<b>Maajid Usman Nawaz</b> (born 2 November 1977) is a British activist and radio presenter. He is the founding chairman of Quilliam, a counter-extremism think tank that seeks to challenge the narratives of Islamist extremists, and the host of a radio show on LBC, every Saturday and Sunday.<br/>Born in Southend-on-Sea, Essex to a British Pakistani family, Nawaz is a former member of the Islamist group <s>Hizb ut-Tahrir</s>, an association that led to his December 2001 arrest in Egypt, where he remained imprisoned until 2006. Reading books on human rights and interacting with Amnesty International—who adopted him as a prisoner of conscience—resulted in a change of heart: he left <s>Hizb-ut-Tahrir</s> in 2007, renounced his Islamist past, and called for a "secular Islam." After his turnaround, Nawaz co-founded Quilliam with former Islamists, including <b>Ed Husain</b>. He wrote an autobiography, <i>Radical </i>(2012) and has since become a prominent critic of Islamism in the United Kingdom.<br/>He is a weekly columnist for <i>The Daily Beast</i>, and his writings have been published in various international newspapers; he appears frequently on television; and has delivered lectures including at the UK Defence Academy and Marshall Center for Security Studies. His second book, <i>Islam and the Future of Tolerance</i> (2015), co-authored with atheist author <b>Sam Harris</b>, was published in October 2015. He was the Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for London's Hampstead and Kilburn constituency in the 2015 general election.