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Radical
Radical
Nov 6, 2024 8:26 PM

Author:Maajid Nawaz

Radical

Born and raised in Essex, Maajid Nawaz was recruited into politicised Islam as a teenager. Abandoning his love of hip hop music, graffiti and girls, he was recruited into Hizb ut-Tahrir (the Liberation Party) where he played a leading and international role in the shaping and dissemination of an aggressive anti-West narrative. While studying for his Arabic and law degree, he travelled around the UK and to Denmark and Pakistan, setting up new cells.

Arriving in Egypt the day before 9/11 his views soon led to his arrest, imprisonment and mental torture, before being thrown into solitary confinement in a Cairo jail reserved for political prisoners. There, while mixing with everyone from the assassins of Egypt's president to Liberal reformists, he underwent an intellectual transformation and on his release after four years, he publically renounced the Islamist ideology that had defined his life. This move would cost him his marriage, his family and his friends as well as his own personal security.

Six years after his release, Maajid now works all over the world to counter Islamism and to promote democratic ideals through his organisation, The Quilliam Foundation, which he co-founded with former Islamist and bestselling author Ed Husain.

Following in the wake of the extraordinary democratic change in the Arab world, that few would have foretold, Radical is Maajid's intensely personal account of life inside and out of Islamic extremism. It also highlights one man's quest to inspire change and challenge extremism in all its forms.

This is a hard-hitting memoir of one man's journey into and out of Islamic extremism.

Reviews

This is a book for our times. It should be read by anyone who wants to understand how the extremism that stalks our world is created and how it can be overcome. It could only be written by someone who has lived this story. And Maajid has

—— Tony Blair

This book is more powerful than America's drone attacks because it helps kill the ideas that inspire terrorists. Ultimately, it is by defeating the extremists' worldview that we will make our world safer. Maajid's compelling story from hatred to hope shows us how this can be done

—— Ed Husain, author of The Islamist

Maajid Nawaz was thirty years my junior when I first encountered him in the Torah Prison. His story saddened but inspired me. His innocence and idealism sharply contrasted with the corruption and despotism of his captors. Through Maajid my faith was renewed that a spring of freedom was bound to happen eventually, and so it did

—— Dr Saad El-Dine Ibrahim, Egyptian liberal reform pioneer and former political prisoner

This book is the account of a redemptive journey – through innocence, bigotry, hardline radicalism and beyond – to a passionate advocacy of human rights and all that this can mean ... I was moved beyond measure

—— Kate Allen, Director, Amnesty International UK

Imagine Homeland crossed with Skins, and you will get some idea of what a gripping, revelatory book this is. Unputdownable

—— Tom Holland

One of the most compelling descriptions of radical political immersion of recent times

—— Mail on Sunday

A horrifying reflection on modern Britain

—— Telegraph

What a life, what a compelling storyteller. In parts you’ll need to remind yourself that what reads like an engrossing, fast-paced, action-packed thriller, a piece of fiction, is in fact a real-life account

—— The Indian Express

Please read Radical by the phenomenal Maajid Nawaz. It's a fantastic read! Nawaz is emerging as the most powerful voice in battling the ideas that inspire terrorists.

—— Joel Kinnaman

Sebald is the Joyce of the 21st Century

—— The Times

Most writers, even good ones, write of what can be written. . . . The very greatest write of what cannot be written. . . . I think of Akhmatova and Primo Levi, for example, and of W. G. Sebald

—— New York Times

Richard Dawkins is among the most eloquent scientists who has ever written for the public. His work has changed countless people’s lives, opening their minds to the wonder and beauty of science, and to the silliness of myth and superstition. But few people know Dawkins the man. How did such a man, born abroad from a family of some privilege, schooled as traditionally as any upper-class British youth, become one of the most well-known scientists in the world, and at the same time—among many of the faithful at least—among the most despised? Told with frankness and eloquence, warmth and humor, this is a fascinating story of a fascinating man who was lucky enough—for himself and the rest of the world—to fall in love with science. This is a truly entertaining and enlightening read and I recommend it to anyone who wants a better understanding of Dawkins the man and the rightful place of science in our modern world.

—— Lawrence Krauss

An Appetite for Wonder feels very much like the substance of the breezy conversation you might have at a long summer dinner, if Dawkins were the guest of honor…charming, boring, brilliant, contradictory, conventional, revolutionary. We leave it perhaps not full of facts or conclusions, but with a feeling of knowing the man.

—— New York Daily News

Dawkins writes with an admirable honestly… When focusing on his area of expertise: explaining the magic contained within the natural universe and the tree of life, Dawkins proves that today he is still an extraordinary thinker, and one who has made an enormous contribution to understanding human nature. This memoir is a fascinating account of one man's attempt to find answers to some of the most difficult questions posed to mankind.

—— NPR Books

A memoir that is funny and modest, absorbing and playful. Dawkins has written a marvellous love letter to science… and for this, the book will touch scientists and science-loving persons. … an enchanting memoir to read, one that I recommend highly.

—— NPR

Dawkins’ style [is] clear and elegant as usual… a personal introduction to an important thinker and populariser of science. … provide[s] a superb background to the academic and social climate of postwar British research.

—— Financial Times

The Richard Dawkins that emerges here is a far cry from the strident, abrasive caricature beloved of lazy journalists … There is no score-settling, but a generous appreciation and admiration of the qualities of others, as well as a transparent love of life, literature - and science.

—— The Independent

[Here] we have the kindling of Mr. Dawkins’s curiosity, the basis for his unconventionality.

—— The New York Times Daily

This memoir is destined to be a historical document that will be ceaselessly quoted.

—— The Daily Beast

Surprisingly intimate and moving. … He is here to find out what makes us tick: to cut through the nonsense to the real stuff.

—— The Guardian

This first volume of Dawkins's autobiography … comes to life when describing the competitive collaboration and excitement among the outstanding ethologists and zoologists at Oxford in the Seventies—which stimulated his most famous book, The Selfish Gene.

—— The Evening Standard

…this isn’t Dawkins’s version of My Family and Other Animals. It’s the beauty of ideas that arouses his appetite for wonder: and, more especially, his relentless drive … towards the answer.

—— The Times

Enjoyable from start to finish, this exceptionally accessible book will appeal to science lovers, lovers of autobiographies-and, of course, all of Dawkins's fans, atheists and theists alike.

—— Library Journal
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