QUOTES

Hip-hop in the '90s began moving towards the Nation of Islam and the 5 Percenters, black nationalist movements; very much so, these movements embraced a form of Islam: Malcom X's form of Islam prior to his change.

I really didn't grow up religious, and I didn't grow up acknowledging my Muslim identity. For me, I was a British Pakistani.

After much soul searching I was able to renounce my past Islamist ideology, challenging everything I was once prepared to die for.

I can now say that the more I learnt about Islam, the more tolerant I became.

We cannot hope to effectively counter extremism if we just focus on schools, universities and prisons: we need to take this online as well.

Chance explorations on search engines do not 'accidentally' lead users to extremist websites.

By the age of 24, I found myself convicted in prison in Egypt, being blacklisted from three countries in the world for attempting to overthrow their governments, being subjected to torture in Egyptian jails, and sentenced to five years as a prisoner of conscience.

Academic institutions in Britain have been infiltrated for years by dangerous theocratic fantasists. I should know: I was one of them.

The Islamist ideology took decades to incubate within our communities, and it will take decades to debunk.

I was filled with hate and anger. But during my trial, something decisive happened: Amnesty International adopted me as a prisoner of conscience, and it was an unbelievable feeling to know that there is someone fighting for you on the outside. Amnesty's 'soft' approach made me seriously consider alternatives to revenge.

Increased sympathy for an Islamist cause, lack of integration, and the absence of acceptance of Muslims into British society makes it harder for Muslims to challenge Islamism and tough for non-Muslims to understand it.

For my own part, once I became a teenager, I experienced severe and violent racism.

The truth is, 'Charlie Hebdo' is not a racist magazine. Rather, it is a campaigning anti-racist left-wing magazine.

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.

As people's opportunities to succumb to confirmation bias increases online - only seeking out information that confirms their prejudices - ignorance, extremism and close-mindedness have continued to rise unabated.

The only certainty we have is that those who are certain of a way to arrive at worldly salvation, are committed enough to organize around this, and seek power to enforce it, will invariably descend into a bloody totalitarian fascism.

Neoconservatism had the philosophy that you go in with a supply-led approach to impose democratic values from the top down. Whereas Islamists and far-right organizations, for decades, have been building demand for their ideology on the grassroots.

I was, by the way - I'm an Essex lad, born and raised in Essex in the U.K.

Dogma not only blinds its protagonist, but it muzzles all other opposition.

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.

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.

The British and French governments have taken a strong stance against 'extremist content' online when addressing their approach to tackling extremism.

I was held in the Mazra Tora Prison for my role as leader of the pan-Islamist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir in Alexandria.

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 used to MC a bit when I was young - 14 or 15 years old.

Preying on the grievances of disaffected young men is the bedrock of Islamism.

Expressing myself through language was always something that I had had to learn to do more so than others.

Islamism is not Islam. Islamism is the politicisation of Islam, the desire to impose a version of this ancient faith over society.

What we cannot deny is that there's an association between exclusion, segregation, non-violent extremist thinking, and jihadism.

Ironically, xenophobic nationalists are utilizing the benefits of globalization.