Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The truth is that just as the 'West' is not a homogenous entity with one view on foreign and domestic policy, nor are Muslims.
Non-violent extremism is essentially the increase of intolerant and bigoted demands made by groups seeking to dominate society.
What we cannot deny is that there's an association between exclusion, segregation, non-violent extremist thinking, and jihadism.
Islamism is not Islam. Islamism is the politicisation of Islam, the desire to impose a version of this ancient faith over society.
After much soul searching I was able to renounce my past Islamist ideology, challenging everything I was once prepared to die for.
I have founded Khudi, in Pakistan, a youth movement which tries to counter extremist ideology through healthy discussion and debate.
I care not to debate which came first, Islamism or anti-Muslim bigotry; suffice to say that both feed into each other symbiotically.
Academic institutions in Britain have been infiltrated for years by dangerous theocratic fantasists. I should know: I was one of them.
No idea is above scrutiny. No idea whatsoever. To criticize, to scrutinize and to satirize my own religion [Islam] is not Islamophobia.
To be forced to defend oneself is an inherently undesirable position to be in. The focus shifts from ideas to the person conveying them.
We cannot hope to effectively counter extremism if we just focus on schools, universities and prisons: we need to take this online as well.
The way to tackle Muslimphobia is to tackle prejudice against Muslims. What it is not is to pretend that Islamist extremism does not exist.
America did not invade Iraq because Iraqis are Muslims. Oil, money, economic interests. Who knows? But it was not because Iraqis are Muslims.
I was imprisoned in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks, when Egypt's state security was rounding people up in unprecedented numbers.
Muslim communities themselves, as they expect mainstream society to stand down racists, must do more to also stand down the Islamist extremists.
In the United Kingdom, we need to promote an inclusive British identity that involves and empowers people from all ethnic and faith backgrounds.
Satire has been a sanctuary historically monopolized by progressives, originally used as a discreet tool against Western religious fundamentalism.
During my teenage years as an Islamist recruiter, I moved to live in self-contained communities in the London boroughs of Newham and Tower Hamlets.
My feminism, as intended by me, extends to empowering women to make legal choices, not to judge the legal choices they make. My fight is for rights.
The British and French governments have taken a strong stance against 'extremist content' online when addressing their approach to tackling extremism.
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.
In Bosnia, the case was there were white, blond-haired, blue-eyed Muslims who were being slaughtered and identified as Muslims. That really touched me.
Wherever I've been, I've left people who joined Hizb ut-Tahrir. I have to make amends. What I did was damaging to British society and the world at large.
The British state already invests in early intervention campaigns in drug abuse and sexual health. Challenging extremism should be no less of a priority.
The niqab, for some, has become an antiestablishment symbol around which one can rally and relish in the opportunities for confrontation that it provides.
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.
Satire is, by definition, offensive. It is meant to make us feel uncomfortable. It is meant to make us scratch our heads, think, do a double-take, and then think again.
A fatwa is a religious edict. Such edicts bind only those who seek to follow the Imam issuing them but can be regarded as an option for others seeking an alternative view.
There has been a failure to grasp how competing narratives fight for the attention of angry young Muslims, and we have grossly underestimated the appeal of the jihadist brand.
What's my audience? British society. Am I received relatively well? Yes. Is there within that... if you break it down, challenges with Muslim communities? Of course there are.
The conclusion that I have come to is that actually, no religion, whether it's Islam, Christianity or any idea based on scripture or texts, is a religion of 'anything,' really.
Poking fun at other people's beliefs, while it may seem frivolous and offensive, is a non-negotiable right. It is a principle that underpins free speech, the basis for progress.
In current times, our moral uproar is best reserved for those who aspire to stone men or women to death, not those who consensually watch women - or men, for that matter - dance.
There were people who had sampled my voice from speeches when I was an Islamist and made them the chorus of pro-Islamist rap songs who then began talking about me as an apostate.
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.
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.
For years, Islamists and other extremists have taken advantage of grievances of Muslims in Britain and have successfully identified ways to integrate them under one 'Islamic' banner.
One of the problems we're facing is, in my view, that there are no globalized, youth-led, grassroots social movements advocating for democratic culture across Muslim-majority societies.
I believe that preventing radicalisation is far more efficient than de-radicalisation, meaning stopping someone joining is a lot easier than trying to pull someone out once they've joined.
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.
Back when I was an Islamist, I thought our ideology was like communism - and I still do. That makes me optimistic. Because what happened to communism? It was discredited as an idea. It lost.
Amnesty International adopted me as a prisoner of conscience, and that led to my - it touched me in a way that really led to me opening up my heart, I've called it the re-humanisation process.
Within our lifetime, we can remember a time when Islamism wasn't the dominant form of discourse or the aim should be to minimise the absolutists within any religious community and contain them.
There are members - very, very close and dear members - of my family - I'm talking immediate family - who simply don't speak to me anymore and haven't done so for years. My marriage fell apart.
Being veterans of the struggle to push back against fundamentalist Christians, American liberals are well acquainted with the pitfalls of the neoconservative flirtation with the religious-right.
The only way we can challenge Islamism is to engage with one another. We need to make it as abhorrent as racism has become today. Only then will we stem the tide of angry young Muslims who turn to hate.
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.
I was in prison with pretty much the who's who of the jihadist and Islamist scene of Egypt at the time, and Egypt was the cradle of Islamism for the world - it's where it began and where jihadism began as well.
My identity comprises of more than just my faith. I am a proud Muslim, but I am also a liberal, a Briton, a Pakistani, a Londoner, a father, a product of the globalised world who speaks English, Arabic and Urdu.
The positive is I'm delighted at the way the Liberal Democrats as a party have supported me and the way in which the work I'm doing, through the Liberal Democrats, has abled to broaden some of the work I work on.