Maajid Nawaz Quotes & Sayings

Non-violent extremism is essentially the increase of intolerant and bigoted demands made by groups seeking to dominate society. — 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

to tell people to stop practicing their faith was imperialism in nineties clothing, a colonial hangover bordering on racism. Instead, we were embraced as a new generation of anti-colonial politicized youth. Curiously, — Maajid Nawaz

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

'Muslim' is not a political party. 'Muslim' is not a single culture. Muslims go to war with each other. There are more Muslims in India, Russia and China than in most Muslim-majority nations. 'Muslim' is not a homogenous entity. — Maajid Nawaz

There has been a failure to grasp how competing narratives fight for the attention of angry young Muslims, and we have grossly underestimated the appeal of the jihadist brand. — Maajid Nawaz

I had the assassins of the former president of Egypt, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood was with me in prison, the leaders of my own former group Hizb ut-Tahrir were with me in prison and so by the time I was released at the age of 28, I wasn't the man who went in at 24. — Maajid Nawaz

I'm a progressive. What I find is that a subsection within the left that instead of standing for consistency in progressive values, so feminism as applied to mainstream society, as well as within minority communities, gay rights to mainstream society as well as within minority communities. — Maajid Nawaz

More violence does not necessarily equate with greater religious conviction. — Maajid Nawaz

The fact that my skin color hadn't been an issue for those early years of schooling says everything about where racism originates: it is a cultural issue, a societal and familial problem that children soak up as they become more aware of the world. But — Maajid Nawaz

The only way we can challenge Islamism is to engage with one another. We need to make it as abhorrent as racism has become today. Only then will we stem the tide of angry young Muslims who turn to hate. — Maajid Nawaz

But we're also taught that you're not a martyr if you blow yourself up in a marketplace, because you're killing civilians and other Muslims. — Maajid Nawaz

I was held in the Mazra Tora Prison for my role as leader of the pan-Islamist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir in Alexandria. — Maajid Nawaz

I care not to debate which came first, Islamism or anti-Muslim bigotry; suffice to say that both feed into each other symbiotically. — Maajid Nawaz

Any item of clothing that covers the face and makes it impossible to identify individuals is open to abuse. — Maajid Nawaz

I'm yet to discover any form of theocracy that isn't homophobic, that isn't bigoted to the out group. — 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

Amnesty International adopted me as a prisoner of conscience, and that led to my - it touched me in a way that really led to me opening up my heart, I've called it the re-humanisation process. — Maajid Nawaz

For my own part, once I became a teenager, I experienced severe and violent racism. — 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

I say I haven't lost my religion. I've lost my ideology. — Maajid Nawaz

I was filled with hate and anger. But during my trial, something decisive happened: Amnesty International adopted me as a prisoner of conscience, and it was an unbelievable feeling to know that there is someone fighting for you on the outside. Amnesty's 'soft' approach made me seriously consider alternatives to revenge. — Maajid Nawaz

Academic institutions in Britain have been infiltrated for years by dangerous theocratic fantasists. I should know: I was one of them. — Maajid Nawaz

What's my audience? British society. Am I received relatively well? Yes. Is there within that ... if you break it down, challenges with Muslim communities? Of course there are. — Maajid Nawaz

Societies should be judged by how they treat the weakest among them. — Maajid Nawaz

If our hard-earned liberty, our desire to be irreverent of the old and to question the new, can be reduced to one, basic and indispensable right, it must be the right to free speech. — Maajid Nawaz

This book is the account of his redemptive journey - through innocence, bigotry, hard-line radicalism, and beyond - to a passionate advocacy of human rights and all that this can mean. — Maajid Nawaz

If we are true small 'l' liberals, it's our job to seek out feminist Muslims, ex-Muslims, liberal Muslims, dissenting voices within Muslim communities, gay Muslims - we should promote those voices and in doing so, we demonstrate Islam is not a monolith, Muslims are not homogenous, and that Muslims are truly internally diverse. — Maajid Nawaz

