,
ready to help my people, ready to save
lives.
People are going to be wounded in this
war and I could help and save them.
And I said, so what is your problem?
She said, my training was stopped
a couple of years ago.
The Taliban closed down the training center
and sent all the instructors home.
And here I am now, back home, rotting
away in this village when I should
be helping my people.
And I felt very sorry for her and
I could feel her frustration.
Here was a young ambitious girl and her
life seemed to have been put in limbo.
Just then her elder brother came in
and he, through the translator, started talking and
he also
had been training to be a doctor
at the very same medical school. And when
it had closed down for financial reasons,
he too had been sent home. So it
wasn't
just
the girl who was being affected,
her brother was as well.
And as we were communicating
with the help of the translator,
an Afghan lady
walked in
and she looked at me very carefully and
she put her hands on her hips and
she really looked me up and down.
And then she said through the translator,
have you any children?
And I said, yes I have a daughter.
She said, just one.
And I said, yes, just one.
And she pushed me
very strong. I lost my balance and went
the other way.
And she said, you English and American women,
you are all so pathetic.
All you can ever have is 1 or
2 children.
Me,
I can have 15.
And when you run out of your boy
soldiers,
I will be producing more.
Don't think that Afghan women are shy retiring
creatures.
And I thought, well, if this is what
the women are like what on earth are
the men like?
And I said, but aren't you afraid
of
America,
of American soldiers?
She said, dare one American soldier come into
my village and I will get those pots
and pans and I will fight him back
myself.
And I thought she probably would.
Then she said, look I'm really sorry
about this mishap.
We're very sorry, but this mishap in New
York, it has nothing to do with us.
And she kept calling
911
a mishap.
And I thought,
you know, this is really provocative, this is
so offensive, this is insulting, 6,000 plus people
have died, that's what we thought at the
time,
and you're calling it a mishap.
And then I realized
that under the Taliban, televisions were banned.
Nobody
saw the dramatic images that we saw which
were played on our TVs
every day, day in day out for more
than 2, 3 weeks.
Whipping up the anger and the hysteria and
the fear,
watching the towers being hit, the towers imploding.
They didn't see any of that.
They lived in single story buildings.
So trying to convey to them the full
horror
of someone trying to jump from the 101st
floor rather than face the inferno inside
was very very difficult.
And that is why
the Afghan people referred to
9:11 as a mishap.
But she said we're very sad but what
has this got to do with us? Why
do the Americans
want to bomb us?
We didn't do that.
And her argument had some logic to it.
As the afternoon progressed I could tell that
people were getting more and more nervous by
my presence in the village and we
took some photographs after some persuasion
and then we left. We thought we'll head
back early.
But by the time we got back to
Torkham, the gates had closed, these great big
metal gates,
and we couldn't get through.
Apparently,
Pakistan had sealed the border. They weren't letting
anybody
in or out.
We stayed overnight and the next morning we
went back to the
area of Torquem, and again
the gates were closed.
And I said to my guides, if I
don't get back by a certain time my
news editor will raise the alarm
and there will be all sorts of panic.
And one of the guides said, well, we
can go through a smuggling route.
And my eyes lit up at this. I
thought this is very exciting.
This will give me something to write about
and add to the humanitarian
report that I will be doing and I
said, great.
Okay. And I imagine that we'd be going
through
narrow mountain passes and ducking from bush to
bush, and it would be really
exciting
because
the border with Afghanistan
is about 1400
kilometers long and there are said to be
about 300, 400 smuggling routes. So you can
imagine how
porous
the border is.
And so we went to this area called
Dour Barber
but there was nothing
secretive about it. In fact, there was probably
more people in Doubaba
than there are in this room tonight.
There were camel traders, there were donkey traders,
there were people
selling refreshments,
people selling carpets,
There were Afghan families with all their goods
packed into handcarts
heading
towards Pakistan.
Unable to bear facing yet another war in
their country,
wanting to get to the safety of Pakistan.
And there were lots of young men
striding
over from Pakistan
looking for Taliban recruiting officers because they wanted
to sign up and fight with the Taliban
against the great Satan,
as they referred to America.
By this time,
the Afghan shoes I had been wearing were
cutting into my feet and they were bleeding
and sore,
And I complained, and one of my guides
said, well, we're only 10 minutes away from
the border, but we can
go by donkey.
And he said, can you ride a donkey?
I thought, can I ride a donkey? You
know, I can ride a horse, I can
jump with a horse. Look at these donkeys,
they're smaller.
They're the same shape and size. It's same
shape, you know, and they they look more
or less the same but they're smaller, probably
easier to control. Of course, I can ride
a donkey.
So
we set off and did a deal with,
this man. I never understood how we were
hiring it, how he was going to get
it back, but
he was happy to part with the donkey.
And I got on its back.
Now I don't know if it sensed that
it had an infidel on its back or
what, but it just bolted.
And it tore through this area.
And my feet were waving, my arms were
waving,
the wind caught the burqa that I was
wearing
and billowed the burqa which made the creature
even more frightened and it ran even faster.
I was screaming my arms like this. I
must have looked like a giant bat
trying to balance on this
wretched beast which was out of control.
And as I move forward to try
and get hold of the reins just to
stop it,
the one piece of equipment that I had
taken with me,
a camera
banned under the Taliban,
slipped out of the folds of my burqa
right into the passing view of a Taliban
soldier.
He saw this and went crazy.
Now I don't know
whether the donkey
stopped and threw me off,
whether he stopped the donkey and pulled me
off.
