Maajid Nawaz

Maajid Nawaz is a British activist, author and politician perhaps best known for his former membership of the extreme Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir (حزب التحرير) and as author of his memoir, . In recent times he has become a very vocal advocate for a moderate, secular Islam, including through (formerly the Quilliam Foundation) which he co-founded, and became an LBC radio host to discuss various political issues. Quilliam eventually closed for good in April 2021, and Maajid's career at LBC ended in 2022 after spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories.
== Ideological evolution ==
===Islamist activism===
Nawaz became involved with radical Islamism in his teens and worked as a recruiter for Hizb ut-Tahrir. He spent a year abroad studying Arabic in Egypt, where he continued his recruiting and as a result was arrested by notorious secret police and imprisoned for 4 years, starting in 2002.
Nawaz has since gone on to talk of how successful he was at fomenting Islamist fervour at Newham College, and how easy it was to get the primarily liberal institution to turn a blind eye to his brand of theocratic political agitation.
Nawaz has claimed that while incarcerated, surrounded by several prominent jihadist leaders, he realized he wanted to take a different path. He cited George Orwell's Animal Farm as key to this realisation and how he came to a new understanding of "what happens when somebody tries to create a utopia."How Orwell's 'Animal Farm' Led A Radical Muslim To Moderation | National Public Radio Friends and family, however, are disdainful of this supposed come-to-Jesus prison experience -- of which they saw no evidence at the time -- and instead see Nawaz as an utter opportunist. They say he cares more "about being a well-compensated hero than he does about the cause he champions."What Does Maajid Nawaz Really Believe? | New Republic
===Counter-extremism and Islamic reform===
He was adopted by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscienceThe Story of Maajid Nawaz | Amnesty International (USA) blog and was released after 4 years. 
After his release, at the age of 24, Nawaz reportedly "was 100 percent committed" to Islamism, and at a press conference after held at his release, Nawaz declared: “I have become more convinced of the ideas that I went into prison with.” But, after about ten months out of prison he had concluded he could rise no higher in his Islamist organization. 
Nawaz's renunciation of his ties to Hizb ut-Tahrir and his wider condemnation of Islamist ideals, occurred in the same week his friend, Ed Husain, gained some celebrity and adulation for writing "a stirring defection story of a Muslim extremist who had come clean." Shortly thereafter, in 2007, Nawaz and Hussain founded The Quilliam Foundation, and "the British government shelled out the equivalent of more than $3.8 million" to Quilliam in three years. 
In 2012 Nawaz published his memoir Radical: My Journey from Islamist Extremism to a Democratic Awakening which was feted as a vital insight into how young Muslims are radicalised and embrace extreme Islamism. The book describes in detail how he experienced serious racist abuse growing up in Britain and how this led to his embracing the ideals of Hizb ut-Tahrir.Alom Shaha admires the honesty of a former Islamist | NewHumanist.org.uk
Quilliam compiled a secret list of Muslim groups it considered as being sympathetic to violent Islamism. Nawaz sent the list to the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT), a directorate of the British Home Office. The organizations and individuals named included the Muslim Council of Britain, the main umbrella group in Britain for Islamic organisations. Also included was the claim that a Scotland Yard counter-terrorism squad, the Muslim Contact Unit, is dominated by extremist ideology. Critics of the foundation accused it of McCarthyite smear tactics and branded its claims ridiculous. Nawaz's reputation among British civil libertarians and many British Muslims fell quite low.List sent to terror chief aligns peaceful Muslim groups with terrorist ideology | The Guardian 
In 2014, he created a storm of criticism and received many death threats from his Muslim followersMaajid Nawaz's with-us or against-us mindset is out of touch with reality | The Guardian after posting on his Twitter account a Jesus and Mo cartoon. Even some supporters of Nawaz's ideals viewed this as a crude publicity stunt designed to offend and curry favor with his new Islamophobic friends.Maajid Nawaz's with-us or against-us mindset is out of touch with reality | The Guardian
Nawaz appeared on Intelligence Squared, arguing that Islam actually was inherently a religion of peace that had been corrupted. Opposing him was Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Douglas Murray.Intelligence Squared, Is Islam a Religion of Peace Unfortunately for him, the opposing side 'won' in that they convinced more people that Islam wasn't inherently peaceful.
