Maajid Nawaz Quotes
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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.
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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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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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Non-violent extremism is essentially the increase of intolerant and bigoted demands made by groups seeking to dominate society.
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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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I was imprisoned in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks, when Egypt's state security was rounding people up in unprecedented numbers.
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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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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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Preying on the grievances of disaffected young men is the bedrock of Islamism.
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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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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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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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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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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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In an open society, no idea can be above scrutiny, just as no people should be beneath dignity.
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Liberalism will beat totalitarianism by killing it softly, not by mimicking it.
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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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Any item of clothing that covers the face and makes it impossible to identify individuals is open to abuse.
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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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Expressing myself through language was always something that I had had to learn to do more so than others.
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The only certainty we have is that those who are certain of a way to arrive at worldly salvation, are committed enough to organize around this, and seek power to enforce it, will invariably descend into a bloody totalitarian fascism.
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When I returned to the United Kingdom, I found that I could no longer justify Islamist extremism as the antidote.