VOICES

Maajid Nawaz

Activist and writer

Maajid Nawaz is a counter-extremist, author, columnist, broadcaster and Founding Chairman of Quilliam, a London-based organization focusing on matters of integration, citizenship & identity, religious freedom, immigration, extremism and terrorism. Nawaz’s work is informed by years spent in his youth as a leadership member of a global Islamist group, and his gradual transformation towards liberal democratic values. Having served four years as an Amnesty International adopted “prisoner of conscience” in Egypt, Nawaz is now a leading critic of his former Islamist ideological dogma, while remaining a secular liberal Muslim. Unafraid to challenge orthodoxies, Nawaz called out the Palestinian Hamas group as a terrorist organization on a radio broadcast in January 2020. (Photo: Wikimedia / Creative Commons License)