===LBC career===
From 2016, Nawaz became the host of an LBC radio show, where he discussed a wide range of topics such as extremism,https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/maajid-nawaz/maajid-hammers-home-failure-of-war-on-terror/ the refugee crisishttps://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/maajid-nawaz/maajid-blasts-caller-for-child-refugee-comments/ and Brexit.https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/maajid-nawaz/maajid-nawaz-explains-divorce-leaving-complex/ In many cases he would engage in heated debates with listeners, some of whom denied the fact that he is British.https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/maajid-nawaz/maajid-nawaz-battles-caller-who-wants-him-deported/https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/maajid-nawaz/maajid-blasts-caller-who-claims-he-isnt-british/
In July 2020, Nawaz began a hunger strike to protest against China's imprisonment and alleged atrocities of its Uyghur population and to promote a parliamentary petition urging the government to impose sanctions on China over its treatment of Uyghur Muslims.https://5pillarsuk.com/2020/07/18/maajid-nawaz-goes-on-hunger-strike-to-support-uyghurs/ Within a week, the petition passed the 100,000 signature threshold, thereby ensuring that a debate on the issue would take place in the UK Parliament.https://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2020/07/parliament-set-to-debate-chinas-persecution-of-uighur-muslims
From late 2020 onwards, Nawaz's commentary became increasingly sympathetic with right-wing populists and conspiracy theorists, especially regarding the U.S. election and the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, his opposition to booster vaccines (despite having two COVID vaccines himself) resulted in fellow LBC presenter Iain Dale publicly criticizing him for spreading "deranged rubbish" on Twitter.https://www.standard.co.uk/news/londoners-diary/londoners-diary-lbc-iain-dale-maajid-nawaz-covid-boosters-jabs-b971850.html Nawaz's commentary on the pandemic appears to be centered around misrepresenting the preventative measures taken by various governments to combat it, such as saying the following in response to a user who claimed the Italian government was mandating vaccines for over-50s and requiring COVID passports for shops, banks and hairdressers (the mandate was true, the passports were nothttps://www.reuters.com/world/europe/italy-make-covid-jab-mandatory-over-50s-tighten-curbs-draft-2022-01-05/):
On 7th January 2022, LBC announced that Nawaz would no longer present a show with immediate effect.https://twitter.com/LBC/status/1479452766334500868https://www.indy100.com/news/maajid-nawaz-covid-lbc-radio-b1989182 Nawaz responded with "I refuse to go quietly into the night".https://twitter.com/MaajidNawaz/status/1479462490559942661
==SPLC==
Nawaz was considered an anti-Muslim extremist by the Southern Poverty Law Center. However, Hemant Mehta and Ophelia Benson strongly disagreed with this classification.Southern Poverty Law Center: Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Maajid Nawaz Are “Anti-Muslim Extremists” 
Nawaz issued a strongly worded reply:
As a result, Nawaz sued the SPLC, receiving a $3.75m settlement and an apology in June 2018.http://www.splcenter.org/news/2018/06/18/splc-statement-regarding-maajid-nawaz-and-quilliam-foundation
==Islam and the Future of Tolerance==
In 2015, Nawaz collaborated with Sam Harris to produce a short book, . The book is presented as a dialogue between the two figures. The two are at one in condemning what they jointly perceive as left wing/liberal apologists equating criticism of Islamic doctrines with Islamophobia and racism (or as Nawaz terms it, reverse racism). Both individuals are of the opinion that to hold Muslims to lower standards than Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. with regards to issues such as human rights, freedom of religion, and free speech, is to tacitly endorse the view that Muslims are inherently inferior, and incapable of being as "civilized" as non-Muslims. Borrowing the phrase from that former United States president George W. Bush, Harris, Nawaz, and several others claim to see Islamic apologists practicing a "soft bigotry of low expectations".Let’s Talk About How Islam Has Been Hijacked | Wall Street Journal (Commentary)Maher vs. Charlie Rose: To Claim Islam Is Like Other Religions Is Naive And Plain Wrong | RealClearPolitics.com
Harris and Nawaz's critics claim that they are not, in fact, practicing any sort of bigotry, including that of "soft expectations." They object to a Western focus on the poor human rights records in some Muslim countries vis-a-vis women and sexual minorities, when the same West that lectures Muslims (as though the western world is a monolith) has colonized and subjugated their lands and continues to bomb and invade them, as well to support their worst tyrants. If Western modernity is unattractive to many Muslims, that makes sense to religious studies scholar Karen Armstrong:
Nawaz critics like Armstrong claim to not object to holding Muslims to proper standards of human rights; they claim to merely reject "Western arrogance" on the subject in light of the other kinds of Western human rights abuses that understandably aggrieve many Muslims. Noticeably, its "refutation" of Nawaz et al. relies on the tu quoque fallacy.
