Radical Quotes

“As he continued to talk to me, I realized one of the fundamental points about Islamism that so many people fail to understand. The way Osman was speaking wasn’t in the orthodox, religious way of the imam with a stick; he was talking about politics, about events that were happening now. That’s crucial to understanding what Islamism is all about: it isn’t a religious movement with political consequences, it is a political movement with religious consequences.”
― Maajid Nawaz, Radical: My Journey out of Islamist Extremism

“We disguised our political demands behind religion and multiculturalism, and deliberately labeled any objection to our demands as racism. Even worse, we did this to the very generation who had been socialist sympathizers in their youth, people sympathetic to charges of racism, who like Dave Gomer were now in middle-career management posts. It is no wonder then that the authorities were unprepared to deal with politicized religion as ideological agitation; they felt racist if they tried to stop us.”
― Maajid Nawaz, Radical: My Journey out of Islamist Extremism

“Like so many nice people who seek power, I wanted to force everyone else to be nice. It's called totalitarianism.”
― Maajid Nawaz, Radical: My Journey Out Of Islamist Extremism

“to tell people to stop practicing their faith was imperialism in nineties clothing, a colonial hangover bordering on racism. Instead, we were embraced as a new generation of anti-colonial politicized youth. Curiously,”
― Maajid Nawaz, Radical: My Journey out of Islamist Extremism

“We disguised our political demands behind religion and multiculturalism, and deliberately labeled any objection to our demands as racism. Even”
― Maajid Nawaz, Radical: My Journey out of Islamist Extremism

“Here I am, back in Mecca. I am still travelling, trying to broaden my mind, for I’ve seen too much of the damage narrow-mindedness can make of things, and when I return home . . . I will devote what energies I have to repairing the damage. —MALCOLM X (1925–65) LETTER TO JAMES FARMER”
― Maajid Nawaz, Radical: My Journey out of Islamist Extremism

“Is not winning the war more important than truth? This maxim, I knew, was also subscribed to by some on the left, the regressive left. For them, winning against capitalism was far more important than it was to their allies. I watched as our ideology gained acceptance and we were granted airtime as Muslim political commentators. I watched as we were ignorantly pandered to by well-meaning liberals and ideologically driven leftists. How we Islamists laughed at their naïveté.”
― Maajid Nawaz, Radical: My Journey out of Islamist Extremism

“Unlike the student protests in the 1960s, by using religion and multiculturalism as a cover, we brought an entirely foreign lexicon to the table. We knowingly presented political demands disguised as religion and multiculturalism, and deliberately labelled any objection to our demands as racism and bigotry. Even worse, we did this to the very generation who had been socialist sympathisers in their youth, people sympathetic to charges of racism, who were now in middle-career management posts; people like Dave Gomer. It is no wonder then that the authorities were unprepared to deal with politicised religion as ideological agitation, and felt racist if they tried to stop us.”
― Maajid Nawaz, Radical: My Journey Out Of Islamist Extremism

“The message was wrong, I knew that now, but maybe the tactics were right. Perhaps we could use the methods of the Islamist groups to create a counter-Islamist movement, to do da’wah for the democratic culture?”
― Maajid Nawaz, Radical: My Journey out of Islamist Extremism

“But because of the religious element in our message, and the desire of the authorities not to offend our religious”
― Maajid Nawaz, Radical: My Journey from Islamist Extremism to a Democratic Awakening

“There are those out there who harbor an irrational fear of Islam. Islamophobes and Islamists have this much in common: both groups insist that Islam is a totalitarian political ideology at odds with liberal democracy, and hence both insist that the two will inevitably clash. One extreme calls for the Qur’an to be banned, the other calls to ban everything but the Qur’an. Together, they form the negative and the positive of a bomb fuse.”
― Maajid Nawaz, Radical: My Journey out of Islamist Extremism

“Not everyone within Amnesty agreed that they should be campaigning on our behalf. I learnt later that the subject of whether or not the group should support us became quite a hot topic internally. The counter-argument was that, although we had committed no crimes ourselves, the ideology that we preached advocated a gross invasion of human rights: once our version of ‘the Khilafah’ was formed, we advocated an aggressive policy of foreign invasion and expansion, the death penalty for apostates, ‘rebels’ and homosexuals, and a forced dress code for women. Thieves would be punished by having their hands cut off, and adulterous women would be stoned to death. Why should Amnesty campaign for our human rights, when, given the opportunity, we would deprive others of theirs? There’s no easy answer to this question. What if, prior to coming to power, Adolf Hitler had been detained for his not yet violent beliefs in National Socialism?”
― Maajid Nawaz, Radical: My Journey from Islamist Extremism to a Democratic Awakening