What happened, I really can't remember. All I
remember is hitting the ground at a great
rate of speed
and then picking myself up. And as I
drew myself up,
I looked straight into the face of this
Taliban
soldier through the grill
of my burqa.
And he was screaming
and shouting
at me.
When I got back to London,
some of my girlfriends said,
what was going through your mind at that
precise moment when you knew the game was
up?
And I said, well,
for a nanosecond,
and I said it was a nanosecond,
I looked at this Taliban
soldier and I thought, my goodness, you're gorgeous.
He had
the most amazing green
emerald eyes.
Very high cheekbones
and a great big beard with a life
of its own. Very very striking. But as
I say, it was a nanosecond.
And then I thought, oh,
I've been caught.
So I took my camera off and I
handed it to him. And then I closed
my eyes waiting to be
shot in the head.
And when I opened my eyes after a
few seconds, he'd gone.
He'd gone over to the man who hired
the donkeys. He wanted to know
who is in charge of this woman.
And then he would get to the bottom
of the camera.
I was delighted. I thought I can get
away. He still doesn't realize that there's a
westerner
under the burqa.
And I turned and went to attach myself
to another group
to follow them
over the border.
And as I walked away,
I looked behind and by this time a
crowd of about a 100 men had surrounded
my 2 guides.
And the soldier was in the middle and
he's screaming and shouting and waving the camera
at him.
1 of the guides had been smacked across
the face and he had a * nose,
and the other one was trying to calm
down
the situation.
And I looked and I thought, I can't
leave them behind.
Although we had made an agreement that if
things did go pear shaped, none of us
knew each other,
I couldn't abandon them. And so I went
back.
And I tried to push my way through
these very angry men.
And they pushed me back. This was man's
business. It had nothing to do with a
woman.
So in the end, I
removed my burger
and said in a very loud voice, will
somebody
let me through?
You could have heard a pin drop.
And then there was a parting like the
Red Sea
as I walked towards the handsome soldier who
by this time was looking really gormless because
his jaw just dropped
as he saw a westerner,
a blonde haired, blue eyed come towards him.
And I thought he is going to be
so happy
to have got his hands on a westerner
that he'll forget all about my 2 guides.
And as I walked, I shot them a
sideways glance.
And I could see by the full horror
on their face
that just when they thought things couldn't get
any worse,
they had.
I had emerged.
I went up to the soldier, demanded the
return
of my camera,
and once he'd recovered,
he got the 3 of us and we
were bundled into a vehicle
and taken off in the direction
of Jalalabad.
During the
journey,
the driver and the Taliban soldier had a
very fierce exchange, and they kept looking back
at me
and arguing and looking back. And suddenly, the
driver did an emergency
stop.
The soldier asked me to get out of
the car.
And then
he took me to this
raised piece of ground
and asked me to stand on it
from the way he was motioning. So I
stood on this
raised piece of ground
and then he went off. He went marching
off to my left and I thought, where's
he gone?
And I'm standing there, rigid with fear,
don't move on this little tiny hill.
And I'm looking around and then I all
I can see
are stones and pebbles and rocks.
And I thought,
this is the stoning corner.
I'm going to be stoned. He's gone off
to get a crowd.
He's probably gone off somewhere to say, hey,
I've got a westerner stoning in 10 minutes.
So I'm standing there and I'm looking down,
and all I could see was blood red
nail varnish coming up from my toes. I'd
lost my socks and shoes in the melee.
And I thought, oh no.
Nail varnish is banned under the Taliban. If
they see my toes they'll probably chop them
off 1 by 1. So I try to
cover
my toes
as well.
And I don't know what it is about
Afghanistan.
The place can be deserted one minute
and in the next 20 seconds you can
have a crowd.
And about 20 seconds later, there were about
80
scary looking men
staring back at me,
and they were getting closer
and closer.
Of course, I'm thinking that they're getting closer
and closer
so they can take a good aim when
the stoning starts.
And I'm looking around at them and trying
to find
a kind face,
maybe a hero,
somebody
who will come to my defense,
and I couldn't see one. Everybody just looked
really hostile.
Of course, the reason why they were getting
closer and closer
was to have a better look. Because
in
Taliban ruled Afghanistan,
no man saw another woman's face unless she
was a mother, a sister, or a daughter,
or a close female relative.
So seeing me would be a bit like
seeing a panda in the zoo for the
first time.
So they were getting closer. Of course, I'm
thinking they're getting closer so they can take
aim when the stoning starts.
I mean, we can laugh about it now,
but I really thought
that the final
minutes of my life were being played out
in this Godforsaken
area.
And as I looked around,
they say that your life flashes before you.
Mine didn't. I'm just thinking how can I
get out of this situation?
And then I remembered
my time as a Sunday school teacher.
And there was a biblical scene
where Jesus had said at a stoning, let
him without sin
cast the first stone.
So I thought, right,
I'm going to say that.
Of course it never occurred to me they
wouldn't be able to understand me.
But I thought, no, I'm going to say,
okay then, bring it on, but let him
without sin cast the first stone. And so
I'm playing this out in my mind, and
then I'm looking round, and
I thought, no, there's probably some pious so
and so at the back saying, that's me,
and he'll start the stoning.
So all of this is going through my
mind
when suddenly
the Taliban soldier returns
and he has with him a woman wearing
a burqa.
She comes up behind me and turns me
around very briskly
and starts to frisk me.
And I thought, oh, they're not going to
kill me. Well, not just yet anyway. They're
trying to find out
if I'm carrying any weapons.
And isn't it strange that he's gone off
to get a woman? You know, why wouldn't
he just search me himself?
Obviously, showing more courtesy than British police.
And so
all the fear that I had felt and
the terror just melted away with relief, and
then I became very angry.
