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

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.

No form of theocracy, whether it's manifested in a violent or non-violent form, is ever good for civilisation, and we have to challenge it in civil society as well as we would challenge Christian-based theocracy, or any other form of bigotry.

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.

I had the assassins of the former president of Egypt, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood was with me in prison, the leaders of my own former group Hizb ut-Tahrir were with me in prison and so by the time I was released at the age of 28, I wasn't the man who went in at 24.

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.