57 Facts About Maajid Nawaz

Maajid Nawaz was the founding chairman of the think tank Quilliam.

Maajid Nawaz's membership led to his December 2001 arrest in Egypt, where he remained imprisoned until 2006.

Maajid Nawaz left Hizb-ut-Tahrir in 2007, renounced his Islamist past, and called for a secular Islam.

Later, Maajid Nawaz co-founded Quilliam with former Islamists, including Ed Husain.

In 2012, Maajid Nawaz published an autobiography, Radical: My Journey out of Islamist Extremism, and has since become a prominent critic of Islamism in the United Kingdom.

Maajid Nawaz was the Liberal Democrats parliamentary candidate for London's Hampstead and Kilburn constituency in the 2015 United Kingdom general election.

Since 2020, Maajid Nawaz has been accused of promoting false claims and conspiracy theories related to COVID-19 and the 2020 United States presidential election.

Maajid Nawaz was born in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, to parents of Pakistani origin.

Maajid Nawaz's father, Mo, is an electrical engineer who had worked for the Pakistan Navy but had to leave on medical grounds after he contracted tuberculosis.

Maajid Nawaz says that racism from classmates, Combat 18 gangs, and police, and feeling divided between his Pakistani and British heritage, meant he struggled to find his own identity growing up.

Osman subsequently persuaded Maajid Nawaz to attend HT meetings held in Southend homes.

Maajid Nawaz became a national speaker and an international recruiter for Hizb ut-Tahrir, travelling to Pakistan and Denmark to further the party's ideology and set up organisational clandestine cells.

Since political Islamist organisations like Hizb ut-Tahrir were banned in Egypt, Maajid Nawaz was arrested and interrogated in Alexandria by the Egyptian security agency Aman al-Dawlah.

Maajid Nawaz was then transferred to Tora Prison and put on trial.

Maajid Nawaz met Islamist Essam el-Erian, the spokesman of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Mohammed Badie, who in his youth had smuggled the manuscripts of Syed Qutb's Islamist manual Milestones out of prison, and had it published.

Maajid Nawaz specialised in the Arabic language whilst studying historical Muslim scholastics, sources of Islamic jurisprudence, Hadith historiography, and the art of Qur'anic recitation.

Maajid Nawaz benefited from the company of imprisoned Egyptian politician Ayman Nour, who was the head of the centrist and liberal Tomorrow Party and a runner-up to the 2005 Egyptian presidential election.

Maajid Nawaz then founded the Quilliam Foundation, a counter-extremism think tank.

Maajid Nawaz addressed the United States Committee on Homeland Security on the subject of Islamist extremism.

Maajid Nawaz spoke at the Sovereign Challenge conference organised by United States Special Operations Command where he advocated the need to move beyond hard power, and look at new counter-radicalisation strategies.

Maajid Nawaz played a major role in Tommy Robinson's exit from the far-right English Defence League, of which Robinson was the founder.

Maajid Nawaz met Robinson in 2013 during the filming of a BBC documentary When Tommy met Mo, and subsequently met the EDL's co-leader, Kevin Carroll.

Maajid Nawaz has co-founded an activist group in Pakistan, named Khudi, which aims to combat extremism.

In 2009, with a BBC Newsnight crew and security team, Maajid Nawaz embarked on a counter-extremism tour, speaking at over 22 universities, and recruiting students all over Pakistan.

Maajid Nawaz was selected in July 2013 to stand as the Liberal Democrats candidate for the marginal north London constituency of Hampstead and Kilburn, in which he came third.

In 2014, Maajid Nawaz received death threats after tweeting a Jesus and Mo cartoon alluding to the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

Maajid Nawaz decided to tweet the cartoon after a BBC programme censored two audience members' shirts displaying cartoons of Muhammad.

Respect Party politician George Galloway called on Muslims, via a tweet, not to vote for the Liberal Democrats while Maajid Nawaz is one of their candidates.

On 2 July 2020, Maajid Nawaz announced his resignation from the Liberal Democrats.

