Maajid Nawaz Quotes
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I have founded Khudi, in Pakistan, a youth movement which tries to counter extremist ideology through healthy discussion and debate.
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Let me make this clear: it is our duty to adopt a policy barring the wearing of niqabs in these public buildings.
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I am a Muslim. I am born to Muslim parents. I have a Muslim son. I have been imprisoned and witnessed torture for my previous understanding of my religion.
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I was held in the Mazra Tora Prison for my role as leader of the pan-Islamist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir in Alexandria.
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Hip-hop in the '90s began moving towards the Nation of Islam and the 5 Percenters, black nationalist movements; very much so, these movements embraced a form of Islam: Malcom X's form of Islam prior to his change.
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The British state already invests in early intervention campaigns in drug abuse and sexual health. Challenging extremism should be no less of a priority.
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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.
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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.
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I realised that the idea of enforcing sharia is not consistent with Islam as it's been practised from the beginning. In other words, Islam has always been secular, and I had been totally ignorant of the fact.
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I can say with a level of confidence that Islam is not a religion of war, only because the majority of Muslims don't subscribe to that perspective, not because there's something inherent in the text that tells me it's a religion of peace.
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To be forced to defend oneself is an inherently undesirable position to be in. The focus shifts from ideas to the person conveying them.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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In an open society, no idea can be above scrutiny, just as no people should be beneath dignity.
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In the United Kingdom, we need to promote an inclusive British identity that involves and empowers people from all ethnic and faith backgrounds.
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The cheeky ideal I am calling for is that Muslims should be viewed as equal citizens, nothing more and nothing less.
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To suggest that a Muslim cannot think for himself sounds to me very much like an incident of anti-Muslim bigotry.
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Rather than allowing jihadists to shut down debate, it must proliferate so much that they simply cannot kill us all.
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The best revolutions are unplanned, and the most democratic are leaderless.
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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.
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Any item of clothing that covers the face and makes it impossible to identify individuals is open to abuse.
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Non-violent extremism is essentially the increase of intolerant and bigoted demands made by groups seeking to dominate society.
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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.