“Although we may have our differences with some of the positions that Mr. SPLC and Nawaz also quarreled over a list of Islamist groups compiled by Quilliam, which SPLC said enabled government targeting and which Quilliam said was intended to defend the listed groups.īut this devolution into quibbling risks obscuring the larger point: It’s possible to disagree with much or some of what Nawaz says, and the way he says it (as I in fact do) without concluding he is an anti-Muslim extremist. SPLC said Nawaz wanted to criminalize the niqab, or face veil Nawaz countered that he favored a “policy” against the veil, not a law against it. As I noted at the time, the first two-his tweeting of a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad and visiting a strip club-were both tacky at worst. SPLC cited four particular reasons for Nawaz’s inclusion on the list. There’s also the small problem that he is a Muslim himself, which separates him from figures like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, another controversial figure, included in SPLC’s report, who was raised Muslim but now identifies as an atheist. Unlike other figures on the list, including Frank Gaffney or Pam Geller (or some figures who aren’t, like Donald Trump), Nawaz does not argue that Islam itself is the problem. Yet even some of Nawaz’s critics were perplexed by SPLC’s choice to include him. Nawaz has also said he receives death threats. To the right, critics view him as too much of an apologist for Islam still. To what is broadly his left, critics find him to be far too strident in his criticism of Islamism and too apt to align himself with right-wing politicians. Back in the United Kingdom, he opened Quilliam, named for an early British convert to Islam, to fight Islamist extremism. Nawaz came to see Islamism, the ideology that combines the religion of Islam with politics, as a dangerous problem, and one that is separable from the religion. A British-born Muslim of Pakistani descent, he joined the radical group Hizb ut-Tahrir as a teenager, and eventually ended up in an Egyptian prison. There was no lack of irony to SPLC labeling Nawaz an “anti-Muslim extremist,” because Nawaz has described himself as a former extremist-but an Islamist one. SPLC did not respond to a request for further comment. The statement does not specify which elements of the field guide were incorrect. “It was the right thing to do in light of our mistake and the right thing to do in light of the growing prejudice against the Muslim community on both sides of the Atlantic,” Cohen said. It said that the payout will go toward Quilliam’s work and will be paid for by insurance. But the terms of the settlement are troubling at a time when free speech and the free press are under fire, sometimes from the very same people who threaten civil rights. Nawaz’s inclusion made the report look more like an attempt to police the discourse on Islam than a true inventory of anti-Muslim extremists, of whom there is no shortage, and opened SPLC up to charges that it had strayed from its civil-rights mission at a time when it's more important than ever. On the merits, SPLC seems to have made the right choice. Nawaz and Quilliam in the Field Guide in the first place.” “But after getting a deeper understanding of their views and after hearing from others for whom we have great respect, we realize that we were simply wrong to have included Mr. Nawaz and Quilliam, it was our opinion at the time that the Field Guide was published that their inclusion was warranted,” Cohen said in a statement. “Given our understanding of the views of Mr. On Monday, however, SPLC President Richard Cohen posted an apology to Nawaz and to the Quilliam Foundation, his think-tank.
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