Those men had made me feel as though
I was going to die.
So I pulled away from the Afghan woman
and I swung around at these
wretched men.
And I was wearing, I want you to
picture the scene. My burqa had gone but
I was wearing a shalwar kameez,
the
trousers
and an orange dress down to the knees.
And I swung around at these men very
angry and I said, I am not carrying
any weapons.
And to emphasize this, I picked up the
hem of my dress and said, look.
Well, there was a collective sharp intake of
breath.
And then they all turned round and ran
as though the devil was snapping at their
heels.
I don't know if any of you have
seen the Carry On film where the Scottish
regiment lift up their kilts at the natives
and they run off, but it was the
same effect.
Of course, this was highly inappropriate
behavior for a woman in Afghanistan,
as I was to find out.
And the lady wearing the burka swung me
back round and whacked me across the face.
She was in such a state of shock
at this vulgar
display.
Anyway, having established that I'm not carrying any
weapons, I was then bundled back into the
car and driven off to Jalalabad.
I was taken into the intelligence headquarters and
introduced to the head of intelligence
who understood
a little bit of English.
I apologized
for causing any inconvenience
and
he asked me to
write down my personal details and telephone contacts
to prove that I was
a journalist.
After I had done that,
he said, we are about to eat.
You must have something to eat. And I
said, well, that's very kind but I need
to use the telephone
first.
And he said, no. You can't use the
phone.
So I said, in that case,
I won't eat either as a guest or
a prisoner of the Taliban until I can
use the phone.
And what started then was the war of
attrition, which was to last 10 days.
Now you would think that the most evil
brutal regime in the world
couldn't care less
if one of their prisoners had gone on
hunger strike,
but these men were very very upset.
Despite
my protest
saying I'm not eating,
every morning, noon, and night, they would bring
me food. They would lay out a cloth
on the floor, beautiful
carpeted floor, by the way.
And, they would put down some bread,
some stew,
and,
some rice.
And they would bring in a jug of
water and a bowl
and they would wash my hands and they
would tell me
in broken English, you are our sister,
you are our guest,
we want you to be happy.
And I thought, what sort of evil brutal
regime is this? Don't they understand the job
description?
And I'm thinking, you know,
this is just a trick. They're trying to
soften me up. And then the really bad
guys will come in with the
electrodes.
In fact, isn't it strange?
Everything
that I thought would have happened to me
under this so called savage primitive regime
happened
to,
prisoners in Abu Ghraib, in Guantanamo
Bay, and other US holding facilities,
which always prompts me to say, thank God
I was captured by the most evil brutal
regime in the world and not by the
Americans.
By the 3rd day,
they called the doctor. Not that I was
feeling unwell at all but they called the
doctor and he came, a little man who
trained in Germany.
And he looked in my eyes, my ear,
took my pulse,
looked in my mouth, and I thought,
they do this, don't they, on death row
in Texas just before they're going to execute
somebody. They like to make sure
that they're fit and healthy.
And then he took my blood pressure.
And something bothered him
because he then took it again.
And I said, yes, I know I have
high blood pressure.
And he said, no you don't. Your blood
pressure is normal.
I said, don't be so ridiculous.
It can't be normal. You know, I'm about
to be killed by the Taliban. How on
earth is my blood pressure
normal?
And he said, look, and he did it
again.
And it was normal.
I said, there you are. 3 days with
the Taliban and you've cured my blood pressure.
Thank you very much.
On the 5th day,
there was a little guy called Hamid,
the doctor's son actually, who acted as the
translator and he came running into my room
very very excited.
He said, you are on the front page
of the papers.
And he brought in the weekly
paper from Jalalabad.
And although photographs were banned under the Taliban,
there were two pictures of me from Reuters
on the front page
with a little story and headlines that took
over half the page.
The headlines looked longer than the story.
And I said, what does the headline say?
And he read it out and he said,
it says
the Taliban has cured Yvonne, released blood pressure
and she's very happy.
Not the catchiest of headlines.
During those 6 days
in Jalalabad
a procession
of very
scary,
fierce looking men came into the room and
through Hamid
asked me questions and the interrogations
would go on and on until maybe 8,
9 o'clock at night.
They never physically
threatened me.
The worst thing that they said to me
was if you don't tell us the truth,
you will be here for 20 years.
I assured them that they would get sick
long before I did.
And
I had,
decided on quite a risky strategy really. I
had decided to be the prisoner from *.
I had bought into the propaganda,
you see, that this was the most evil
brutal regime in the world, and it didn't
matter what I said or did, they were
going to kill me at the end of
the day
when they wanted to.
And so I just thought if I'm nice,
they're gonna kill me. If I'm nasty, they're
gonna kill me. Well, I'm just gonna go
down fighting. And so I was very
abusive and aggressive.
And the harder I pushed them,
the nicer they were. And they would say,
why are you angry?
You are our guest.
You are our sister.
Hamid had to translate my words.
And one day he said to me,
I am terrified of these people and you
should be as well. And it's not nice
for me to translate your words. I get
scared.
On the 6th day,
Hamad came to see me and his face
was nearly black with fear. His mouth was
so dry he could hardly talk.
And he said, you have a very important
visitor.
And I said, who is it? He said,
I can't tell you but you must be
respectful.
I said, well, who is it? Is it
Mullah Omar? And he said, please
just be respectful.
You have to show some respect.
This is a very very
important person.
So I'm thinking I wonder who it can
be.
10 minutes later there was a knock on
the door.
Although I was the prisoner, I had my
own key. And so
I unlocked the door,
opened it,
Hamad stood aside,
and there in front of me
was a man who made my blood run
cold.
