The Story of Maajid Nawaz

Maajid Nawaz is a British citizen of Pakistani descent who became involved in his youth with the radical Islamic Liberation Party (Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami), undertaking missions for the party in Pakistan and Egypt. Hizb al-Tahrir is an international movement that campaigns for the reestablishment of the caliphate in Muslim lands.

In April 2002 Nawaz was detained by the Egyptian authorities along with three other British members of the party. He was interrogated for twelve weeks in Cairo’s State Security Intelligence building, and then sent for pre-trial detention. He was written off by Hizb al-Tahrir as “a fallen solder.”

Hizb at-Tahrir is banned from participating in political activity in Egypt and Amnesty International took up Nawaz’s case as a freedom of speech issue. In the fall of 2002 an Amnesty delegation visited Egypt and sought access to him in prison.  Abandoned by his former colleagues, Nawaz was stunned to learn that an international human rights group had been taken up his case:

“I was just amazed, we’d always seen Amnesty as the soft power tools of colonialism. So, when Amnesty, despite knowing that we hated them, adopted us, I felt – maybe these democratic values aren’t always hypocritical. Maybe some people take them seriously … it was the beginning of my serious doubts.”

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