Maajid Nawaz

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

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

“If our hard-earned liberty, our desire to be irreverent of the old and to question the new, can be reduced to one, basic and indispensable right, it must be the right to free speech.”

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

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

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

“I realised that the idea of enforcing sharia is not consistent with Islam as it's been practised from the beginning. In other words, Islam has always been secular, and I had been totally ignorant of the fact.”

“Dogma not only blinds its protagonist, but it muzzles all other opposition.”

“I am a Muslim. I am born to Muslim parents. I have a Muslim son. I have been imprisoned and witnessed torture for my previous understanding of my religion.”

“Hizb ut-Tahrir spearheaded the radicalization of the 1990s and cultivated an atmosphere of anger.”

“I became, suddenly, not just a Muslim in faith. I became a Muslim in politics. Somebody whose politics were pre-defined by one interpretation of Islam.”

“To suggest that a Muslim cannot think for himself sounds to me very much like an incident of anti-Muslim bigotry.”

“Not all Muslims wish to express themselves in public through a communal religious identity. Identities are multiple, and some may wish to speak instead just as citizens in their professional capacity, through their political party, or their neighborhood body.”

“I joined a radical group at the age of 16 because I'm a passionate man; the good news is that I turned myself around since then. But my character is still quite free and passionate.”

“I was born and raised in Essex, just outside London, to a financially comfortable, well-educated Pakistani family.”

“I used to MC a bit when I was young - 14 or 15 years old.”

“We cannot hope to effectively counter extremism if we just focus on schools, universities and prisons: we need to take this online as well.”

“I come from an immigrant family, but I know no other nationality apart from British.”

“Yes, women should be free to cover their faces when walking down the street. But in our schools, hospitals, airports, banks and civil institutions, it is not unreasonable - nor contrary to the teachings of Islam - to expect women to show the one thing that allows the rest of us to identify them... namely, their face.”

“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.”