Credo: Maajid Nawaz

I believe...

I regret being in Hizb ut-Tahrir. It is not a terrorist organisation, but it shares the ideological foundations that inspire the terrorist movement, in that it believes Islam is a political ideology that must dominate the world.

My journey to Egypt was fateful. I went there to study, and I ended up in jail from 2002 to 2006. I was detained for trying to revive Hizb ut-Tahrir there, where it is banned. After the initial solitary confinement and torture, the Egyptian government allowed us access to traditional Islamic sources. For the first time, I was exposed to the pluralism in Islam. Muslims in the past never made the claim that Islam was a political ideology. It has always been a faith. It was through these studies in jail that I came to that conclusion.

Disenchantment among Muslim youths is an essential ingredient for radicalisation, but indoctrination is what keeps it in their head.

Force is sometime necessary. We had to resist Hitler, for example, and the same was needed to stop the Bosnian Muslim genocide. One of the things that radicalised me was that the arms embargo was not lifted, so Bosnians could not arm themselves.

Muslims are not living in a world that is against them. The Iraq war is not a war against Muslims. To interpret it as such is similar to the way the Communists divided everything into the proletariat versus the bourgeoisie.

I have so much to celebrate as a British Muslim. The privileges I enjoy here are ones I may not be able to enjoy in Muslim-majority countries. It'shigh time we celebrated that.

My former colleagues in Hizb ut-Tahrir regard me as a traitor because I'm trying to challenge what they believe.

www.quilliamfoundation.org