Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN) formally announced his run for Chair of the Democratic National Committee early this week, and one of his big surprise endorsements came from the well-known British “reformist” Maajid Nawaz, who has at times been refreshingly honest about the jihad threat. Following the Pulse massacre in Orlando, Florida that many tried to deny was religiously motivated, wrote an article with this headline: “Admit it, These Terrorists are Muslims.”
Odd, then, that he would endorse Ellison, given the latter’s well-known and disreputable background of receiving funding and support from Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups, and openly supporting them in turn. Yet instead of denouncing this, Nawaz stated of Ellison:
Keith Ellison is an African-American and currently co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Despite being elected in a post 9/11 world, he was the first Muslim Congressman. And all of this sends a perfect message to President-elect Trump, symbolizing the opposite of the worst excesses of the Trump campaign.
Sam Harris, the prominent neuroscientist, atheist spokesman and writer, coauthored a book with Nawaz: Islam and the Future of Tolerance. The two are known to be sparring partners over contentious Islamic issues regarding the hadith, the Quran, literal interpretations, whether Islam is a religion of peace and the like. Yet despite their differences of opinion, Harris and Nawaz have demonstrated in the past that intellectual disagreement is a time-honored feature of pluralism and democracy, while Islamic supremacism is the antithesis of the diversity of thought. Now given the news that Maajid has openly declared his support for Ellison, one wonders where this will leave the Nawaz/Harris collaboration, and where, in fact, it leaves everyone who trusted Maajid Nawaz as a model of Islamic reform and openness to Western values.
An outstanding question remains: why Nawaz would make such a move. Could it possibly be a panicked reaction to his inclusion on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of “anti-Muslim extremists,” which threw him into a fit of rage and anxiety? In Nawaz’s words:
They put a target on my head. The kind of work that I do, if you tell the wrong kind of Muslims that I’m an extremist, then that means I’m an target….They don’t have to deal with any of this. I don’t have any protection. I don’t have any state protection. These people are putting me on what I believe is a hit list.
I’m the one who’s a Muslim in this!…..I’m listed there with people such as Pam Geller? It’s unbelievable.
Perhaps a thing or two can be learned about Maajid Nawaz in his own self-description on how he developed “skills” of maneuvering in a democratic society, drawing from past lessons acquired “within an extremist organization”:
Now that journey, and what took me from Essex all the way across the world — by the way, we were laughing at democratic activists. We felt they were from the age of yesteryear. We felt that they were out of date. I learned how to use email from the extremist organization that I used. I learned how to effectively communicate across borders without being detected.
Eventually I was detected, of course, in Egypt. But the way in which I learned to use technology to my advantage was because I was within an extremist organization that was forced to think beyond the confines of the nation-state. The age of behavior: where ideas and narratives were increasingly defining behavior and identity and allegiances.
In the same haughty fashion, Maajid now delivers advice to Ellison:
In terms of values, I’d advise Ellison to focus the Democratic Party on the future. In a post-Brexit, President-Trump world, liberals must move beyond post-modernism. Identity politics, censorship, and “feelings based” policy are in danger of rendering liberals as post-factual as the populist right.
Whatever the reason, the revelation of Nawaz’s support Keith Ellison has surprised many. Electronic media is unsurprisingly buzzing. One letter found its way into my inbox today outside of the US from the leader of the Montreal chapter of the American Congress for Truth (ACT). Its leader, Valerie Price, gave me permission to publish her note of disappointment in Maajid Nawaz:
I am very upset by this statement of support from Maajid for Keith Ellison. How could he possibly support someone with his history; his relationship with CAIR and the support and financing of organizations like Hamas?
I had long been an admirer of his. I knew about him LONG before most people. I actually flew to London after I saw his interview on 60 Minutes many years ago – that was how impressed I was. I signed up to Quilliam. And I believed in his work – even though everyone else said he was not to be trusted and told me I was a fool. I defended him and said that he was true and honest and that his work was very important.
By endorsing Ellison, Maajid Nawaz is suggesting that for him, race and religion as paramount above all, even the preservation of democratic values. He states about Ellison:
His selection would be a beautiful reminder to concerned citizens everywhere that the USA is not only the inward-looking America of Donald Trump, but that it is also the America of this outward-looking, progressive black Muslim from Minnesota, who swore his Congressional oath of allegiance on the Holy Quran.
“Keith Ellison Is a Muslim—and the Man to Lead the Democrats Into the Future”, by Maajid Nawaz, The Daily Beast, November 15, 2016:
LONDON—Love did not Trump hate. Whichever way you voted, that statement stands, because even some of those who may have raised this pro-Hillary slogan have been out on the streets doing a disservice to peaceful anti-Trump protestors, by rioting.
