Maajid Nawaz Quotes
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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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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.
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America did not invade Iraq because Iraqis are Muslims. Oil, money, economic interests. Who knows? But it was not because Iraqis are Muslims.
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The fact is that there is a serious problem of extremism with minority groups within Muslim communities.
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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.
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We cannot hope to effectively counter extremism if we just focus on schools, universities and prisons: we need to take this online as well.
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Having our fundamental assumptions about life challenged is never a comfortable thing.
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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.
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Islam will be what Muslims make of it. And it is the sum total of the interpretation that Muslims give to it.
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Quilliam will remain a priority for me because its values shape my beliefs and outlook.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The truth is that just as the 'West' is not a homogenous entity with one view on foreign and domestic policy, nor are Muslims.
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I worked my way through the education system and was treated as though I had value.
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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.
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Liberalism will beat totalitarianism by killing it softly, not by mimicking it.
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Expressing myself through language was always something that I had had to learn to do more so than others.
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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.
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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.
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After much soul searching I was able to renounce my past Islamist ideology, challenging everything I was once prepared to die for.
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The Bosnian Genocide was something that triggered my consciousness and led to an awakening politically for me.
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Islamism is not Islam. Islamism is the politicisation of Islam, the desire to impose a version of this ancient faith over society.
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I was imprisoned in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks, when Egypt's state security was rounding people up in unprecedented numbers.