Former Islamist seeks to turn the tide of religious extremism in Pakistan
(Read article summary)Maajid Nawaz has founded Khudi, the first social movement in Pakistan to challenge extremist religious ideas and instead promote democratic culture among youths.
London
In the late 1990s, British Pakistani Maajid Nawaz was helping to recruit Pakistani army officers to an extremist Islamist group – with a view to overthrowing the Pakistani government. Now he's using the tactics he learned as an Islamist to try to curb extremism in Pakistan.
"There are, to use a phrase, transferrable skills," Nawaz, co-founder and chairman of the London-based counter-extremism think tank Quilliam Foundation, said in a recent telephone interview.
Now a man courted by the world's top political leaders and a TED speaker, Nawaz was once a top international recruiter for Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HT), a group that seeks to create a Muslim superstate, a global caliphate.
It aims to oust governments by military coups, after first spreading its ideas among the military, intellectuals, and general population. Once in power, its aim is to pursue an aggressive policy of foreign invasion and expansion, and impose its own version of Islam as state law.
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