Radical

My Journey out of Islamist Extremism

Maajid Nawaz, 2013


Nawaz was born in Southend England in 1978, of Pakistani immigrant parents. Abused by other kids, he encountered Islam, both as a guiding principle and a threat against gangs. But this was Hizb ut-Tahrir: radical, Islamist, restore-the-caliphate, blame-the-west Islam, sparked by western indifference to the fate of caucasian Muslims in Bosnia, based on a selective reading of the of Koran, and western nationalism.

This is not the scimitar-wielding woman-mutilating Jihadism that led to the Taliban, but it still is at odds with the west and many Muslim dictatorships, where Nawaz travelled as a recruiter. In Egypt, he was arrested by Mubarrak's secret police, abused, threatened with torture, and spent 2001 to 2006 in prison. There, he learned about the much richer and complete Koran, and met leaders of the future Arab spring in Egypt. He was released with the help of Amnesty International.

He now leads a London thinktank, Quilliam

He quotes this translation of Jalaluddin Rumi on page 179:

This may be a too-secular translation; others point out that this bowdlerizes Rumi's more Allah-centric verse.

See also IslamWithout


Islam and the Future of Tolerance

A dialog, by Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz, Hillsdale 297.28 H3161i 2015


This small book is in interview format, mostly atheist Sam Harris making provocative statements and Nawaz responding. Harris is a "Qu'ran literalist", claiming that scrict Islam is anti-liberal. Nawaz claims that the text does not speak for itself; instead, the reading and the context determines the interpretation of the text, and that history demonstrates many different interpretations by different Islamic scholars, and that contemporary Islam also offers many different interpretations.

I'll mostly quote the responses from Nawaz

Oopsie, lost my notes, MoreLater