I really didn't grow up religious, and I didn't grow up acknowledging my Muslim identity. For me, I was a British Pakistani.
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.
What's my audience? British society. Am I received relatively well? Yes. Is there within that... if you break it down, challenges with Muslim communities? Of course there are.
The conclusion that I have come to is that actually, no religion, whether it's Islam, Christianity or any idea based on scripture or texts, is a religion of 'anything,' really.
I can say with a level of confidence that Islam is not a religion of war, only because the majority of Muslims don't subscribe to that perspective, not because there's something inherent in the text that tells me it's a religion of peace.
I joined a radical group at the age of 16 because I'm a passionate man; the good news is that I turned myself around since then. But my character is still quite free and passionate.
The positive is I'm delighted at the way the Liberal Democrats as a party have supported me and the way in which the work I'm doing, through the Liberal Democrats, has abled to broaden some of the work I work on.
Wherever I've been, I've left people who joined Hizb ut-Tahrir. I have to make amends. What I did was damaging to British society and the world at large.
Hizb ut-Tahrir spearheaded the radicalization of the 1990s and cultivated an atmosphere of anger.
I say I haven't lost my religion. I've lost my ideology.
My arrest in Egypt happened in 2002, and I was convicted to five years as a political prisoner.
I think I would encourage leaders to start working with communities in order to inoculate angry, young teenagers.
The University of Westminster is well known for being a hotbed of extremist activity.
I was born and raised in Essex, just outside London, to a financially comfortable, well-educated Pakistani family.
All my friends were non-Muslims. I actually knew very little about Islam - like, very little.
I had a mind inquiring enough to question world events, as well as the passion fostered by my background to care, but I lacked the emotional maturity to process these things. That made me ripe for Islamist recruitment. Into this ferment came my recruiter, himself straight out of a London medical college.
I became, suddenly, not just a Muslim in faith. I became a Muslim in politics. Somebody whose politics were pre-defined by one interpretation of Islam.
Before someone can change his ideas, he has to open his heart.
I worked my way through the education system and was treated as though I had value.
My upbringing was completely liberal from the start. In fact, I didn't even have a Muslim identity.