“TO BE ASKED to voluntarily walk towards your own torture is the cruellest of expectations. Why can’t they just carry me? Each step is a personal betrayal. My body is convulsing in revulsion against my commands.”
― Maajid Nawaz, Radical: My Journey from Islamist Extremism to a Democratic Awakening

“We love death more than you love life. Come, all of you, come and taste death if you dare!”
― Maajid Nawaz, Radical: My Journey from Islamist Extremism to a Democratic Awakening

“The fact that my skin color hadn’t been an issue for those early years of schooling says everything about where racism originates: it is a cultural issue, a societal and familial problem that children soak up as they become more aware of the world. But”
― Maajid Nawaz, Radical: My Journey out of Islamist Extremism

“the only groups who were speaking out against HT at this stage were people like Jeremy Newmark—now of the Jewish Leadership Council—and gay-rights campaigner Peter Tatchell. This was fantastic propaganda for HT: the opposition of pro-Israeli and pro gay rights voices only reinforced the message we were trying to get across to Muslims. “The most dangerous of the Islamic fundamentalists is Hizb al-Tahrir,” Tatchell wrote at the time. His views and warnings were ignored, and we were left laughing at people’s ignorance.”
― Maajid Nawaz, Radical: My Journey out of Islamist Extremism

“Islamism demanded no less of a root-and-branch overhaul of society. But because it was cloaked in religious garb, no one quite knew what to do with it, and people were desperate not to offend. There was confusion over whether to define our activism as a cultural identity, an ideology, or a faith. To”
― Maajid Nawaz, Radical: My Journey out of Islamist Extremism

“The authorities should have taken a different approach. Imagine if it had been the far-right British National Party (BNP) growing on campus. Suppose that it was racism, instead of Islamism, spreading throughout the student population and the BNP had decided to stand in Student Union elections. If that had happened, and the BNP had taken over, the college would have acted immediately. They certainly would have seen the need for a solution, if only for their own reputation and the impact on admissions. They would have cited the college constitution about how hate speech was not allowed, how the BNP was an external political group attempting to hijack the college, and probably stopped them. But because of the religious element in our message, and the desire of the authorities not to offend our religious sensitivities, we were left alone.”
― Maajid Nawaz, Radical: My Journey Out Of Islamist Extremism

“Back then Tatchell was something of a lone voice on HT, no one was listening to him, but credit is due to the man. ‘The most dangerous of the Islamic fundamentalists is Hizb al-Tahrir’, he wrote at the time. ‘Hizb al-Tahrir is especially active on college campuses in London and Manchester … there is a hardcore of fundamentalists who are fanatics … Many […] believe that all Muslims will go to Heaven if they kill for Allah.’ His views and warnings were ignored, and we were left laughing at people’s ignorance.”
― Maajid Nawaz, Radical: My Journey Out Of Islamist Extremism

“Islamism demanded no less of a root-and-branch overhaul of society. But because it was cloaked in religious garb, no one quite knew what to do with it, and people were desperate not to offend. There was confusion over whether to define our activism as a cultural identity, an ideology or a faith. To top it off, Islamism went through a decade of being embraced by both the left and right wings. The default left-leaning liberal position was to embrace the movement as part of multicultural sensitivity: to tell people to stop practising their faith was imperialism in nineties clothing, a colonial hangover bordering on racism. Instead, we were embraced as a new generation of anti-colonial politicised youth. Curiously, the default position on the right was to embrace us too, because it had been the Afghan Mujahideen, backed by the CIA, who fought the Soviet Union. Lest we forget, this was when Hollywood films such as Stallone’s Rambo 3 portrayed the Afghan Mujahideen as heroes.”
― Maajid Nawaz, Radical: My Journey Out Of Islamist Extremism

“Having been raised in a multiethnic and multifaith united India, he lost many of his childhood friends. Those who now belonged to the “wrong” faith were forced to immigrate to India; others left for England.”
― Maajid Nawaz, Radical: My Journey out of Islamist Extremism

“This book is the account of his redemptive journey—through innocence, bigotry, hard-line radicalism, and beyond—to a passionate advocacy of human rights and all that this can mean.”
― Maajid Nawaz, Radical: My Journey out of Islamist Extremism

“Any prisoner held solely for the non-violent expression of their beliefs, no matter how illiberal, has an automatic and unconditional right to our support as a fellow human being. However, not every former prisoner, once released, should be automatically hailed as a champion of human-rights, and placed on prestigious human-rights platforms as a spokesperson for human-rights causes.”
― Maajid Nawaz, Radical: My Journey Out Of Islamist Extremism