The hair on the back of my neck
lifted.
For 6 days I had avoided talking about
religion,
and there in front of me was a
religious cleric, a Milano.
And everything in Afghanistan
is dirty, ripped, and torn, and dusty.
He was wearing an immaculate
ivory gown, one which went right down to
the ground. The Taliban's clothes were above their
ankles.
This guy's clothes were right down to the
ground. You couldn't see his feet. And he
had a great big
ivory turban.
A very
modest beard
by Afghan standards.
Very light brown modest beard
and light brown eyes.
And he had beads which he moved, like
rosary beads which he moved 2 at a
time.
And there was something else
about him
that I thought was weird.
And when I mentioned it to my first
Muslim crowd,
a few of them went alhamdulillah.
When I told them, I said there was
something really weird
about this guy. He had a shine on
his face.
It was like a light on the inside
coming out.
I've never seen anything like it before.
And I was told
by my Muslim friends back in London,
this is the nur,
the light
that comes out of somebody who is very
pious,
very practicing,
a very good person.
I didn't know that at the time. I
just thought there's something weird and spooky
about this guy.
After I recovered,
I moved aside and invited him into
my
room. And he was so graceful and elegant.
He didn't even seem to walk. He just
glided in
and glided down.
And I sat
opposite him and Hamid acted as the translator.
And he said,
what is your religion?
And I thought, oh, here we go.
I said, I'm a Christian.
He said, yes, but what sort of Christian?
Are you a Roman Catholic? Are you a
Protestant?
I said, I'm a Protestant
from the Church of England.
And he's smiling and moving his beads and
he said, and what do you think
of Islam?
Oh, I said, it's fantastic.
It's absolutely
wonderful.
Of course, I knew nothing about Islam,
very little. And the little that I knew
was totally wrong as it turned out. And
I went
off in praise for 2 minutes of this
faith that I knew so little about.
And he smiled and he moved his beads
and then
when I finally
stopped
running out of adjectives,
he said,
Islam
is a beautiful
religion.
I couldn't agree more. And then again I
ran off in praise of Islam.
And he smiled as he listened
and Hamid translated.
And I said, do you know
the people around here
are so
passionate about their faith that they pray
5 times a day. I know because I've
watched and counted it. And he looked. He
must have thought you stupid woman, but I
didn't realize that Muslims are expected to pray
5 times a day.
So he moved his beads
and then he said, so
you would like to convert.
And I thought he's led me into a
blind alley here.
If I say yes, I'll convert,
he'll accuse me of being fickle and insincere
and he'll say take her away and have
her stoned.
If I say, no, I'm not interested,
he'll say, how dare you insult Islam. Take
her away and have her stoned.
So I'm
trying to come up with the
right answer.
And then in the end I said, look
I can't make such a life changing decision
while I'm in prison
but
if you let me go, I promise I
will read the Quran
and I will study Islam.
And he smiled and he didn't say anything
more. And he rose up and he glided
out.
Hamad went scuttling after him.
And he returned a few minutes later
and he said,
you're going.
You're going home on a red crescent plane.
Well, I punched the air and congratulated
myself for having
dealt with this Milana, this religious man
in such a clever way.
And within a few minutes,
I
the little goods that I had accrued were
in a plastic bag,
and off I was in a truck
heading for Kabul.
7 hours later,
after a dusty, bumpy
ride,
we came into Kabul
and drove straight past the airport.
But I was okay. I just thought, well,
there are other Westerners being held by the
Taliban.
We're probably gonna pick them up. All I
know is that I'm going home on a
Red Crescent plane.
That night, I was to find out another
aspect to the character
of the Afghan people.
They don't like giving you bad news.
They don't like telling you anything that will
upset you or cause an adverse reaction.
And so we drove past the airport,
and then we pulled into a really
grim prison. Everything that you would imagine
a 3rd world prison
to be.
And I was asked to get out and
I got out and we walked down this
dark dingy corridor
and then they pushed open this little metal
door with a little spy hole in it.
And there, sitting on a concrete floor, were
2 Afghan women, 1 with a babe in
arms and the other one heavily pregnant.
And they said,
tonight you will stay here. And I said,
no, no, no, no. You've made a mistake.
I am going home
on a Red Crescent plane.
Of course the thing is when you
lead someone on,
you have to deliver the bad news at
some point and so the bad news was
delivered to me then. You're going nowhere. You
were a bad woman. You entered our country
illegally
without a passport.
You have to be punished.
I screamed and shouted there was no way
I was going to go into this cell
and to get me out and get me
to the airport.
And I said to them, you can't do
this to me, I'm British.
And they smiled.
Just then
another
cell door opened
and 6 women wearing hijabs
came out.
And one of them said to me, are
you from the Red Cross?
I said, you speak English? And she said,
well, I'm Australian.
These 3 are Germans and the other 2
are Americans. And I went, oh my God,
you're the Christians, the
charity workers who were locked up for trying
to convert Muslims to Christianity.
And they said yes. And I said, look,
there's been a terrible mistake. I'm supposed to
be going home on a Red Crescent plane.
Will you tell these people?
And the women all spoke the language.
And I could tell by the
heated conversation
and the expressions on everyone's face that I
was going nowhere that night, certainly
not on a Red Crescent plane.
Diana Thomas, the Australian girl said to me,
look,
why don't you stay in our cell tonight
and then
we can sort this mess out later.
And in truth, I hadn't had any female
company for over 6
days. These girls spoke my language.
Furthermore,
if I ever got out of this *
hole,
I might have an even better story
to tell. So I said, yes, okay.