Fear has won. We are all scared. But as this mourning process moves from denial, to grief, and on to acceptance, we liberals, not just in the United States, but globally, must begin to consider how to regroup, reform, and resurrect.
That resurrection cannot come without a realization that the Democratic Party establishment has had its day. They blew it, big time.
To have endorsed the ultimate Washington insider when the rebel was there right before you was utter folly. To have backed a paragon of the party establishment during an age of outsider opportunities was sheer naïveté. To have ignored the insurgent in favor of the stagnant was stubborn. To prefer the anointed over the popular was plain hubris. To have coveted the corporate while ignoring the common man was corrupt. Now, we have lost the House, the Senate, and the presidency to possibly the least competent candidate in history. That is our fault. So yes, it is time for reform. And nothing short of a major overhaul of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) will suffice.
This March, the chair of the DNC will be up for grabs. This seat has lately been mired in allegations of debate fixing and question-rigging. The sitting head of the DNC is Donna Brazile, a longtime Democrat and former CNN contributor. Brazile leads in an interim capacity after Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned amid serious corruption allegations. Hacked emails appeared to show Wasserman Schultz and other now-former DNC officials collaborating to undermine Bernie Sanders’s popular campaign to clinch the Democratic nomination. But Interim Chair Brazile herself has come under fire after another set of hacked emails showed her forwarding questions from a town hall presidential debate jointly hosted by CNN to the Clinton campaign at Trump’s expense.
This is totally unacceptable. Liberalism, democracy, and the reputation of the Democratic Party are just too important to tolerate such cronyism. To regain the trust of disenfranchised millennials—the future of the party, mind you—who were denied the candidate of their choice, a radical change is needed. This requires a total reimagining of the function of the DNC, its purpose, its reach, and its organization. Only a complete overhaul will do.
Vermont governor Howard Dean, who ran the DNC from 2005 to 2009, has announced his intention to stand again for the role. But that would not be an overhaul. It would simply be a rinse and repeat.
There is another option.
Clean, grassroots, and progressive, this option is a party outsider. He is pro-choice, pro-gay rights, and a human rights campaigner. As the second congressman to endorse Bernie Sanders during the Democratic primaries, he has shown that he saw what the Democrat-elite fatefully failed to see. This option therefore has the backing of the Sanders revolution that never was, and has the chance to resurrect some of that hope the young then felt when they asked us all to Feel the Bern, and we didn’t listen.
Keith Ellison is an African-American and currently co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Despite being elected in a post 9/11 world, he was the first Muslim Congressman. And all of this sends a perfect message to President-elect Trump, symbolizing the opposite of the worst excesses of the Trump campaign.
In a call Thursday night with members of the liberal grassroots group Democracy for Action, Rep. Ellison said he was keen to help the party move forward: “My shoelaces are tied up tight, and I’m ready to get out on that court.” He announced his candidacy on Monday.
MoveOn.org, a major progressive network, also said in a statement that Ellison would be “an excellent DNC chair.” Bernie Sanders has already declared his hand, backing Ellison by saying, “You can’t tell working people you’re on their side while at the same time you’re raising money from Wall Street and the billionaire class. The Democratic Party has to be focused on grass-roots America and not wealthy people attending cocktail parties.”
Sanders accepted that the party must continue its high-value fundraising, but suggested a micro-donor model, too……
But will the Democratic establishment pay heed?
Humbly, I put it you them that they must. They have no choice. Ellison will face some resistance. He is not known as a fundraiser. Assuming he would remain a representative, he wouldn’t be able to hold the chairmanship as a full-time job. But this could be fixed by drafting in competent deputies.
In terms of values, I’d advise Ellison to focus the Democratic Party on the future. In a post-Brexit, President-Trump world, liberals must move beyond post-modernism. Identity politics, censorship, and “feelings based” policy are in danger of rendering liberals as post-factual as the populist right.
The rallying cry of new, young Democrats should now be open, inclusive, universalist liberal internationalism. Former British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was the closest the U.K. had to this, but he came up politically short. America thirsts for a leader of such assertive, open liberalism.
On the economic globalization front, yes, in the long run the corrective impact of “the market” kicks in through specialization efficiencies. But it was the great John Maynard Keynes himself who retorted to the capitalists, “In the long run we’re all dead.” This is precisely why he argued for softening the blow of market “corrective” forces. In our rush for globalization, we liberals forgot this, and forgot the white working classes in the process.
Keith Ellison could change this. His great value is in what he could come to symbolize to the young voters who supported Bernie Sanders in droves, and yet abandoned Hillary Clinton in equal measure.
Ellison’s value is in the potential for the DNC to show that it has learned its lesson, and that it is finally—better late than never—listening to the outsiders who want change, and who are not stained by spending too many years greasing palms.
