Radical

My Journey out of Islamist Extremism

Maajid Nawaz, 2013


Nawaz was born in Southend England in 1978, of Pakistani 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.