And I
followed them
into their cell.
And I looked around and it was so
grim. It's everything
you would think a third world prison to
be.
And suddenly I broke down and I started
to cry. The first
tears that I had cried
since my captivity.
And I said, well the Taliban have finally
broken me. And amid the sobbing,
I felt for my cigarettes.
Because although
cigarettes were banned under the Taliban, when they
realized I smoked, they gave me lots of
cigarettes.
So I pulled out my cigarettes
and I was about to light up when
I just said, oh, does anybody
mind if I smoke?
And the tears were coming down and I'm
sobbing
and about to light my cigarette
when they all said, yes, this is a
no smoking cell.
How could I find the only no smoking
cell in Asia? How unlucky can you get?
They said, look, if you must smoke, go
outside into the courtyard.
We're about to have a meeting.
Suddenly,
my nicotine craving went, and I said, a
meeting? And they said, yes, we have 2
meetings a day.
And I'm looking around, I'm thinking,
what happens around here
that they have 2 meetings a day?
It's the escape committee.
They're digging a tunnel and this is a
progress report.
So I said, do you mind if I
listen in
to your meeting? And they said, no, not
at all.
So I suddenly forgot about my cigarettes for
the time being, and I sat on the
edge of this bunk bed,
and the 6 girls
sat in a circle on the floor.
And then they pulled out their bibles.
And I'm thinking I don't believe this.
They have been charged under Sharia law with
trying to convert Muslims to Christianity.
They're in serious trouble.
They could be
executed.
And now they're getting their Bibles out. And
I'm looking at the door expecting the Taliban
to come bursting in
and beat them up or do something horrible
to them,
and nothing happened.
Of course as I
did
read the Quran later, it states quite specifically
that we must, as Muslims,
protect people of the book,
I. E. Jews and Christians, and we must
allow them to carry on and carry out
and perform their faith. And this is exactly
what the Taliban were allowing the Christians to
do, although
I didn't realize it at the time.
So they
read
from the
Bible very loudly
a passage appropriate
to their
position.
And after 20 minutes they put their Bibles
down and pulled out
hand written pieces of paper.
And then they
started to sing.
Now I can tell you as, you know,
I was
a a practicing Christian
in those days, and when I say practicing,
I probably went to church maybe twice a
month, which in some people's eyes is bordering
on fanaticism.
And we would sing, you know, these Victorian
hymns,
and
and
they started singing,
not Victorian hymns.
We are talking
very loud,
very robust,
happy clappy,
full on Southern Baptist style,
hallelujah
type singing.
So this started and at that point, I
went outside into the courtyard
and I smoked 3 cigarettes off the trot.
The ezam, the call to prayer
started and I thought I don't believe it.
I've got Muslims
on that side of the wall, Christian
fundamentalists
in that cell. No wonder
that religious cleric
was smiling as he left me. He probably
thought, she won't convert? Well, feed her to
the Christians.
Although I make fun of them, I have
to say that
that those 6 girls were incredibly strong and
their faith did get them through their ordeal
which lasted much much longer
than mine.
After they'd finished
singing,
they then started praying.
And again,
it was really full on, in your face,
hallelujah
type praying. In fact, at one point, they
were all shouting different things. And at one
point, I could hear one of the girls,
I think it was the American girl, Heather,
shouting,
lord Jesus,
show me the way out of here.
And I have a very gallows sense of
humor and I felt like shouting back straight
down the corridor and turn left but there's
a great big talob there.
That night,
I slept on
this concrete floor with a very wafer thin
mattress.
And when I woke up the next morning,
I was given a change of clothes.
In fact,
I'm wearing
the prison clothes
now.
Nobody
put me in an orange jumpsuit,
shaved, shackled or abused me or raped me
or sodomized me or videoed me for the
gratification
or pleasure
of others later on.
As you can see,
from what I'm saying,
my experience was completely different to those who
fell into the hands of the Americans.
So that morning, a new change of clothes,
so I set about washing the old ones.
And one of the German girls took me
into the courtyard
and gave me a metal bucket,
and took me to a hand pump. And
she said, you can get your water from
there.
And I'm looking at this contraption which looked
as though it had come from one of
those old western movies,
and I started
cranking it.
And eventually some water came out and I'm
saying, this is amazing.
How do they heat it underground?
And she started laughing. She said, it's cold.
I was given a pumice stone
and,
some
soap flakes, and and I set about
washing,
my clothes.
And I then hung them on the washing
line
in the
prison courtyard.
Within 5 minutes, I'm sitting trying to enjoy
the last days of the summer sun and
the
prison governor came in.
A great big man with a huge beard
and really
a very scary looking dude.
And he came in
and in broken English he said to me,
he growled at me,
remove those garments.
And I'm looking, I said it's my washing.
Remove them now. And I said I can't.
It's my washing. I am washing my clothes.
This is a washing line. We dry our
clothes on the washing line.
Well, cover them up.
And I'm looking, I said, you stupid man.
You've obviously never done the washing in your
life. How on earth will it dry
if it's covered up?
So he stood there for a couple of
moments and then he said,
well, take those items down. And he looked
the other way and sort of pointed.
And I realized he was talking
about my underwear.
And I said,
no.
This is the female wing of the prison.
If you don't like what you see,
clear off.
He said, remove them. And I said, no.
If you don't like them, you remove them.
And I thought he was going to explode
on the spot.
He then went storming off,
and he returned
15 minutes later
with the deputy
foreign minister
of Afghanistan.
These people are about to be bombed by
the most powerful country on earth,
and
a diplomatic
incident was unfolding as a result of my
underwear.