Some accuse Nawaz of "making money playing the role of the 'good' and 'moderate' Muslim every Islamophobe loves" and argue that his projects are simply self-promotion;
To promote the book, in September 2015 Nawaz and Harris jointly addressed Harvard University's Institute of Politics.Islam & the Future of Tolerance - Maajid Nawaz & Sam Harris (YouTube)
== The Cameron Speech ==
In July 2015, Nawaz collaborated with the British Prime Minister David Cameron to write the speech delivered by Cameron as his 5 year strategy purporting to counter Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.David Cameron & Maajid Nawaz unveil strategy to tackle Islamism (YouTube)
== Feminism ==
In 2015, Nawaz was filmed  in a London lap-dancing club on his stag night, receiving a private dance and putting his hands on the woman dancing for him. This resulted in a barrage of dubious criticism and some counter-claims from Nawaz making arguments inline with the views of sex positive feminists. In the UK, however, sex postive feminism is weak, therefore many declared Nawaz to be no feminist at all.Nice try, Maajid Nawaz, but you didn’t go to a lapdancing club because you’re a feminist | NewStatesman.com
==Questionable funding==
The Quilliam Foundation has received funding (at least $3m) from the John Templeton Foundation., Medium, 8 Jan 2016 Quilliam (and hence by association, Nawaz) has also received funding from a man associated with Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, neo-cons.Maajid seems to have gotten funding by a man associated with Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, known bigots | loonwatch.com Moreover, Quilliam took money from the UK governmentHome Office funding to the Quilliam Foundation from 2008 to 2012 - Publications - GOV.UK as a quid pro quo and, as noted, had sent a list of alleged Islamist sympathizers to British intelligence.
==Muslim grooming gangs==
The Quilliam Foundation has long campaigned on the issue of alleged targetting of vulnerable white children by Pakistani Muslim men (such as the Rochdale sex trafficking gang). In December 2017 Quilliam produced an influential report claiming that "84% of grooming gang offenders" are Asian, and dwelt on the problem of Asians, particularly Pakistani Muslims, targetting vulnerable white children. While it was praised by the UK Conservative Party and many figures in the media, the report has come under attack over its flawed methodology, its failure to disclose some details of its methodology, and secret edits made to the paper online to cover up these methodological flaws. It was based on a partial sample of cases, performed in an opaque way but apparently based on media reports, which are influenced not only by racial bias of the media, but by biases in police investigations and the differing tendencies of people to report crimes (a particular issue with child sexual abuse where only 3-15% of cases may be reported). Although the ethnic group of offenders was recorded, there was no systematic recording of offenders' country of origin or religion, making claims about Pakistani Muslims problematic. Its suggestion that white children were at risk was challenged as facing several biases, not least that there was no recording of the race of victims and the report ignored cases where ethnic minority children were targeted.When bad evidence is worse than no evidence: Quilliam's “grooming gangs” report and its legacy, Ella Cockbain, Policying Insight, 20 March 2019We’re told 84% of grooming gangs are Asian. But where’s the evidence?, Kenan Malik, The Guardian, 11 Nov 2018
More recently the report has been panned for its deliberately misleading content by the highly acclaimed peer-reviewed SAGE journals.Cockbain, Ella; Tufail, Waqas (2020). "Failing victims, fuelling hate: challenging the harms of the 'Muslim grooming gangs' narrative". Race & Class. 61 (3): 3–32. doi:10.1177/0306396819895727. ISSN 0306-3968. It was "fiercely" criticised for its poor methodology by Ella Cockbain and Waqas Tufail, in their paper "Failing victims, fuelling hate: challenging the harms of the 'Muslim grooming gangs' narrative" which was published in January 2020.Cockbain, Ella; Tufail, Waqas (2020). "Failing victims, fuelling hate: challenging the harms of the 'Muslim grooming gangs' narrative". Race & Class. 61 (3): 3–32. doi:10.1177/0306396819895727. ISSN 0306-3968.Kenan Malik (November 11th, 2018). We’re told 84% of grooming gangs are Asian. But where’s the evidence?. The Guardian. Archived Version. Retrieved December 25th, 2020. In December that year, a further report by the UK Government was released showing that the majority of CSE gangs were, in fact, composed of white men.https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/944206/Group-based_CSE_Paper.pdf