I was in prison with pretty much the who's who of the jihadist and Islamist scene of Egypt at the time, and Egypt was the cradle of Islamism for the world - it's where it began and where jihadism began as well. — Maajid Nawaz

Once you subscribe to an ideological dogma as a solution to certain grievances, it then frames your mindset. — Maajid Nawaz

Satire has been a sanctuary historically monopolized by progressives, originally used as a discreet tool against Western religious fundamentalism. — 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

Yes, women should be free to cover their faces when walking down the street. But in our schools, hospitals, airports, banks and civil institutions, it is not unreasonable - nor contrary to the teachings of Islam - to expect women to show the one thing that allows the rest of us to identify them ... namely, their face. — Maajid Nawaz

Islamism. It's an ideology. People are seeking to bring it about, but they differ in their approach. — 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

Before someone can change his ideas, he has to open his heart. — Maajid Nawaz

No idea is above scrutiny. No idea whatsoever. To criticize, to scrutinize and to satirize my own religion [Islam] is not Islamophobia. — Maajid Nawaz

In today's Britain, the weakest among us are often assumed to be minority communities. In fact, the weakest are those minorities-within-minorities for whom the legal right to exit from their communities' constraints amounts to nothing before the enforcement of cultural and religious shaming. — Maajid Nawaz

To be forced to defend oneself is an inherently undesirable position to be in. The focus shifts from ideas to the person conveying them. — Maajid Nawaz

The cheeky ideal I am calling for is that Muslims should be viewed as equal citizens, nothing more and nothing less. — Maajid Nawaz

During my teenage years as an Islamist recruiter, I moved to live in self-contained communities in the London boroughs of Newham and Tower Hamlets. — Maajid Nawaz

The truth is, 'Charlie Hebdo' is not a racist magazine. Rather, it is a campaigning anti-racist left-wing magazine. — Maajid Nawaz

There were people who had sampled my voice from speeches when I was an Islamist and made them the chorus of pro-Islamist rap songs who then began talking about me as an apostate. — Maajid Nawaz

The great liberal betrayal of this generation is that in the name of liberalism, communal rights have been prioritized over individual autonomy within minority groups. And minorities within minorities really do suffer because of this betrayal. The people I really worry about when we have this conversation are feminist Muslims, gay Muslims, ex-Muslims - all the vulnerable and bullied individuals who are not just stigmatized but in many cases violently assaulted or killed merely for being against the norm. — Maajid Nawaz

I'd argue, in fact, that the rise of the so-called Islamic State under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi does somewhat vindicate Osama bin Laden's strategy and his belief that making the West intervention-weary through war would lead to a power vacuum in the Middle East and that the West would abandon its support for Arab despots, which would lead to the crumbling of despotic regimes. From the ashes of that would rise an Islamic State. Bin Laden said this eleven years ago, and it's uncanny how the Arab uprisings have turned out. — Maajid Nawaz

There are those out there who harbor an irrational fear of Islam. Islamophobes and Islamists have this much in common: both groups insist that Islam is a totalitarian political ideology at odds with liberal democracy, and hence both insist that the two will inevitably clash. One extreme calls for the Qur'an to be banned, the other calls to ban everything but the Qur'an. Together, they form the negative and the positive of a bomb fuse. — Maajid Nawaz

My arrest in Egypt happened in 2002, and I was convicted to five years as a political prisoner. — Maajid Nawaz

Having our fundamental assumptions about life challenged is never a comfortable thing. — Maajid Nawaz

I'm a Muslim, we come from a Muslim community and we are very critical of western or American foreign policy. So if I've got the right and if other Muslims have got the right to criticize ... likewise everyone else has also got the right to criticize everything else. — Maajid Nawaz

I became, suddenly, not just a Muslim in faith. I became a Muslim in politics. Somebody whose politics were pre-defined by one interpretation of Islam. — Maajid Nawaz

