There are members – very, very close and dear members – of my family – I’m talking immediate family – who simply don’t speak to me anymore and haven’t done so for years. My marriage fell apart. – Maajid Nawaz
Expressing myself through language was always something that I had had to learn to do more so than others. – Maajid Nawaz
One of the problems we’re facing is, in my view, that there are no globalized, youth-led, grassroots social movements advocating for democratic culture across Muslim-majority societies. – Maajid Nawaz
Back when I was an Islamist, I thought our ideology was like communism – and I still do. That makes me optimistic. Because what happened to communism? It was discredited as an idea. It lost. – Maajid Nawaz
I was imprisoned in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks, when Egypt’s state security was rounding people up in unprecedented numbers. – Maajid Nawaz
My identity comprises of more than just my faith. I am a proud Muslim, but I am also a liberal, a Briton, a Pakistani, a Londoner, a father, a product of the globalised world who speaks English, Arabic and Urdu. – Maajid Nawaz
Increased sympathy for an Islamist cause, lack of integration, and the absence of acceptance of Muslims into British society makes it harder for Muslims to challenge Islamism and tough for non-Muslims to understand it. – Maajid Nawaz
Wherever I’ve been, I’ve left people who joined Hizb ut-Tahrir. I have to make amends. What I did was damaging to British society and the world at large. – Maajid Nawaz
Being veterans of the struggle to push back against fundamentalist Christians, American liberals are well acquainted with the pitfalls of the neoconservative flirtation with the religious-right. – Maajid Nawaz
The truth is, ‘Charlie Hebdo’ is not a racist magazine. Rather, it is a campaigning anti-racist left-wing magazine. – Maajid Nawaz
Muslim communities themselves, as they expect mainstream society to stand down racists, must do more to also stand down the Islamist extremists. – Maajid Nawaz
To suggest that a Muslim cannot think for himself sounds to me very much like an incident of anti-Muslim bigotry. – Maajid Nawaz
Neoconservatism had the philosophy that you go in with a supply-led approach to impose democratic values from the top down. Whereas Islamists and far-right organizations, for decades, have been building demand for their ideology on the grassroots. – Maajid Nawaz
De-radicalisation begins by breaking down the logic which once seemed unassailable and rethinking what you are fighting for and why. That is hard to do when Islamists and Islamophobes feed off each other’s hateful cliches. – Maajid Nawaz
Satire is, by definition, offensive. It is meant to make us feel uncomfortable. It is meant to make us scratch our heads, think, do a double-take, and then think again. – Maajid Nawaz
Poking fun at other people’s beliefs, while it may seem frivolous and offensive, is a non-negotiable right. It is a principle that underpins free speech, the basis for progress. – Maajid Nawaz
The Islamist ideology took decades to incubate within our communities, and it will take decades to debunk. – Maajid Nawaz
For years, Islamists and other extremists have taken advantage of grievances of Muslims in Britain and have successfully identified ways to integrate them under one ‘Islamic’ banner. – Maajid Nawaz
Any item of clothing that covers the face and makes it impossible to identify individuals is open to abuse. – Maajid Nawaz
What we cannot deny is that there’s an association between exclusion, segregation, non-violent extremist thinking, and jihadism. – Maajid Nawaz
My upbringing was completely liberal from the start. In fact, I didn’t even have a Muslim identity. – Maajid Nawaz
In current times, our moral uproar is best reserved for those who aspire to stone men or women to death, not those who consensually watch women – or men, for that matter – dance. – Maajid Nawaz
A fatwa is a religious edict. Such edicts bind only those who seek to follow the Imam issuing them but can be regarded as an option for others seeking an alternative view. – Maajid Nawaz
By the age of 24, I found myself convicted in prison in Egypt, being blacklisted from three countries in the world for attempting to overthrow their governments, being subjected to torture in Egyptian jails, and sentenced to five years as a prisoner of conscience. – Maajid Nawaz
There are no globalized, youth-led, grassroots social movements advocating for democratic culture across Muslim-majority societies. There is no equivalent of Al-Qaeda without the terrorism. – Maajid Nawaz
I have founded Khudi, in Pakistan, a youth movement which tries to counter extremist ideology through healthy discussion and debate. – Maajid Nawaz
The truth is that just as the ‘West’ is not a homogenous entity with one view on foreign and domestic policy, nor are Muslims. – Maajid Nawaz