Research has found that group-based child sexual exploitation offenders are most commonly white. Some studies suggest an overrepresentation of black and Asian offenders relative to the demographics of national populations. However, it is not possible to conclude that this is representative of all group-based CSE offending. 
::
Writing in The Guardian, Cockbain and Tufail wrote of the report that "The two-year study by the Home Office makes very clear that there are no grounds for asserting that Muslim or Pakistani-heritage men are disproportionately engaged in such crimes, and, citing our research, it confirmed the unreliability of the Quilliam claim".
The results of the two year home office study have been condemned unanimously by the Network of Sikh Organizations (NSOUK), noting The Home Office’s research paper into ‘Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation Characteristics of Offending’ was published earlier this week, but it fails to acknowledge one of the well evidenced motivations behind grooming gangs like those in Rochdale and Rotherham – the religion and culture of the perpetrators. The report talks of ‘othering’ of victims to justify abuse but fails to accept this also involves ‘othering’ of non-Muslim girls who are considered fair game and worthless. Their abuse is justified by the perpetrators because they are considered inferior. This religion-linked justification empowers the perpetrators who feel they have impunity, whilst sustaining the persecution of the victims. The Home Office’s failure to acknowledge this important driver is most peculiar, given it is clear from the testament of victims (in places like Rotherham), and in the conclusions of the judge in Rochdale, who said the perpetrators targeted their victims because they were outside of their community and religion. In failing to consider this important aspect, the victims have been failed yet again.
For years we’ve highlighted that it’s not only white girls who’ve been targeted by predominantly Pakistani heritage Muslim gangs in street-based sex grooming – it is something that has been an issue for Sikh and Hindu communities for decades, and one that has regrettably triggered vigilante responses by young Sikh men, some of whom have been sent to prison as a result.
Whilst we acknowledge perpetrators come from various ethnic backgrounds, the high-profile cases like Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford and Telford (to name a few) have involved mainly Pakistani heritage Muslim men and showed a now well-established pattern of criminality which has blighted our country over the last few decades."
This accusation of whitewashing in the official government inquiry is substantiated further by a Social Science Research paper published jointly by University of Chichester and University of Reading professors that specifically investigated Group Localised Child Sexual Exploitation (GLCSE) in the UK across hundreds of local authorities and involving half a thousand defendants convicted. The abstract states:
"Since 2011, the prosecution of Asian men for Group Localised Child Sexual Exploitation (GLCSE) in the UK has led to two opposing positions: (1) Asian men have been unfairly demonized, and (2) Asian men have a disproportionate propensity for GLCSE. We analysed the evidence in the public domain in different two ways. First, we collected newspaper reports of GLCSE cases, and completed a comprehensive review of the literature, government documents and official case reviews. Our data consists of 498 defendants in 73 prosecutions between 1997 and 2017. Using a technique that is widely accepted in medical research, we determined the heritage of these defendants. Second, using census data for 404 local authorities, we analysed the relationship between GLCSE prosecutions, and the religion and heritage of each local population.
