Notes and Quotes from Maajid Nawaz at Oslo Freedom Forum:

Islamism

• #Islamism is the desire to impose any version of Islam over society. (distinct from Islam, the faith.)
• #Jihadism: The use of force to spread Islamism
• There is a misdiagnosis about what we are dealing with. Today, we are dealing with it like an organized crime gang: take out the leader and deal with the gang.
• We cannot kill/shoot/legislate our way out of this problem.
• You cannot kill an idea. (Killing Osama bin Laden did no more to kill jihadism than killing Malala did to kill her ideas.)

...it's not new and has support within the communities

• How on earth is it possible that 6000 born-and-raised European citizens go to join the worst terrorist group that history has ever known if not for the fact that there was level of support within the communities for this ideology?
• This ideology has been propagated for decades in Europe.

...and we have to give ourselves permission to talk about it, even though we fear being labeled bigots

• The solution is to give people permission to have this conversation. (The danger lies in not wanting to appear as an anti-Muslim bigot, or a racist, or an Islamophobe.)
• The alternative to talking is violence and conflict as we have seen for the last decade and longer.

...we can challenge intolerable acts whomever we think we are, and we don't need to be Islamic scholars to do so

• You do not need to be black to challenge racism
• You don't have to be gay to challenge homophobia
• So none of you should be told that you cannot condemn stoning a woman to death or throwing gays off of tall buildings or chopping off body parts.
• You don't need to know anything about the Quran... nor the Hadith to condemn stoning a woman to death

...and now that we are free to talk about this, here are some things we need to come up with:

• Let's work together to build these 5 things that the civil society needs to push back against this theocratic ideology: Ideas, Narratives, Symbols, Leaders, A Goal. (The violent jihadists have all of these.)

References

Here's how to talk about Islamist extremism without invading countries or pretending it doesn't exist, freestyled in 10 mins at the Oslo Freedom Forum

#Solidarity #Tyranny