I don't want to embarrass the men here,
but I mean, we're not talking anything small,
salacious, and lacy. We're talking big, comfortable, Bridget
Jones.
So the deputy foreign minister
said to me, will you please remove your
undergarments
from the line?
And I said, look,
this is the female wing of the prison.
There are no male prisoners. The only men
around at the moment are you 2. If
you clear off, there will be no men.
By the time they're dried, nobody's gonna be
any the wiser.
He said, yes, but
the Taliban soldiers
live above the female wing of the prison.
And if they look out
and see those things,
they'll have impure thoughts.
I'm looking at my underwear in a new
light now.
I said, there's a very easy solution to
this.
He said, I knew there would be. I
said, tell your men not to look out
of the window.
No. No. That's impossible.
I thought I cannot believe this.
You know,
America
didn't need to fly over in B 50
twos and bomb these people.
They should have just parachuted in a regiment
of women soldiers
waving their underwear,
and the Taliban would have gone.
But it gives you a remarkable
insight
into
the modesty
of these people
and the way they felt about
issues
like women's underwear.
So
the argument
continued
and went on long after the clothes
had dried.
And nobody
emerged as a real winner, but I did
get my dry clothes back.
The next day,
the 9th day, I was feeling really
crotchety.
I'd had,
3 or 4 really rousing
sessions with the,
the the Christian services.
And in fact, you know, although the Taliban
had, banned singing and they banned music, they
allowed them to sing,
but they drew the line as music.
And I am eternally grateful to this day
that they confiscated
their tambourines and guitars.
But,
so I'm feeling really wretched and bad tempered,
and and thinking I'm never gonna get out
of this place. I can't take much more
of this.
And the deputy foreign minister returned
with his sidekick, a man I called the
smiling
assassin.
And he said, we want to ask you
a few more questions.
And I said, no. I'm done with,
answering any more questions. I'm finished with you
people.
I've had enough.
And,
I then launched into
a series of insults and curses
and swearing,
And then I rounded it off with something
that I've never done in my life before,
I've never done since, and you would get
sent off a football pitch for doing it.
I spattered them.
And then I went into my cell and
I started
shaking. And a couple of the Christian girls
said,
did you just do
what we thought you did? And I said,
yes.
I've gone beyond the line. I've gone beyond
the wire. I've pushed it and pushed it,
and
I'm in serious trouble now. I can sense
it.
And just then, one of the female
prison officers came in
and which was translated for me later, and
she said, tell the English woman she is
going to be flogged
because she cannot do this to high ranking
people.
So I'm standing there rigid with fear,
cursing me and my
big mouth, and wondering
is there going to be a public flogging?
Will Al Jazeera be there to record it?
You know, what what is what is gonna
happen?
And I'm standing there rigid with fear,
and about 10, 15 minutes later,
we heard the gates open in the courtyard.
And Heather, one of the American girls, came
running in and she said,
they've returned.
Yvonne is going to be flogged.
And just then, 3 of the Christians threw
themselves down at me and grabbed onto my
clothes
and started saying, Lord Jesus, don't let Yvonne
feel any pain. And I'm standing there looking
at them thinking, you know, you're making it
worse.
And just then the smiling
assassin
walked in
and he had in his hand
the one thing that I wanted.
The very thing
I had gone on hunger strike for 9
days earlier. He had in his hand a
satellite phone.
And he strutted around the cell
and showed off this satellite
phone.
And he said,
all of you
all of you can ring home. You can
all ring your families
today.
Apart from her, the English woman, she's horrible
and she spat at us and she has
to be punished.
So it's interesting. This is how
the most evil brutal regime in the world
decided to punish me.
They allowed my cellmates
to ring home, which was fantastic
for the Germans. They hadn't and and all
of them, they hadn't spoken to their family
for 2 months. It was an opportunity
to ring home and say, look, we're okay.
We're we're holding out.
And then one of the German girls went
to the smiling assassin and made a special
plea and said, look,
Yvonne needs to talk to her daughter. Please
let her call home. And he said, no.
She's a horrible woman. She has to be
punished.
And as I say, that was my punishment,
which I,
looking back,
think,
you know, shows a degree of, wisdom and
insight
on their part which is more than can
be said for my behavior, and my only
mitigation is, look, I haven't eaten for 9
days and and I was starting to get
fractures.
That afternoon,
the,
senior officers returned and they removed me without
warning,
got my things together, and said, you're going.
And then they took me out of the
prison and upstairs into the Taliban sleeping quarters,
and one of the senior officers
had vacated his room and said, you complained
about the prison downstairs.
Is this good enough for you?
And it was a very nice room by
Afghan standards.
And he said, tomorrow
you will go home,
Insha'Allah.
And I said, what is this Inshallah you
keep using at the end of every sentence
and it never ever happens.
Of course I now know Inshallah
means God willing.
And they put me in this room. They
gave me the key.
I locked myself in.
I had a fantastic view over the city
of Kabul,
looking right up to Kabul Hill where all
the anti aircraft units were.
And I
sat on the bed
contemplating
my future wondering
if and when I'd ever get out. They
kept saying tomorrow you will go home Insha'Allah,
but Insha'Allah
it never happened.
And so I was wondering how genuine
they actually were.
Why had they removed me from the Christians?
Was this my last night
on
earth? Would they
execute me tomorrow?
I really didn't know all of this was
going through
my mind and then suddenly there was a
huge
rip as though somebody had just torn the
sky open.
And there was a great big light
and it was the start of the war.
That night, America and Britain
dropped 50 cruise missiles
on Kabul.