And Ellison’s value is in the signal his selection could send to the rest of the world.
His selection would be a beautiful reminder to concerned citizens everywhere that the USA is not only the inward-looking America of Donald Trump, but that it is also the America of this outward-looking, progressive black Muslim from Minnesota, who swore his Congressional oath of allegiance on the Holy Quran.

cs says
Reformist, pero non mucho. lol.
underbed cat says
Well to be fair and balanced…..ya right….maybe Milo can join you. Hamiliton crew won’t boo Ellison for now( as they did too VP. until Milo comes to town….just heard Milo Y speak in Orlando…he got the truth out funny how it takes on legitimacy now…I hope they listen.
Rob Porter says
underbed, Maajid Nawaza has simply demonstrated that at the end of the day one cannot trust even a Muslim who appears ‘moderate’. Funnily enough, after seeing him on numbers of occasions, once in a debate with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, I never warmed to or trusted him. I had personal experience with one Muslim who for a few years I considered a friend. Then there was a dramatic change. Every day at noon he attended mosque and returned to his business an angry, foul-mouthed imbecile with whom I had nothing in common.
Thank goodness General Flynn it so be the U.S. National Security Advisor. He knows Islam and evidently has few illusions about Muslims as a group. How I laugh as the left rants and raves over his appointment.
gravenimage says
Maajid Nawaza is the founding chairman of the Quilliam Foundation, a supposedly “moderate” Islamic think tank, which often does as much to whitewash Islam as to oppose Jihad. It supports the “Palestinian” people, and has opposed Israel defending against attacks from Gaza, which it disingenuously claims strengthens Hamas.
Quilliam publicly confronted the brave Geert Wilders, claiming that he is “undoubtedly an ill-informed, hate-driven bigot with many unpleasant views but he is not directly inciting violence. … We therefore challenge Geert Wilders to an open debate in which we will argue that Islam is compatible with secular democracy and that, contrary to what he apparently believes, Muslims are not a threat to Europe and its values.”
Pretty disturbing stuff.
Nawaza champions “secular Islam”, whatever the hell *that* is. He has said that “Islamism” is incompatible with Islam–when there is, of course, no difference.
He is against drone strikes of Jihadists and any profiling of Muslims.
And before this he was a member of the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir–you have to wonder how much he has really changed.
gravenimage says
underbed cat, Milo Yiannopoulos is a brave man, and like Bruce Bawer is both openly Gay and *very* opposed to Jihad. Like Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, he was prevented from speaking in Britain. Like them, he has never urged violence, yet Jihadist thugs are welcome there.
I do find Milo’s style sometimes a bit aggressive for my taste, but his message is too important for me to be concerned about small matters of style.
Jay Boo says
Who is Keith Ellison?
Don McKellar says
This is a devastating video that really is a must watch. It should be shoved down the throat of every left-fascist on the internet and every Democrat in government. Thanks for posting.
cs says
Good video, confirming everything that we already know.
Praeceptor Maximus says
Thank you Jay Boo for posting this video. I agree with everything that Don McKellar said in his post regarding this video.
gravenimage says
Thanks, Jay Boo. And kudos to Sean Hannity for exposing this creep.
Rob says
I always thought there was something dodgy about Nawaz.
Be good to see what Douglas Murray has to say about this.
cs says
Yep, or his friend Sam Harris for that matter.
Praeceptor Maximus says
cs
Sam Harris has spoken. He hates Trump and reviled those around him. I put a video of him speaking of this, but no none here took notice of it. They said that I posted a video about a nobody.
cs says
I have seen this video, and he disqualifies Trump because “he does not know where Aleppo is, but hillary does.” Well who cares? He is not a geographer, you don;t need to know where is Aleppo, you need to have a good cabinet and be well informed. And it seems he is doing just that.
Sam Harris is quite a moron when he wants to be.
Rob Porter says
underbed, Maajid Nawaza has simply demonstrated that at the end of the day one cannot trust even a Muslim who appears ‘moderate’. Funnily enough, after seeing him on numbers of occasions, once in a debate with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, I never warmed to or trusted him. I had personal experience with one Muslim who for a few years I considered a friend. Then there was a dramatic change. Every day at noon he attended mosque and returned to his business an angry, foul-mouthed imbecile with whom I had nothing in common.
Thank goodness General Flynn it so be the U.S. National Security Advisor. He knows Islam and evidently has few illusions about Muslims as a group. How I laugh as the left rants and raves over his appointment.
gravenimage says
Not me, PM–I explained at the time to anyone who was unfamiliar with Sam Harris if you check back on that thread.
Don McKellar says
A moslem reformer is an oxymoron. This has been proven hundreds of times over during the past few years. It always ends up in the same place: deception. This is because
1) Islam cannot be reformed because it cannot be changed.
