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Biography & Autobiography. Politics. Nonfiction. HTML: Maajid Nawaz spent his teenage years listening to American hip-hop and learning about the radical Islamist movement spreading throughout Europe and Asia in the 1980s and 90s. At 16, he was already a ranking member in Hizb ut-Tahrir, a London-based Islamist group. He quickly rose through the ranks to become a top recruiter, a charismatic spokesman for the cause of uniting Islam's political power across the world. Nawaz was setting up satellite groups in Pakistan, Denmark, and Egypt when he was rounded up in the aftermath of 9/11 along with many other radical Muslims. He was sent to an Egyptian prison where he was, fortuitously, jailed along with the assassins of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. The 20 years in prison had changed the assassins' views on Islam and violence; Maajid went into prison preaching to them about the Islamist cause, but the lessons ended up going the other way. He came out of prison four years later completely changed, convinced that his entire belief system had been wrong, and determined to do something about it. He met with activists and heads of state, built a network, and started a foundation, Quilliam, funded by the British government, to combat the rising Islamist tide in Europe and elsewhere, using his intimate knowledge of recruitment tactics in order to reverse extremism and persuade Muslims that the 'narrative' used to recruit them (that the West is evil and the cause of all of Muslim suffering), is false. Radical, first published in the UK, is a fascinating and important look into one man's journey out of extremism and into something else entirely. This U.S. edition contains a "Preface for US readers" and a new, updated epilogue..… (more)
User reviews
Nawaz is very blunt about his success in turning disenchanted Muslims to HT as well as recruiting numerous radicals, most notably the man who killed Daniel Pearl. His time in prison is sometimes nail-bitingly tense, especially the time he spent in the Egyptian equivalent of the Lubyanka, where he witnessed, and expected to receive himself, repeated torture. The last sections of the book, in which he describes the founding and purpose of Quilliam, could have been greatly condensed.
I had mixed feelings after reading this. It's certainly interesting, especially for a Westerner and non-Muslim who questions the hold extreme Islam has taken among young people living in Europe and North America. Perhaps I read too few autobiographies, but I just got tired of Nawaz's voice. Still, it's a story of great value to read and I encourage others to pick it up from their library and check it out.
Nawaz was a leading firebrand in Hizb al-Tahrir (HT), the militant organisation that wishes to overthrow all infidel regimes and establish a new Muslim Caliphate. Although it is not itself a terror organisation, its ideology legitimises violence. The author traces what he calls its ''snail’s trail’’ all the way to al-Qaeda.
Nawaz did not agitate in Britain alone. He went first to Denmark, and then to Pakistan, where HT was stirring up students and recruiting army officers of that newly nuclear nation to bring about an Islamist coup. Then he went to Mubarak’s Egypt to spread the HT word there. He was arrested, tortured and spent more than four years in prison. His arrest took place after September 11 2001. There is some suggestion that the British authorities were complicit.
When Nawaz was released in 2006, he returned to Britain and a hero’s welcome from the militants. But while he was in jail, a different story had been ''unfolding inside my own head’’. Starting with his doubts about the motives of the HT leaders, he began to ask himself deeper questions. Despite his rhetorical devotion to Islam, he had been obsessively political, and knew little about the religion in whose name he had struggled and plotted. In jail, he studied. He also met lots of other people, including secularists, imprisoned for beliefs quite unlike his own. He found that he respected them. He concluded that his zealotry had not been truly religious, but a Muslim-coloured version of Western student revolt: ''We Islamists were the bastard children of colonialism.’’
So Brother Maajid broke away from HT, even as he was being offered its British leadership, and even though the break brought his marriage to an end. Temporarily homeless, and sleeping at night in his Renault Clio parked in Tavistock Square, near the scene of the July 7 bombings of 2005, Nawaz conceived a mission to bring ''democratic awakening’’ to Muslims here and abroad. He set up Quilliam, the first Muslim organisation dedicated to confronting the extremists. Nowadays, he is trying to create political pluralism in Pakistan, Egypt and Libya. He helped David Cameron with his important Munich speech on countering extremist ideology.
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| 297.092 |