Islamism to Secular Liberalism : Maajid Nawaz [Debate]

Former Islamist on Radical Islam and the 'Voldemort Effect'

Hardtalk - What Is Islamism? - Maajid Nawaz, Quilliam Foundation (2012)

Islamist Extremism and the Orlando Shootings - Maajid Nawaz

Orlando Attack: The Process of Radicalisation - Maajid Nawaz

Ayaan Hirsi Ali with Maajid Nawaz – Alan Howard Foundation / JW3 Speaker Series

RadicLe - "A Fu*king Problem" by Maajid Nawaz Feb 1st 2015

Lateline: Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz on the Future of Islam

How to Beat Islamic State

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: To win against the jihadists, isolate them, undercut their appeal to Muslims and avoid a ‘clash of civilizations’

Islam is a religion, and like any other faith, it is internally diverse. Islamism, by contrast, is the desire to impose a single version of Islam on an entire society. Islamism is not Islam, but it is an offshoot of Islam. It is Muslim theocracy.

In much the same way, jihad is a traditional Muslim idea connoting struggle—sometimes a personal spiritual struggle, sometimes a struggle against an external enemy. Jihadism, however, is something else entirely: It is the doctrine of using force to spread Islamism.

President Barack Obama and many liberal-minded commentators have been hesitant to call this Islamist ideology by its proper name. They seem to fear that both Muslim communities and the religiously intolerant will hear the word “Islam” and simply assume that all Muslims are being held responsible for the excesses of the jihadist few.

I call this the Voldemort effect, after the villain in J.K. Rowling ’s Harry Potter books. Many well-meaning people in Ms. Rowling’s fictional world are so petrified of Voldemort’s evil that they do two things: They refuse to call Voldemort by name, instead referring to “He Who Must Not Be Named,” and they deny that he exists in the first place. Such dread only increases public hysteria, thus magnifying the appeal of Voldemort’s power.

The same hysteria about Islamism is unfolding before our eyes. But no strategy intended to defeat Islamism can succeed if Islamism itself and its violent expression in jihadism are not first named, isolated and understood. It is as disingenuous to argue that Islamic State is entirely divorced from Islam as it is to assert that it is synonymous with Islam. Islamic State does indeed have something to do with Islam—not nothing, not everything, but something. That something is the way in which all Islamists justify their arguments using Islamic scripture and seek to recruit from Muslims. Read on and comment » | Maajid Nawaz | Friday, December 11, 2015

How Islamic Extremists Are Exploiting Our Weaknesses

Dec. 13, 2015 - 6:15 - Author Maajid Nawaz explains how jihadists are slipping through the cracks of our politically correct culture on 'The Greg Gutfeld Show'

Radical: My Journey Out Of Islamist Extremism (Full Session)

Today, Maajid Nawaz leads a think tank focusing on such things as citizenship and identity, religious freedom, and extremism. But his young life is marked by years spent as a youth leader and recruiter for a radical Islamist group which ultimately landed him in an Egyptian prison for four years. He shares his remarkable transformation toward liberal democratic values.

Maajid Nawaz on ISIL & Islamism (Sunday Politics, June 28, 2015)

Maajid Nawaz on ISIL & Islamism (Sunday Politics, 28/6/15) Political reaction to the terrorist attacks this week, including interviews with Lord Dannatt, Tim Marshall and Hilary Benn.

Muslim Critics of British Islam (2014)

Maajid Nawaz talks for first time about "Jesus and Mo" cartoon row and asks: who speaks for Muslim Britain? He quickly comes under personal attack from Mehdi Hasan and Mo Ansar.

Maajid Nawaz: As a Former Extremist Who Knew Anjem Choudary, I Fear for the Mentality of British Muslims

THE INDEPENDENT: Like 33 per cent of British Muslims do, I once supported the idea of a caliphate based upon sharia law. But the debate has now become polarised and poisonous

Anjem Choudary, Britain’s loudest Islamist extremist, has finally been remanded in custody, charged under section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The charge is related to him sending messages to his 32,000 followers on Facebook, allegedly encouraging people to join Isis. His guilt or innocence is a matter for the courts. What concerns me here is his trajectory.

