“Within our lifetime, we can remember a time when Islamism wasn’t the dominant form of discourse or the aim should be to minimise the absolutists within any religious community and contain them.”

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.

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

No idea is above scrutiny. No idea whatsoever. To criticize, to scrutinize and to satirize my own religion Islam is not Islamophobia.

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

Ironically, xenophobic nationalists are utilizing the benefits of globalization.

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

Does freedom of speech give the right to offend?

When I returned to the United Kingdom, I found that I could no longer justify Islamist extremism as the antidote.

Amnesty International adopted me as a prisoner of conscience, and that led to my – it touched me in a way that really led to me opening up my heart, I’ve called it the re-humanisation process.

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

If we look at Abdel Nasser in Egypt as an Arab leader, he was secular.

We have to render Islamist extremism as unattractive as communism has become today.

No form of theocracy, whether it’s manifested in a violent or non-violent form, is ever good for civilisation, and we have to challenge it in civil society as well as we would challenge Christian-based theocracy, or any other form of bigotry.

I believe that preventing radicalisation is far more efficient than de-radicalisation, meaning stopping someone joining is a lot easier than trying to pull someone out once they’ve joined.

The Bosnian Genocide was something that triggered my consciousness and led to an awakening politically for me.

I’m yet to discover any form of theocracy that isn’t homophobic, that isn’t bigoted to the out group.

By far the greatest and most admirable form of wisdom is that needed to plan and beautify cities and human communities.

If you come together with a mission, and it’s grounded with love and a sense of community, you can make the impossible possible.

Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society: all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labor of others by means of such appropriation.

There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism – by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.

Unanimous hatred is the greatest medicine for a human community.

Unanimous hatred is the greatest medicine for a human community.

Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be in itself a power.

Communism begins where atheism begins.