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

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.

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

If we are true small 'l' liberals, it's our job to seek out feminist Muslims, ex-Muslims, liberal Muslims, dissenting voices within Muslim communities, gay Muslims - we should promote those voices and in doing so, we demonstrate Islam is not a monolith, Muslims are not homogenous, and that Muslims are truly internally diverse.

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

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.

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