Maajid Nawaz

Who is Maajid Nawaz?

Maajid Nawaz is a British Pakistani and former member of the Islamic political group Hizb ut-Tahrir. He holds a B.A. from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and a M.Sc. in Political Theory from the London School of Economics. He is the co-founder and Executive Director of Quilliam, the world's first counter-extremism think tank. He is also the co-founder of Khudi, a counter-extremism social movement working towards the promotion of social democratic change in Pakistan.

Nawaz cites racism whilst growing up and feeling divided between his Pakistani and British identities as important factors in his struggle to find his own identity. He cites seeing how "European Muslims were being massacred" in Bosnia as a turning point. Maajid's experience of Islamism began at the age of 16 when he left home to pursue a design course in London - it was then that he was recruited to Hizb ut-Tahrir. Maajid very quickly became a national speaker and international recruiter for the party, travelling first to Pakistan and then to Denmark to export the party's ideology and set up cells from London. He was arrested in December of 2001 in Egypt and remained in prison there until 2006. He resigned from Hizb-ut-Tahrir in May 2007.