Who is maajid nawaz

For a long time, I opposed everything that liberal, secular democracy stood for. I had to think hard about these values and what they mean for the world, and for Muslim communities. In prison I reflected on the relative prosperity of Muslim communities in the West despite their problems , compared to communities in Muslim-majority societies, and what enabled that.

Nawaz: Liberalism is under threat from all sides. In Hungary, a member of the E. Both nations have succumbed to the strongman syndrome, like Putin in Russia. President Xi is now president for life in China. The populists in Germany form the second largest bloc in parliament, and the form of nativism they are promoting is collectivist thinking that rejects individual liberty.

Left activists marginalize individuals for the sake of group dynamics. Both nativism and multiculturalism stifle the rights of individuals. Philanthropy: In the U. When I was growing up in Britain, racism was very bad. There are still many problems. I know them very well and intimately. Citizens worked hard for many years before we were even born to get us to where we are today.

Others were more controversial, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is beloved by some as a truthteller and reviled by others as a bigot.

Nawaz is a star in certain anti-terror circles, thanks to a compelling personal narrative: A self-described former extremist who spent four years in an Egyptian prison, he has changed approaches and now argues for a pluralistic and peaceful vision of Islam.

When I spoke to Nawaz on Thursday, he was both baffled and furious. These people are putting me on what I believe is a hit list. Not that he took well to his inclusion on its merits, either. A vivid example of his estrangement was provided this year, when the Muslim owner of a strip-club that Nawaz visited on his stag night leaked footage of him to the Daily Mail. Then there is his closeness to the law-making elite, which unsurprisingly creates suspicion among those most likely to be the targets of ever-widening surveillance.

I get the sense, though, that there is something about the man that puts people off. Partly, it is what made his story so eye-catching in the first place. A former acquaintance of Nawaz, who also asked for anonymity, points to something more personal. But there are voices of praise too. For his part, Nawaz sees the blowback as a predictable response to confronting Muslims with uncomfortable facts.

British society. Am I received relatively well? Is there within that Of course there are. The double-standards rankle him. The regressive left will rightly condemn racism and far-right attitudes in the white community, he says, but their voice is muted when it comes to illiberalism that emerges from minority communities. He is blunt in his assessment. Nawaz, who ran for parliament as a candidate of the centrist Liberal Democrat party in the general election, is unsurprised by the rise of anti-Semitism on the political left.

Nawaz, however, is undeterred. He first returned with a parliamentary delegation led by Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel, and has visited on a number of occasions since. In , he met with Arnold Roth, whose year-old daughter Malki was killed in a suicide bombing at Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem in August The meeting was an important one for Nawaz.