Omar Bakri Muhammad is a Syrian Islamist militant leader born in Aleppo. He was instrumental in developing Hizb ut-Tahrir in the United Kingdom before leaving the group and heading to another Islamist organisation, Al-Muhajiroun, until its disbandment in 2004.
Hizb ut-Tahrir is an international pan-Islamist and Islamic fundamentalist political organization whose stated aim is the re-establishment of the Islamic caliphate to unite the Muslim community and implement sharia globally.
Al-Muhajiroun is a proscribed militant network based in Saudi Arabia. The founder of the group was Omar Bakri Muhammad, a Syrian who previously belonged to Hizb ut-Tahrir; he was not permitted to re-enter Britain after 2005. According to The Times, the organisation has been linked to international terrorism, homophobia, and antisemitism. The group became notorious for its September 2002 conference "The Magnificent 19", praising the September 11, 2001 attacks. The network mutates periodically so as to evade the law; it operates under many different aliases.
Muhammad Taqi al-Din bin Ibrahim bin Mustafa bin Isma'il bin Yusuf al-Nabhani was an Islamic scholar from Jerusalem who founded the Islamist political party Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Zeyno Baran is a Turkish American scholar on issues ranging from US-Turkey relations to Islamist ideology to energy security in Europe and Asia. She was the Director of the Center for Eurasian Policy and a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, a think tank based in Washington, D.C. From January 2003 until joining the Hudson Institute in April 2006, she worked as the Director of International Security and Energy Programs for The Nixon Center. Baran also worked as the Director of the Caucasus Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies from 1999 until December 2002.
Wassim Doureihi is a prominent member of Hizb ut-Tahrir (Australia), a global Islamic political party that advocates the re-establishment of the Caliphate in the Muslim world. He is a spokesman for the organisation.
The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left is a 2007 book about Ed Husain's five years as an Islamist. The book has been described as "as much a memoir of personal struggle and inner growth as it is a report on a new type of extremism." The son of pious Muslim parents from South Asia, living in East London, Husain joins the Islamist group Young Muslim Organization at the age of sixteen, before moving on to be active in Hizb ut-Tahrir while in college. After disheartening experiences with factional infighting and sectarian violence at his college, and unIslamic behavior while living in Saudi Arabia as an English teacher, Husain rejects political Islam and returns to "normal" life and his family. Husain describes his book as explaining "the appeal of extremist thought, how fanatics penetrate Muslim communities and the truth behind their agenda of subverting the West and moderate Islam."
Maajid Usman Nawaz is a British activist and former radio presenter. He was the founding chairman of the think tank Quilliam. Until January 2022, he was the host of an LBC radio show on Saturdays and Sundays. Born in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, to a British Pakistani family, Nawaz is a former member of the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. His membership led to his December 2001 arrest in Egypt, where he remained imprisoned until 2006. While there, he read books about human rights and made contact with Amnesty International who adopted him as a prisoner of conscience. He left Hizb-ut-Tahrir in 2007, renounced his Islamist past, and called for a secular Islam. Later, Nawaz co-founded Quilliam with former Islamists, including Ed Husain.
Quilliam was a British think tank co-founded in 2008 by Maajid Nawaz that focused on counter-extremism, specifically against Islamism, which it argued represents a desire to impose a given interpretation of Islam on society. Founded as The Quilliam Foundation and based in London, it claimed to lobby government and public institutions for more nuanced policies regarding Islam and on the need for greater democracy in the Muslim world whilst empowering "moderate Muslim" voices. The organisation opposed any Islamist ideology and championed freedom of expression. The critique of Islamist ideology by its founders―Nawaz, Rashad Zaman Ali and Ed Husain―was based, in part, on their personal experiences. Quilliam went into liquidation in 2021.
Mohammed Shafiq is a British media personality known for his commentary on Islam in the United Kingdom.
Usama Hasan is a British Senior Analyst at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and has described himself as a "a full-time counter-extremism practitioner since 2012". He was also a senior researcher in Islamic Studies at the Quilliam Foundation until it was closed down in April 2021. He is a former senior lecturer in business information systems at Middlesex University, and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Mohammed "Mo" Ansar is a British political and social commentator.
Hizb ut-Tahrir is an international pan-Islamist and fundamentalist political organisation. The organisation is considered a "radical Islamic group" and has come under scrutiny from the Australian government.
Shiraz Maher is a British writer and analyst, and Director at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR) at King's College London. He also teaches at Johns Hopkins University. The son of Pakistani immigrants, for several years after 9/11 Maher was a member of the Islamist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir, but left the movement after the 2005 London bombings and became an outspoken critic of radical Islam. He has written for leading newspapers in Britain and elsewhere, produced reports and studies on counterterrorism strategy, and appeared in the international news media as a commentator on jihad and radicalisation.
Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue is a 2015 book collaboration between American author Sam Harris and British activist Maajid Nawaz. The book has been subsequently adapted into a documentary film of the same title.
Regressive left, also referred to as regressive liberals or regressive leftists, is a pejorative term to describe by its proponents a branch of left-wing politics that is accused of being accepting of, or sympathetic to, views that conflict with liberal principles, particularly by tolerating Islamism. Among those who have used the term are the British political activist Maajid Nawaz, American political talk-show hosts Bill Maher and Dave Rubin, and New Atheist writers, such as Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins.
Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain is the British branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a transnational, pan-Islamist and fundamentalist group that seeks to re-establish "the Islamic Khilafah (Caliphate)" as an Islamic "superstate" where Muslim-majority countries are unified and ruled under Islamic Shariah law, and which eventually expands globally to include non-Muslim states such as Britain.
Hizb ut-Tahrir is a pan-Islamist and fundamentalist group seeking to re-establish "the Islamic Khilafah (Caliphate)" as an Islamic "superstate" where Muslim-majority countries are unified and ruled under Islamic Shariah law, and which eventually expands globally to include non-Muslim states. In Central Asia, the party has expanded since the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s from a small group to "one of the most powerful organizations" operating in Central Asia. The region itself has been called "the primary battleground" for the party. Uzbekistan is "the hub" of Hizb ut-Tahrir's activities in Central Asia, while its "headquarters" is now reportedly in Kyrgyzstan.
This is a list of individual liberal and progressive Islamic movements in Europe, sorted by country. See also Islam in Europe and Euroislam.