We conclude that Muslims, particularly Pakistanis, dominate GLCSE prosecutions"
Considering the animosity of police in the UK towards investigating these crimes for fear of being branded "racist" as reported by the Independent and the unwillingness of the Home Office to thoroughly investigate these crimes due to claiming the child gang rape victims had made an "informed choice" per Rochdale Prosecutor Nasir Afzal, it appears there is still notable trepidation in the UK authorities to uncover the cultural drivers behind this overrepresentation and brush it under the rug despite best efforts by then Home Secretary Priti Patel, noted by writers at EU Today and Spiked Magazine.
Indeed, a cursory analysis of the studies mentioned in the government report reveal in every study there is a 5 to 18 fold overrepresentation of so called "Asian" offenders (making up only 4 percent of the UK population but anywhere from 21 to 75 percent of those convicted of these crimes), which combined with the research paper published in the Social Science Research Network listed above by researchers from both the University of Reading and University of Chichester showing the notable overrepresentation of Pakistani Muslims, as well as the well documented unwillingness of UK Police authorities and Home Office to thoroughly investigate both the extent and cultural drivers of this sort of crime nixes any credibility of the Home Office's report which does not even cite the most well researched and recent study available on this subject and was produced by a government department revealed to have turned a willing blind eye to this pattern.
The government report contradicts itself by claiming "there was not enough evidence to conclude that child sexual abuse gangs were disproportionately made up of Asian offenders" but then literally cites studies showing strong overrepresentation of so called "Asians" and does not even cite the most thoroughly researched Social Science paper published most recently that uses medical techniques to prove the origin of a vast majority of these Group Localized Child Sexual Exploitation gangs (euphemistically referred to as "grooming gangs") are Pakistani Muslims.
==Right wing apologism==
In 2013 Nawaz allied himself with Tommy Robinson, far-right leader and self-styled expert on child grooming.Tommy Robinson link with Quilliam Foundation raises questions, The Guardian, 12 Oct 2013 Robinson claimed (perhaps rather dubiously) that Quilliam paid him to quit the English Defence League so they could claim credit for de-radicalising him.Tommy Robinson, Former EDL Leader, Claims Quilliam Paid Him To Quit Far-Right Group, Steven Hopkins, Huffington Post, 04/12/2015 This was one of a series of conversions that Quilliam claimed to have carried out; but certainly in Robinson's case it was short-lived.The Phony Martyrdom of Tommy Robinson, Richard Seymour, Jacobin magazine, Aug 2018
In April 2019, Nawaz felt the need to defend Candace Owens after the comments she made about Adolf Hitler were brought up during a congressional hearing on white supremacy.https://twitter.com/MaajidNawaz/status/1115951703520612353
In June 2019 Nawaz promoted the claim that cement was used in the milkshake thrown at Andy Ngo.https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1145353112707895297.html The following year, he invited Ngo on to his radio show to discuss the Portland protestshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPsW5PQDi0E and commented that "few undercover journalists have the courage of Andy Ngo".https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=135775283156412&story_fbid=3120810351319542
In August 2020, Nawaz defended Nigel Farage's use of the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory, stating that it "refers to [the] Long March through our institutions of Frankfurt School critical theory".https://twitter.com/MaajidNawaz/status/1300007484225204224?s=20
==COVID-19 lockdown skepticism==
Nawaz believes that the negative effects of lockdowns to control the spread of a disease outweigh the positive effects, stating "lockdowns kill".https://twitter.com/LBC/status/1343506871257346049 He also claimed that the British government was deliberately withholding a "secret dossier" containing information about the effects of the lockdowns it implemented, even though the government had already published this information several months earlier.https://www.ons.gov.uk/news/statementsandletters/estimatingtheimpactsofcoronavirusonenglandsmortalityandmorbidity 
