13 quotes
I think it's important just to distinguish between Islamism and Islam, a religion.
Comments in The Story of God with Morgan Freeman (2016)
When I saw him I thought, "my God, if these guys ever came to power and declared a caliphate, it would be Hell on Earth."
Comments in The Story of God with Morgan Freeman (2016)
Islamism is not Islam. Islamism is the politicisation of Islam, the desire to impose a version of this ancient faith over society.
I am still a Muslim, but I am now liberal.
Comments in The Story of God with Morgan Freeman (2016)
There are no globalized, youth-led, grassroots social movements advocating for democratic culture across Muslim-majority societies. There is no equivalent of Al-Qaeda without the terrorism.
There is a disproportionate number of convicted terrorists who've come from a conversion background
It slowly dawned on me that what I had been propagating was far from true Islam. The more I learnt about Islam, the more tolerant I became.
For if liberalism is to mean anything at all, it is duty bound to support without hesitation the dissenting individual over the group, the heretic over the orthodox, innovation over stagnation and free speech over offense.
What we've come to realise is those two extremes - far-right fascism and Islamist extremism - have a symbiotic relationship, where they mutually reinforce the other's very generalised view of the other, and they feed off each other's propaganda.
If the dangers of racism are apparent, even in a non-violent form, then it was the same for Islamism. Communalist identity politics, self-segregation and group-think are far more damaging to societies in the long run than the odd bomb going off here or there, because it is such a milieu that keeps breeding bomb-makers.
Radical: My Journey out of Islamist Extremism (2012)
I didn't imagine sharing a panel with a former neo-Nazi, because, of course, I joined the group I did, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, at 16 after being chased in the streets by [the right-wing extremist group] Combat 18, and being stabbed.
[The Prevent definition of Islamism is] so broad that it fails to distinguish between Islamists and politically active Muslims inspired by Islam
In today’s Britain, the weakest among us are often assumed to be minority communities. In fact, the weakest among us are those minorities-within-minorities for whom the legal right to exit from their communities’ constraints amounts to nothing before the enforcement of cultural and religious shaming.
On Blasphemy (2015)