Happy Anniversary!

This is a remarkable - and genuinely hopeful - development in the 3rd World War. Maajid Nawaz was - until sometime very recently - a leading figure in Hizb-ut-Tahrir, one of the few radical Islamic movements who explicitly call for the Caliphate and even make it clear that they're after a Global Caliphate. In other words they don't just want Islamic Countries to unite under a common Caliph, they want to bring the rest of us into their Islamic fold as well.

Thanks, but no thanks.

Majiid, it seems, has had time to think. He's been in an Egyptian jail for the past few years and, in that time, got to read some of the more traditional Islamic texts instead of the selective radical sources he's been exposed to since the age of 16. He woke up.

He realised that, for the past 12 years he's been brainwashed and guilty of brainwashing others. And he's come out, pretty damn publicly, to tell the world about it. (if that link dies use my backup of the Newsnight interview - wmv 30mb 17 mins)

This really is amazingly good news. Like, oh I don't know, Congress deciding to hold a real 9-11 inquiry and impeach the President or Duane Gish and Michael Behe telling us that they can suddenly see the point of evolution after all!

Happy Anniversary!