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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.

Maajid Nawaz

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Maajid Nawaz
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: November 2
Essayist
Human Rights Activist
Political Activist
Politician
Maajid Usman Nawaz
Groups
Released
Leader
Egypt
Wasn
Brotherhood
Went
Muslim
Age
Former
President
Leaders
Men
Prison
Time
Group
Assassins

More quotes by Maajid Nawaz

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Once you subscribe to an ideological dogma as a solution to certain grievances, it then frames your mindset.
Maajid Nawaz
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I can now say that the more I learnt about Islam, the more tolerant I became.
Maajid Nawaz
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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.
Maajid Nawaz
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In prison I had the opportunity to debate and discuss people that had subscribed to all forms of Islamism.
Maajid Nawaz
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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.
Maajid Nawaz
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I'm yet to discover any form of theocracy that isn't homophobic, that isn't bigoted to the out group.
Maajid Nawaz
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When I returned to the United Kingdom, I found that I could no longer justify Islamist extremism as the antidote.
Maajid Nawaz
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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.
Maajid Nawaz
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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.
Maajid Nawaz
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Ironically, xenophobic nationalists are utilizing the benefits of globalization.
Maajid Nawaz
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Does freedom of speech give the right to offend?
Maajid Nawaz
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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.
Maajid Nawaz
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I am everything I am today, because of my past.
Maajid Nawaz
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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.
Maajid Nawaz
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Preying on the grievances of disaffected young men is the bedrock of Islamism.
Maajid Nawaz
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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.
Maajid Nawaz
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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.
Maajid Nawaz
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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.
Maajid Nawaz