From September 2016 to January 2022, Maajid Nawaz hosted an LBC radio show on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.

Maajid Nawaz's firing came weeks after fellow host Iain Dale accused him of spreading 'deranged rubbish' concerning coronavirus vaccines.

In October 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center in the United States accused Maajid Nawaz of being an "anti-Muslim extremist", for which it was criticised by various media outlets, including The Atlantic, The Spectator, and The Wall Street Journal, and Maajid Nawaz himself.

Maajid Nawaz announced his intention to file a defamation lawsuit against the SPLC on the 23 June 2017 episode of Real Time with Bill Maher.

Maajid Nawaz has been critical of multiculturalism, and he criticises what he describes as the failed 1990s policies on multiculturalism in Britain and Europe.

Maajid Nawaz has argued that multiculturalism has failed ethnic minorities by not promoting integration, inhibiting social mobility in employment and gender inequality in Muslim communities, and has encouraged bigotry of low expectations.

Maajid Nawaz has instead argued in favour of what he terms omniculturalism and integration, stating that both are more culturally and economically beneficial to minority communities.

Maajid Nawaz voted Remain and was opposed to Brexit during the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum.

Maajid Nawaz maintained that while he is pro-immigration and supports accepting refugees, he opined that the open border policy pursued by German chancellor Angela Merkel was a mistake in terms of national security, social integration, and fueling support for the far-right in Europe, and it had contributed to the Brexit result.

Maajid Nawaz accused the party of "whitewashing" history over British colonialism to make Scotland appear as if it was colonised by England and played no role in the building of the British Empire.

Maajid Nawaz has expressed opposition to demolishing statues and references to British historical figures in public spaces over past historical comments.

Maajid Nawaz criticised Donald Trump over his proposal for a temporary ban on entry of Muslims into the United States during his 2016 presidential campaign.

Maajid Nawaz said that American liberals had been hypocritical in their criticisms of Trump compared to previous presidents.

Maajid Nawaz has opposed racial profiling of Muslims, extrajudicial detention of terror suspects, torture, targeted killings, and drone strikes.

Maajid Nawaz opposed the Terrorism Act 2000, under which he was himself once detained, and called for the universal right to legal representation and right to silence in all cases and for all suspects.

In 2009, Maajid Nawaz was among the twelve advisers to British government who wrote an open letter to the then prime minister Gordon Brown asking him to hold Israel accountable for its attacks on the Gaza Strip.

Maajid Nawaz opposes Hamas, which he considers a terrorist organisation.

Maajid Nawaz has expressed support for Israel in his commentary, and criticised those who he says use anti-Zionism to promote antisemitic beliefs.

Maajid Nawaz has opined that opposition to Israel is "the mother of all virtue-signals".

In 2015, Maajid Nawaz popularised the term Voldemort effect which pertained to analysts being fearful to call out the ideology of Islamism as the underlying cause of Jihadist terrorism.

Maajid Nawaz argues that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is out to provoke a Clash of Civilisations, which can be avoided by calling out the underlying Islamist ideology and isolating jihadists from ordinary Muslims.

Maajid Nawaz took exception to Pope Francis's characterisation of the November 2015 Paris attacks as the start of a World War 3; he said that it is not another world war but a global jihadist insurgency.

Maajid Nawaz said that when leaders pump up their followers by promising them utopian visions, and then fail to deliver on those promises, followers take matters into their own hands.

Maajid Nawaz said the abuses amounted to genocide and that it "leaves no room for neutrality".

In January 2021, Maajid Nawaz signed an open letter to the FBI and other Western intelligence agencies asking them to investigate the possibility that COVID-19 lockdowns were a "global fraud" promulgated by the Chinese Communist Party and intended to "impoverish the nations" that implemented them.

At the age of 21, Maajid Nawaz married a then fellow Hizb ut-Tahrir activist who was a biology student; they have a son.

In 2014, Maajid Nawaz married Rachel Maggart, an artist and writer from the United States who works for an art gallery in London.

In February 2019, Maajid Nawaz said that he was assaulted in a racially-motivated attack by a white man.