Maajid Nawaz Quotes

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

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

No form of theocracy, whether it's manifested in a violent or non-violent form, is ever good for civilisation, and we have to challenge it in civil society as well as we would challenge Christian-based theocracy, or any other form of bigotry.

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.

Does freedom of speech give the right to offend?

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

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

We have to render Islamist extremism as unattractive as communism has become today.

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.

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

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.

Ironically, xenophobic nationalists are utilizing the benefits of globalization.

Within our lifetime, we can remember a time when Islamism wasn't the dominant form of discourse or the aim should be to minimise the absolutists within any religious community and contain them.

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.

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.

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

I am everything I am today, because of my past.

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.

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.

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

If we look at Abdel Nasser in Egypt as an Arab leader, he was secular.

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

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.

Preying on the grievances of disaffected young men is the bedrock of Islamism.

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