马吉德·那瓦兹

马吉德·乌斯曼·那瓦兹（英语：Maajid Usman Nawaz；乌尔都语：ماجد نواز；1978年11月2日—），英国社会活动家，专栏作家和政治家。他曾是2015年英国大选伦敦汉普斯德和基尔伯恩选区自由民主党议员候选人。他也是反对伊斯兰极端主义智库奎利亚姆基金会的创始人之一和主席。

那瓦兹是伊斯兰极端组织伊扎布特前成员。因参与该组织活动，他于2001年12月在埃及被捕，监禁至2006年释放。在狱期间，他通过阅读人权类书籍并与大赦国际互动（后者将其视作良心犯），获得了思想上的转变。那瓦兹于2007年退出伊扎布特组织，结束了伊斯兰主义生涯，并开始呼吁一种世俗的伊斯兰教。

经此转变，那瓦兹同另一位前极端伊斯兰主义者埃德·侯赛因创立了奎利亚姆基金会。他在亚马逊的畅销自传《激进》（Radical；2012）中讲述个人经历。他从此成长为一名卓著的伊斯兰主义批评家。

那瓦兹会流利的英语，乌尔都语和阿拉伯语。

Maajid Usman Nawaz (Urdu: [ˈmaːdʒɪd̪ nəwaːz]; born 2 November 1977) is a British activist and presenter who works for GB News. He was the founding chairman of the think tank Quilliam. Until January 2022, he was the host of an LBC radio show on Saturdays and Sundays. Born in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, to a British Pakistani family, Nawaz is a former member of the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. His membership led to his December 2001 arrest in Egypt, where he remained imprisoned until 2006. While there, he read books about human rights and made contact with Amnesty International who adopted him as a prisoner of conscience. He left Hizb-ut-Tahrir in 2007, renounced his Islamist past, and called for a secular Islam. Later, Nawaz co-founded Quilliam with former Islamists, including Ed Husain.

In 2012, Nawaz published an autobiography, Radical: My Journey out of Islamist Extremism, and has since become a prominent critic of Islamism in the United Kingdom. His second book, Islam and the Future of Tolerance (2015), co-authored with atheist author Sam Harris, was published in October 2015. He was the Liberal Democrats parliamentary candidate for London's Hampstead and Kilburn constituency in the 2015 United Kingdom general election. Since 2020, Nawaz has been accused of promoting false claims and conspiracy theories, including those related to COVID-19 and the 2020 United States presidential election.

Early life and education

Nawaz was born in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, to parents of Pakistani origin. His mother, Abi, moved to Southend with her family when she was nine. His father, Mo, is an electrical engineer who had worked for the Pakistan Navy but had to leave on medical grounds after he contracted tuberculosis. After moving to the United Kingdom, Nawaz's father worked for an oil company in Libya, and moved between Libya and the United Kingdom until his retirement. Nawaz has an elder brother and a younger sister. In his memoir Radical, he uses the pseudonym Osman to refer to his brother.

Nawaz was educated at Westcliff High School for Boys, a grammar school in Westcliff-on-Sea, a suburb of Southend. Later, he studied law and Arabic at SOAS, University of London, and earned his master's degree in political theory from the London School of Economics.

Islamist activism

Association with Hizb ut-Tahrir

Nawaz says that racism from classmates, Combat 18 gangs, and police, and feeling divided between his Pakistani and British heritage, meant he struggled to find his own identity growing up. His elder brother, referred to pseudonymously as Osman, was recruited into Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) by Nasim Ghani, who would later become the British leader of Hizb ut-Tahrir. Osman subsequently persuaded Nawaz to attend HT meetings held in Southend homes. At those meetings, recruits were shown videos of Bosnian Muslims being massacred. Watching these videos eventually resulted in Nawaz's formal recruitment in the HT.

While a student at Newham College and then at SOAS, Nawaz quickly rose through the ranks. By the age of 17, he was recruiting students from Cambridge University, and by 19 he was on the national leadership of HT in the United Kingdom. He became a national speaker and an international recruiter for Hizb ut-Tahrir, travelling to Pakistan and Denmark to further the party's ideology and set up organisational clandestine cells.