I first met Anjem in 1994, when I was 17 years old. We were both students of the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), which was led in the UK back then by the Syrian firebrand cleric Omar Bakri Muhammad. HT is responsible for first popularising the notion of resurrecting a theocratic caliphate in Muslim-majority countries. At the time, I had been studying at Newham College and was eventually expelled due to my Islamist belligerence. Anjem volunteered as my lawyer, furnishing me with advice on my expulsion.

Later that year, HT organised an international caliphate conference at London’s Wembley Arena, the first and largest of its kind globally. As our fellow HT activists went up and down the country plastering eye-catching bright orange stickers pronouncing The Caliphate - Coming Soon to a Country Near You, Muslims were arriving from all over the world to behold Wembley stadium, packed with 10,000 people cheering in unison for the return of the Caliphate. Those were the days before Isis, even before al-Qaeda, when HT was the most extreme manifestation of this pernicious Islamist ideology in Britain. The British-Muslim scene would never be the same again. » | Maajid Nawaz | Friday, August 7, 2015

Why Is ISIS Attacking During Ramadan? BBC News (June 2015)

Maajid Nawaz from the Quilliam Foundation describes the reasons why ISIS may have decided to execute attack during the holy month of Ramadan.

BBC3 'Free Speech': 'Can You Be Gay and Muslim?' Maajid Nawaz vs Abdullah al Andalusi

Maajid Nawaz/Asifa Lahore vs. Homophobic Muslim Women

Muslim Cartoon Row – Maajid Nawaz

"A Liberal Democrat candidate who tweeted a cartoon featuring Jesus and Muhammad has received death threats and faces calls to be deselected from contesting the 2015 general election.

Maajid Nawaz, chosen for the London seat of Hampstead and Kilburn and founder of the anti-extremist think-tank Quilliam Foundation, has faced a petition against him, and told the BBC he was advised by police not to appear on TV to debate the issue.

Andrew Neil spoke to Mohammed Shafiq, a member of the Liberal Democrats Ethnic Minority group calling for deselection, and to Kenan Malik, who writes about multi-culturalism and free speech."

Maajid Nawaz Explains the Difference between Islam and Islamism to Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins

Maajid Nawaz is the co-founder and Executive Director of Quilliam, the world's first counter-extremism think tank. He is also the co-founder of Khudi, a counter-extremism social movement working towards the promotion of social democratic change in Pakistan. This clip is from "Overtime" with Bill Maher where he has a discussion about the roots of islamism and the difference between islamism and islam with Maher, Richard Dawkins, Michael Moore, Valerie Plame and Al Sharpton. From "Overtime" with Bill Maher, October 25, 2013.

Freedom of Speech: Is It My Right to Offend You?

THE INDEPENDENT: Last week, a political figure tweeting a cartoon about Mohamed prompted death threats. In a civilised society, we need to know how to express views without censorship

Maajid Nawaz is a former Islamist who now campaigns against extremism as the executive director of the Quilliam Foundation. He is also a Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate. Three weeks ago, he appeared on the BBC's religious debate programme, The Big Questions. On that show, two atheist students wore T-shirts featuring cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed. Nawaz declared that he was not upset by the images. After the show, he tweeted one of the cartoons, declaring that his God was greater than to feel threatened by it. And then everything went mad.

Nawaz has faced an appalling string of death threats. About 22,000 people have signed a petition calling for his deselection. Thousands more have leapt to his defence. Last week, Nick Clegg promised that he would not be deselected. But as various media outlets have reported on the subject, they, too, have faced criticism for their squeamishness: no one has shown uncensored the cartoon at the centre of the storm.

There is so much to unpack here. Where to begin? Well, how about, for the record, a simple declaration: Maajid Nawaz has an absolute right to tweet a picture of the Prophet Mohamed. I would not vote for any political party that dismissed him for doing so. But actually, this is the least interesting, least fruitful aspect of the whole discussion. This is primary school stuff. » | Archie Bland | Sunday, February 02, 2014

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