In Maajid Nawaz’s book Radical: My Journey out of Islamist Extremism, he tells of an unpleasant experience with the Essex police when he was 15. (Nawaz was born in Essex. His parents were born in Pakistan.)

 

Someone had spotted his 16-year-old brother Osman* playing with a (perfectly legal) plastic BB gun earlier in the day. Take note that this was a time when everyone there knew where to buy AK 47 Rifles, and a lot of people possessed them. They called police in case he was going to commit an armed robbery.

For some reason, the police took this seriously. Very seriously. They put him under surveillance all day, and didn’t calm down when he failed to commit any crimes.

When Osman joined Maajid and their friend Ronnie to play pool, the police were watching. And when they quit playing pool and hopped in a car to go home. Perhaps to the police it seemed they were on their way to commit crimes. Finally! The car stereo was on at top volume, clearly the sign of criminals on the prowl. Who does that? CRIMINALS!

When the boys noticed helicopters overhead and police cars racing past with sirens on, they didn’t worry. They figured someone was going to be in trouble, but it never dawned that it might be them. Until the police cars slewed across their path, blocking their way, with more police cars behind them. And a helicopter spotlighted them. And police with submachine guns sprang out on both sides shouting “Stop the car!” And “Do not move your hands!”

They did not move their hands. They were jerked from the car and thrown to the ground. Guns were put to their heads. To their astonishment they were advised that they were under suspicion of armed robbery, and taken to jail. (Since police had been tailing Osman all day, it is not clear when he was suspected of committing said robbery.)

They spent the night in jail. Which might be when Maajid first heard about the (legal) BB gun. Because Maajid was under 16, the police were obliged to notify his parents. “[T]they had to call and wake Abi up at 3 a.m., and tell her that both her sons had been arrested on suspicion of armed robbery.”

I get the sense this is what upset Maajid most. Pull a gun on me, throw me around, lock me up, but please please don’t upset my mother.

Overnight the police examined the evidence they had against the boys: zero. In the morning they let them go, returning the (legal) BB gun to Osman.

Maajid was angry. He stopped to ask if they had made any missteps. “Is there anything, anything at all that we did wrong?” The officer he addressed said:

No, you did nothing wrong. It was a misunderstanding. Sorry about that.

This event contributed to Maajid Namaz’s growing distrust of the police, of British society, and then of Western society in general. A few years later he followed Osman in joining Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist group which plans to establish a caliphate. He became a successful speaker and recruiter for the group, and was sent to Denmark and Pakistan to organize for Hizb it-Tahrir there.

He went to study Arabic in Egypt, and continued recruiting until he was arrested. During the four years he spent in prison there, he had a change of heart. Part of the reason was reading Animal Farm, part was being adopted by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience, part was talking to people who had been imprisoned for diverse reasons, he told Fresh Air.

Others from Hizb ut-Tahrir were there. Some of the group that assassinated Anwar Sadat. The founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Quaeda affiliates. Bomb makers. Guys who’d been imprisoned for being gay. Muslims who’d converted to Christianity. Christians who’d converted to Islam. “So we had a running joke in prison…: In Egypt if you change your mind from anything to anything you get put in prison…. You can imagine the sorts of conversations that the gay guys would be having with the assassins of Sadat. So, in a sense, it was a very very thorough education – a political education…”

After leaving prison and returning to the UK, he broke with Hizb ut-Tahrir, which meant breaking with much of his family, including his wife, and with his friends.

He started the Quilliam Foundation, a think tank focused on counter-extremism. He consulted with governments trying to understand Islamist extremism. He helped Tommy Robinson leave the English Defence League. He wrote books. He ran for office. He spoke publicly.

In 2007 Nawaz was on the BBC’s Newsnight, talking about his dramatic career. Apparently he talked about his youth, racism he encountered, and his alienating experiences with the police. Maybe he even griped about how they upset his mother.

A few days later his mother called. “You’ll never guess who came to see me after your story was aired on Newsnight. It was the Essex Police,” she said. “They came to offer an apology for having arrested you at gunpoint all those years ago when you were fifteen. They saw it on TV and felt bad.”

Nawaz laughed. He took it as a good sign. “My message was reaching people, but this time it was a democratic one, and I was encouraged.”

That first apology (“It was a misunderstanding. Sorry about that”) was no good. It was inadequate to the experience the kids and their families had gone through. The minimization of it was shameful. It didn’t appease the outraged detainees, but instead increased mistrust.

The second apology, years later, is much better. It seems to have arisen out of genuine dismay at what had happened. It was delivered personally to the mother of two of the (then) boys. And it gave Nawaz hope for a better society.

[*Osman is a pseudonym Nawaz uses for his brother.]