I can now say that the more I learnt about Islam, the more tolerant I became. — Maajid Nawaz

I come from an immigrant family, but I know no other nationality apart from British. — Maajid Nawaz

We can't remain silent on gender rights and personal freedoms. — Maajid Nawaz

Traditionally, open-minded secular liberal rationalists have not made a case for tolerance. — Maajid Nawaz

As people's opportunities to succumb to confirmation bias increases online - only seeking out information that confirms their prejudices - ignorance, extremism and close-mindedness have continued to rise unabated. — Maajid Nawaz

In Bosnia, the case was there were white, blond-haired, blue-eyed Muslims who were being slaughtered and identified as Muslims. That really touched me. — Maajid Nawaz

My upbringing was completely liberal from the start. In fact, I didn't even have a Muslim identity. — Maajid Nawaz

America did not invade Iraq because Iraqis are Muslims. Oil, money, economic interests. Who knows? But it was not because Iraqis are Muslims. — Maajid Nawaz

Islamism is not Islam. Islamism is the politicisation of Islam, the desire to impose a version of this ancient faith over society. — Maajid Nawaz

If liberalism is to mean anything at all, it is duty bound to support without hesitation the dissenting individual over the group, the heretic over the orthodox, innovation over stagnation, and free speech over offense. — 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

In prison I had the opportunity to debate and discuss people that had subscribed to all forms of Islamism. — Maajid Nawaz

The best revolutions are unplanned, and the most democratic are leaderless. — 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

The rise of ISIS in Iraq is a wider threat to the stability of the Middle East and the West than many realise. — Maajid Nawaz

Like so many nice people who seek power, I wanted to force everyone else to be nice. It's called totalitarianism. — Maajid Nawaz

As he continued to talk to me, I realized one of the fundamental points about Islamism that so many people fail to understand. The way Osman was speaking wasn't in the orthodox, religious way of the imam with a stick; he was talking about politics, about events that were happening now. That's crucial to understanding what Islamism is all about: it isn't a religious movement with political consequences, it is a political movement with religious consequences. — Maajid Nawaz

I had a mind inquiring enough to question world events, as well as the passion fostered by my background to care, but I lacked the emotional maturity to process these things. That made me ripe for Islamist recruitment. Into this ferment came my recruiter, himself straight out of a London medical college. — Maajid Nawaz

After much soul searching I was able to renounce my past Islamist ideology, challenging everything I was once prepared to die for. — Maajid Nawaz

Language that is designed to dehumanize has consequences. — Maajid Nawaz

Islamism is an ideology that seeks to impose any version of Islam over society. — Maajid Nawaz

In the United Kingdom, we need to promote an inclusive British identity that involves and empowers people from all ethnic and faith backgrounds. — Maajid Nawaz

Unlike the student protests in the 1960s, by using religion and multiculturalism as a cover, we brought an entirely foreign lexicon to the table. We knowingly presented political demands disguised as religion and multiculturalism, and deliberately labelled any objection to our demands as racism and bigotry. Even worse, we did this to the very generation who had been socialist sympathisers in their youth, people sympathetic to charges of racism, who were now in middle-career management posts; people like Dave Gomer. It is no wonder then that the authorities were unprepared to deal with politicised religion as ideological agitation, and felt racist if they tried to stop us. — Maajid Nawaz

We disguised our political demands behind religion and multiculturalism, and deliberately labeled any objection to our demands as racism. Even worse, we did this to the very generation who had been socialist sympathizers in their youth, people sympathetic to charges of racism, who like Dave Gomer were now in middle-career management posts. It is no wonder then that the authorities were unprepared to deal with politicized religion as ideological agitation; they felt racist if they tried to stop us. — 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

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

I believe that preventing radicalisation is far more efficient than de-radicalisation, meaning stopping someone joining is a lot easier than trying to pull someone out once they've joined. — Maajid Nawaz

