There was a genocide unfolding against Bosnian Muslims and we, in the United Kingdom, were incredibly angered - a teenager at the time, 15 years old, so my young teenage mind processed that in a way typical to the very passionate and angry and black-and-white way that teenagers often can do.

The Bosnian Genocide was something that triggered my consciousness and led to an awakening politically for me.

It's not always the case that Muslims have been theocrats.

After much soul searching I was able to renounce my past Islamist ideology, challenging everything I was once prepared to die for.

There are no globalized, youth-led, grassroots social movements advocating for democratic culture across Muslim-majority societies. There is no equivalent of Al-Qaeda without the terrorism.

Within our lifetime, we can remember a time when Islamism wasn't the dominant form of discourse or the aim should be to minimise the absolutists within any religious community and contain them.

If we look at Abdel Nasser in Egypt as an Arab leader, he was secular.