Nawaz's tendency to downplay the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic involved retweeting a thread by Dr. Thomas Binder (a 9/11 truther, Assadist and virulent anti-semite).https://twitter.com/sundersays/status/1355831852469248000https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1331699565557395460
Nawaz was 1 of 10 signatories of an open letter to the FBI and M15 alleging that lockdown policies are the result of a global plot by the Chinese Communist Party.https://twunroll.com/article/1348412619858849792
==2020 American election and mental downfall==
Nawaz has since deleted many of his tweets, and blocks any and all criticism of him. He essentially became the very person he claimed he used to hate. In the wake of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election which saw Joe Biden defeat Donald Trump, Nawaz began to extend an excessive amount of charity to individuals alleging mass voter fraud by the Biden campaign. This involved promoting far-right websites such as Red Elephants and Project Veritas, known for their conspiracy theories (Nawaz later apologized when he realized the former also promotes antisemitism).https://twitter.com/maajidnawaz/status/1325113223906013184https://twitter.com/MaajidNawaz/status/1326435144937435137 Nawaz also promoted doctored images fueling these conspiracy theories, and those who attempted to correct/criticize him for these actions were swiftly blocked,https://twitter.com/LaloDagach/status/1325650133023924226 and were also often met with random legal threats from him.https://twitter.com/gspellchecker/status/1347156935792078848?lang=en Nawaz had succeeded in alienating many individuals who once admired and supported him.https://twitter.com/Mohammed_Amin/status/1330216815314825217https://twitter.com/jay_shapiro/status/1325053772503068672 Additionally several Quilliam staff members had resigned from the organization.https://twitter.com/GerryHassan/status/1351969619687444481https://twitter.com/ToubeDavid/status/1354781298192166914
After the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot, Nawaz appears to have been sympathetic to the insurrectionists, claiming that their actions were "the only outlet they had", continuing to question the legitimacy of the election.https://twitter.com/GregoryDavisHNH/status/1348381581782757384 In contrast, Nawaz vilified the Black Lives Matter and Antifa protesters during the 2020 George Floyd protests, as comparable to Radical Islamists.
==Closure of Quilliam==
On 9th April 2021, Nawaz posted on Twitter that Quilliam had closed down for good, citing financial hardships incurred by the COVID-19 lockdowns.Alex MacDonald, Quilliam: British 'counter-extremist' group closes citing lack of funds. Middle East Eye, 9 April 2021. However, there is some evidence to suggest that the organization had been suffering from financial problems prior to the pandemic, notably a 2019 employment tribunal verdict in which Quilliam had to compensate a contracted employee for unpaid earnings & unfair dismissal, after telling her that it had run out of funds.Employment Tribunals, Mrs MA Khan vs The Quilliam Foundation Ltd. Central London Employment Tribunal, 23 March 2020. Nawaz also appears to have deleted most of his tweets up until this point, making it difficult to cite evidence for many of his controversial and problematic statements.
==2022 Russo-Ukrainian War==
After Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Nawaz decided to share an article from 2014 about the Azov Battalion, its Nazi ideology and connection to the Ukrainian government (why care about fascism now all of sudden, when he didn’t before?).https://twitter.com/MaajidNawaz/status/1496972850494058498 Nawaz cited further articles on the subject, including one by The Grayzonehttps://twitter.com/MaajidNawaz/status/1497176448574103560 (ironic that someone who claims to care about the Uighur genocide tweets an article from an outlet that denies said genocide).
Nawaz tweeted the debunkedhttps://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/02/25/fact-check-claim-us-biolabs-ukraine-disinformation/6937923001/ claim that the U.S. has biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine, and appeared to use it to justify Russia's actions.https://twitter.com/MaajidNawaz/status/1496800671739174913
==See also==
*Jordan Peterson
*Intellectual Dark Web
==References==
Category:British people
Category:British politicians
Category:Conspiracy theorists
Category:Intellectual Dark Web
Category:Internalized discrimination
Category:Leftists who turned right with age
Category:Living people
Category:Muslims
Category:Secularism