The British and French governments have taken a strong stance against 'extremist content' online when addressing their approach to tackling extremism. — Maajid Nawaz

There was a genocide unfolding against Bosnian Muslims and we, in the United Kingdom, were incredibly angered - a teenager at the time, 15 years old, so my young teenage mind processed that in a way typical to the very passionate and angry and black-and-white way that teenagers often can do. — Maajid Nawaz

When I returned to the United Kingdom, I found that I could no longer justify Islamist extremism as the antidote. — Maajid Nawaz

Imams must ridicule Caliphate fantasies. Exchange programmes between Muslim-only schools and non-Muslim-majority schools should be initiated. Community-based debates around these themes must no longer be shut down from fear of offence. — 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

I think I would encourage leaders to start working with communities in order to inoculate angry, young teenagers. — Maajid Nawaz

My feminism, as intended by me, extends to empowering women to make legal choices, not to judge the legal choices they make. My fight is for rights. — Maajid Nawaz

I was in prison with the assassins of the former president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, who was killed in 1981. Those who weren't executed in that case were given life sentences, and two of those were with me in prison. — Maajid Nawaz

I was, by the way - I'm an Essex lad, born and raised in Essex in the U.K. — Maajid Nawaz

Islamism demanded no less of a root-and-branch overhaul of society. But because it was cloaked in religious garb, no one quite knew what to do with it, and people were desperate not to offend. There was confusion over whether to define our activism as a cultural identity, an ideology or a faith. To top it off, Islamism went through a decade of being embraced by both the left and right wings. The default left-leaning liberal position was to embrace the movement as part of multicultural sensitivity: to tell people to stop practising their faith was imperialism in nineties clothing, a colonial hangover bordering on racism. Instead, we were embraced as a new generation of anti-colonial politicised youth. Curiously, the default position on the right was to embrace us too, because it had been the Afghan Mujahideen, backed by the CIA, who fought the Soviet Union. Lest we forget, this was when Hollywood films such as Stallone's Rambo 3 portrayed the Afghan Mujahideen as heroes. — Maajid Nawaz

One does not need to be brown to discuss racism, one does not need to be Muslim to discuss Islam. Ideas have no color, or country. Good ideas are truly universal. Any attempt to police ideas, to quarantine thought based on race or religion, and to pre-define what is and what isn't a legitimate conversation, must be resisted by all. — Maajid Nawaz

The positive is I'm delighted at the way the Liberal Democrats as a party have supported me and the way in which the work I'm doing, through the Liberal Democrats, has abled to broaden some of the work I work on. — Maajid Nawaz

I have founded Khudi, in Pakistan, a youth movement which tries to counter extremist ideology through healthy discussion and debate. — 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

I joined a radical group at the age of 16 because I'm a passionate man; the good news is that I turned myself around since then. But my character is still quite free and passionate. — Maajid Nawaz

Quilliam will remain a priority for me because its values shape my beliefs and outlook. — Maajid Nawaz

The British state already invests in early intervention campaigns in drug abuse and sexual health. Challenging extremism should be no less of a priority. — Maajid Nawaz

The niqab, for some, has become an antiestablishment symbol around which one can rally and relish in the opportunities for confrontation that it provides. — Maajid Nawaz

Rather than allowing jihadists to shut down debate, it must proliferate so much that they simply cannot kill us all. — Maajid Nawaz

What we cannot deny is that there's an association between exclusion, segregation, non-violent extremist thinking, and jihadism. — Maajid Nawaz

Does freedom of speech give the right to offend? — Maajid Nawaz

The message was wrong, I knew that now, but maybe the tactics were right. Perhaps we could use the methods of the Islamist groups to create a counter-Islamist movement, to do da'wah for the democratic culture? — Maajid Nawaz

The Bosnian Genocide was something that triggered my consciousness and led to an awakening politically for me. — Maajid Nawaz