Quotes from Maajid Nawaz

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.

Traditionally, open-minded secular liberal rationalists have not made a case for tolerance.

I can now say that the more I learnt about Islam, the more tolerant I became.

A fatwa is a religious edict. Such edicts bind only those who seek to follow the Imam issuing them but can be regarded as an option for others seeking an alternative view.

What's my audience? British society. Am I received relatively well? Yes. Is there within that... if you break it down, challenges with Muslim communities? Of course there are.

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.

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.

Islam will be what Muslims make of it. And it is the sum total of the interpretation that Muslims give to it.

Liberalism will beat totalitarianism by killing it softly, not by mimicking it.

After much soul searching I was able to renounce my past Islamist ideology, challenging everything I was once prepared to die for.

I say I haven't lost my religion. I've lost my ideology.

In Bosnia, the case was there were white, blond-haired, blue-eyed Muslims who were being slaughtered and identified as Muslims. That really touched me.

Increased sympathy for an Islamist cause, lack of integration, and the absence of acceptance of Muslims into British society makes it harder for Muslims to challenge Islamism and tough for non-Muslims to understand it.

Hip-hop in the '90s began moving towards the Nation of Islam and the 5 Percenters, black nationalist movements; very much so, these movements embraced a form of Islam: Malcom X's form of Islam prior to his change.

During my teenage years as an Islamist recruiter, I moved to live in self-contained communities in the London boroughs of Newham and Tower Hamlets.

Rather than allowing jihadists to shut down debate, it must proliferate so much that they simply cannot kill us all.

Academic institutions in Britain have been infiltrated for years by dangerous theocratic fantasists. I should know: I was one of them.

Non-violent extremism is essentially the increase of intolerant and bigoted demands made by groups seeking to dominate society.

Ironically, xenophobic nationalists are utilizing the benefits of globalization.

All my friends were non-Muslims. I actually knew very little about Islam - like, very little.

I had a mind inquiring enough to question world events, as well as the passion fostered by my background to care, but I lacked the emotional maturity to process these things. That made me ripe for Islamist recruitment. Into this ferment came my recruiter, himself straight out of a London medical college.

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.

The Islamist ideology took decades to incubate within our communities, and it will take decades to debunk.

Any item of clothing that covers the face and makes it impossible to identify individuals is open to abuse.