You can hear a cruise missile from 20
miles away. These were coming within quarter of
a mile of the prison.
I had covered
walls before
and I don't know why
it had not occurred to me then but
it certainly occurred to me that night.
These bombs don't discriminate. There's nowhere to run.
There's nowhere to hide.
Civilian,
military,
man, woman, child, these bombs cannot tell the
difference.
I'm going to be blown apart by a
British bomb. I've got no doubt Tony Blair
will blame the Taliban
and that will be the end of that.
And it was truly
terrifying, and I also thought there is no
way
the Taliban will let me go now. Absolutely
no way at all.
And the next morning,
there was a knock on my door and
I was told,
please there is a vehicle outside,
we are going to release you.
I couldn't believe it.
But sure enough, there was a vehicle, they
put me in it. We drove down
from Kabul
through Jalalabad,
down to Torkum,
and eventually,
after some shenanigans,
I was handed over to the
Pakistan
authorities.
And as I walked back across
no man's land,
the camera lights went up
and the journalists
started shouting,
how did the Taliban treat you?
And in truth,
up until the point that I was released,
I still didn't trust them 1 inch.
And I thought everything that they were trying
to do had a hidden motive.
It was only at the point that they
released me
that I thought,
you know what, they were quite an honorable
bunch of guys.
So when this journalist shouted at me,
how did the Taliban treat you?
I thought for a while and then I
said,
with respect and courtesy,
this is not what the western media wanted.
The western media wanted Abu grape tales. They
wanted abuse,
*, torture.
They wanted to see scars.
They wanted to see tears.
There was nothing nothing
I could give them other than the truth.
And sadly,
for some people, the truth is never enough.
When I got back
to London,
about 2 weeks later,
one of my guides on the Pakistan side
called me
and he said, madam,
the village that you visited
has been bombed by the Americans.
That was the village Kharma, which is smaller
than this hall we're in now.
And I said, look, Pasha, I know these
terrible things happen
in the fog of war.
And
it's awful, but these accidents do happen.
And he said, but madam,
how can you accidentally
bomb a village
the size of Karma
3
days
running?
Now when the Americans were telling us all
about their
strategic
strikes, their surgical strikes,
their B 52 bombers coming at 30,000
feet, karma wouldn't have even looked
like a dot
from 30,000
feet.
It was quite clear to me
that this was indiscriminate
bombing of civilian areas.
And in many ways, the Taliban were to
blame because they kicked out all of the
Western journalists. Whatever you think about journalists,
we do have our our functions and our
role. We are the eyes, the ears, the
witnesses.
And by kicking out all of the Western
journalists, they ensured
that Britain and America
could and would
bomb indiscriminately
across the country,
slaughtering innocent civilians,
which they did.
That propelled me into the anti war movement
and made me become very very active
as a as an anti war
campaigner.
At that same time, I remembered
the promise that I had given to the
religious cleric.
And I thought, well, against all the odds,
they kept their word. While they hung on
to the Christians, they let me go.
And really,
I should keep my promise now.
And I started
to read the Quran.
Very soon, groups of Muslims found out and
somebody gave me a wonderful English translation by
Aya Savali
with a,
an index in the back.
So I thought, great. I'll get this over
and done with very quickly. I'm going to
cherry pick and I'm going to read all
about
the subjugation
and oppression of women,
and what promotes people to slam
planes into towers.
So I started
cherry picking and going through all the women's
issues.
And then I had other Islamic literature to
support my reading of the Quran.
I couldn't believe what I was reading.
The Quran makes it perfectly clear,
crystal clear, no two ways about it, women
are equal in spirituality,
worth, and education.
Furthermore,
the first convert to Islam was a woman.
The first martyr to Islam
was a woman.
Women played major roles
right from day 1
in Islam.
They fought alongside the men. The prophet, peace
be upon him, picked out one particular woman
and singled her out for praise during a
battle, the battle of Ehud. And he said,
everywhere I looked this woman was there protecting
me, fighting with me, fighting alongside me.
I thought, where
have we got this idea that women are
oppressed and subjugated?
Where do we get it from?
Who
put the poison
in our minds?
I then looked
at property rights, inheritance rights,
divorce rights.
What's yours is yours, what's his is half
of yours.
Yeah? Brilliant.
Much of it could have been written by
a Californian
lawyer. In fact, this is from where they
probably get their inspiration.
All these tales in the tabloids
about the superstars
having
prenuptial
contracts and teams of lawyers drawing up and
thrashing out these prenuptial
contracts,
They were available to Muslim women from day
1.
And so I began to
see Islam
in a totally different light.
And I thought, yes okay. This is great
but what are the people like?
And so I went out into the Muslim
communities
specifically to meet the sisters.
And it didn't matter where I went in
the world, whether it was Pakistan,
and,
or whether it was Saudi,
or Canada, or America,
or Australia,
and now New Zealand,
The Muslim women I have met,
whether they have been formally educated or not,
are
resilient,
strong,
politicized,
internationally
aware,
multi skilled, multi talented.
A few years ago I would have looked
in this room and picked out everyone wearing
a hijab and I would have thought, oh,
look at those poor oppressed
women. How did they manage to sneak out
of the home to come here?
Now I'm looking and I'm trying to work
out who is the engineer, who is the
doctor,
who is the lawyer, who is the teacher,
who is doing the PHD, who's doing the
MA, who's raising kids at the same time
supporting their man, running a business, a charity,
who is the backbone of the community,
I see incredibly
diverse
women.
And I remember
a sister in Canada who said to me,
Yvonne,
my
head might be covered but my mind is
not.
