page_title: Maajid Nawaz
section_title: Activities in Pakistan
hierarchical_section_title: Maajid Nawaz / Counter-extremist activism / Activities in Pakistan
caption_attribution_description: English: West Hampstead, London elections hustings 2015
context_page_description: Maajid Usman Nawaz is a British activist and radio presenter. He is the founding chairman of Quilliam, a counter-extremism think tank that seeks to challenge the narratives of Islamist extremists, and the host of a radio show on LBC, every Saturday and Sunday.
  Born in Southend-on-Sea, Essex to a British Pakistani family, Nawaz is a former member of the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, an association that led to his December 2001 arrest in Egypt, where he remained imprisoned until 2006. Reading books on human rights and interacting with Amnesty International—who adopted him as a prisoner of conscience—resulted in a change of heart: he left Hizb-ut-Tahrir in 2007, renounced his Islamist past, and called for a "secular Islam." After his turnaround, Nawaz co-founded Quilliam with former Islamists, including Ed Husain. He wrote an autobiography, Radical and has since become a prominent critic of Islamism in the United Kingdom.
  He is a weekly columnist for The Daily Beast, and his writings have been published in various international newspapers; he appears frequently on television; and has delivered lectures including at the UK Defence Academy and Marshall Center for Security Studies.
context_section_description: Nawaz has co-founded an activist group in Pakistan, Khudi, which aims to combat extremism. In 2009, with a BBC Newsnight crew and security team, Nawaz embarked on a counter-extremism tour, speaking at over 22 universities and recruiting students all over Pakistan.
caption: Nawaz (left) with other candidates of the Hampstead and Kilburn constituency
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