And the most valuable lesson that I learned
from the sisters that I met is never
ever again will I judge a person's freedoms
and liberties
by the length of their skirt.
So this was wonderful.
The other thing that I learned about the
Muslim community
is it has an incredibly
gossipy network.
And I could
visit somebody in Glasgow
one day,
and by the next morning, I'd get a
phone call from somebody in Karachi saying I
hear you were in Scotland.
How did it go?
The communication
is amazing,
but sometimes
there were Chinese whispers and people
had false information that I had taken my
shahada, the oath to become a Muslim.
And I remember
one day, I'm sure many of you in
this hall
will have at least heard the name.
One day I got a phone call from
Sheikh Abu Hamza Al Masri,
the fire and brimstone
cleric from Finsbury Park mosque
who is currently detained at her majesty's pleasure
in Belmarsh.
And he rang me up
and he said,
sister Yvonne,
welcome to Islam.
And I said, well thank you very much.
However, I
hate to disappoint you but you're a wee
bit premature.
I haven't taken my shahada yet but, you
know, I will get there Insha Allah.
And he said, well take your time. This
is going to be the most important decision
you ever make in your life. Don't be
rushed into it. Don't be pressurized into it.
Make sure that you read
as much as you can.
Be convinced
before
you take your shahada.
We are all making dua, prayer for you.
And I thought I can't believe that this
is the fire and brimstone cleric from Finsbury
Park Mosque.
The
tabloids love to hate him,
because of his hooks and his
eye patch and they really have demonized him.
And I said, well, thank you very much
for your understanding.
I will keep you informed of my progress.
And I was just about to close the
line
when he said, well, there's just one thing
I want you to know.
And I said, well, what's that? He said,
well,
if you go out tomorrow
and you're hit by a bus,
you will go straight to hellfire.
I said, thank you.
And closed the line. And that made me
nervous.
It made me very nervous. So I
took a copy of the Shahada
and I carried it round with me.
And I would address meetings like this and
I would say, look, if you come across
an accident and you hear someone shouting
for 2 Muslim witnesses,
please come running fast because it's me trying
to get in before it's too late.
Happily,
there was no such accident.
And on June 30th,
in 2003,
at 11:30
in the morning,
I took my Shahada
and declared my belief that there is only
one God and that Muhammad, peace be upon
him, is his messenger.
And I joined then, what I consider to
be the biggest and the best family in
the world.
And I know that wherever
I go in the world, it doesn't matter
how remote the place is. I will meet
brothers and sisters
who will give me their love and support
and help
if I need it.
And that is very important to me.
I was also lucky enough
in January
this year
to go on Hajj, the annual pilgrimage which
Muslims are required to do at least once
in their life.
As I say, the Saudi women
don't think for one minute
that they're oppressed or subjugated. They're like a
tightly coiled spring and they are
really
ready to
launch
into the political scene
in Saudi Arabia.
There were elections earlier this year. Women weren't
allowed to vote. Let me tell you,
I really feel
that the next elections,
not only will will women be voting,
they will be standing
as well.
These women are really
really remarkable and as I say, they're in
the wings and they're ready to launch.
Unfortunately,
because of Saudi's restrictive
media rules, we hardly
get to find out any real news
that is happening there.
But these sisters from Jeddah told me how
distressed they were
during the 2nd intifada,
the uprising in Palestine. How
distressed they were and they had been discussing
this
in the mosque
after
Friday prayers.
And they wanted to show their solidarity
with their Palestinian
sisters.
So they did something
that,
is forbidden
in Saudi. They had a spontaneous
demonstration.
And they shouted and demonstrated
and the police were called because of of
this, public disorder.
And the police moved in
and one of the the main
women
stood in front of the police and she
said, dare one of you touch us.
We are Saudi women and you cannot touch
us. And the police
sprang back.
And they were wondering what on earth are
we going to do with these women. We
can't have them demonstrating.
But they're right. We can't manhandle them and
cart them off to
jail either.
And there was this standoff for about half
an hour as the women continued with their
protest.
In the end,
the police chief had a better idea
and they went and arrested all their husbands
instead.
They took them to the station
and they said the next time their wives
did this,
they would be charged,
which,
is a wonderful tale.
So that was,
Hajj in January.
Obviously, you're all aware of the London bombings.
I live in Central London.
We were
shocked by the
ferocity of the atrocity
but not surprised.
The anti war movement and the political party
I belong to called Respect, which is led
by George Galloway MP,
had said,
long before the first bombs dropped on Baghdad,
we told Tony Blair,
if you take us into a war with
Iraq,
our
security
will vanish.
London
will become
a target.
In his
arrogance, he dismissed us. He dismissed the fears
of 2,000,000 people who marched in London.
He would rather take his orders from Washington.
Really, I salute
New Zealand
in its strength and determination
to stand up to America
over many different issues.
That
stand
It should be me applauding you.
That stand
has made New Zealand
one of the safest places on earth.
In terms of security
and certainly your anti nuclear stance is
admirable.
Beware of siren calls from politicians
like Winston Peters
who thrive only
on hate.
You have a very important election
coming up soon.
I can't tell you how to vote, but
just be wary
of those
who would want to stand shoulder to shoulder
with George Bush because you will end up
in serious trouble like we have in Britain.
Thank you very much for
listening to me. I am really looking forward
to hearing your questions and observations.
As I say to the non muslims here
tonight,
I am not Islam's answer to Billy Graham.
I am not here to get you to
convert.
But if you are interested
in learning a little bit more
about
Islam
for your own benefits,
not for any other reason,
there's some books outside which you're welcome to
take away.
Thank you very much for being a terrific
audience. Thank you.