2) Islam teaches that it’s good to lie to unbelievers to advance Islam or to protect yourself.
Because #1 is true we must always keep in mind that the “reformer” is following #2 — and it has inevitably been revealed to be so in case after case.
maghan says
Why is Ellison so coy about not going by his Arab name? The question is what is it about Islam that attracted him in the first place? And an intelligent and rational person would say that there is nothing in Islam that would appeal to a rational and intelligent person. Its core text the “Quran” is a badly plagiarized text, a hodgepodge of Stone Age nonsense whose central character is an Arab desert bandit, rapist, killer, thief, racist, slave holder, misogynist, hater of dogs, and pedophile. All his statements are either trite, stupid, superstitious, or just savagely violent.
And all this tedious nonsense about washing up and praying 5 times a day is just absurd. If Allah is all-powerful, all-knowing, and self-sufficient, why engage in the logically useless prayer-pandering?
If Ellison is a Muslim, he must be questioned on whether he actually supports all the moral crimes committed by his so-called Prophet.
Jack Holan says
Christine, do you believe religiously, philosophically, and politically Keith Ellison will ever be able to erase the fundamentalist groups that have guided him individually and propelled him politically into and kept him in Office?
vladkoval says
Admit it, Muslim Reformation is Joke
Mac-101 says
It is amusing to watch the Libs continue to embrace Islam when they MUST know Islam will kill them when given the chance and they are no longer useful “Useful Idiots”. The only Lib/Socialist/Commie I know who was able to git the best of the Muslims was Joseph Stalin. And he killed something like 20 million to consolidate his power in Southern USSR Republics.
CommoHull says
Well, THAT should get him off the SPLC bad boy list! Shows him to be the global collectivist he is as well as his ideas on “reforming” islam – which is, not much.
Reminds me of the line from the Blues Brothers when the Illinois nazi says ‘the Jew is using the Black for muscle’. These days it could read, ‘the Globalist is using the muslim for muscle’. A policy which could come back and bite him in the ass if he’s not careful.
Mac-101 says
The only way I figure the Globalist NWO can pull it off is use Islam as the forced religion of the Beast! There is no better control method than Islam, especially if you combine high tech monitoring of the entire population. It would be especially easy to cull those who are “Not Muslim Enough” which would include about every aspect of your life.
gravenimage says
The idea that Leftists can control Islam is mistaken.
Shmooviyet says
How has Ellison be a “human rights campaigner”? Certainly not in the dopey state that sent him to DC. Only one set of humans he’s interested in.
This Nawaz is picturing the complete transformation of the Dem party into a mainstream islamic/socialist People’s Party, which millenials and younger will be drawn to for its “inclusive tolerance” yadda yadda. Only when it’s too late will some realize the deadly mistake they made and how many lies they were fed.
Angemon says
Raise hands if you’re surprised. Anyone? No one? Thought so.
Vikram Chatterjee says
Nawaz was long ago exposed at GatesofVienna.net
Maajid Nawaz is a fanatical ISIS operative who poses as a liberal in the West. He’d be off in Syria chopping off heads and raping women, but Allah needs him elsewhere, because he’s a smooth talker.
He knows that Sam Harris is an ignoramus about Islam, and is using Harris, and his underserved reputation as a critic of Islam, as a vehicle for a campaign of mass deception about Islam, delivered in the disastrous book, Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue.
Anyone who thinks he is peaceful should take the time to absorb the following links.
How Maajid Nawaz threatened the audience at a London synagogue https://youtu.be/QS30IWoChAo
Maajid Nawaz: Stealth Jihadist Exposed https://vkchatterjee.wordpress.com/2015/12/30/maajid-nawaz-stealth-jihadist-exposed/
Sinister and Dangerous: The Stealth Supremacism of Maajid Nawaz https://vkchatterjee.wordpress.com/2016/03/20/sinister-and-dangerous-the-stealth-supremacism-of-maajid-nawaz/
────────
Nawaz’s group, Quilliam Foundation, if a front for the Sunni supremacist movement Hizb ut-Tahrir. It is named after Abdullah Quilliam, a pious and fanatical Sunni Muslim who converted to Islam in the Edwardian era, and founded England’s first mosque. Quilliam called for Sharia law in Britain and a global caliphate to rule the world.
That’s who his “counter-extremism think tank is named after”. It’s as if a German nationalist claimed to be an ex-Nazi and founded a Joseph Goebbels Center for Aryan-Jewish Understanding.
By naming his organization after this man, Nawaz signals in dog-whistle fashion to the Muslims in the audience that he remains loyal to Sharia and the caliphate, aka ISIS.
http://www.andrewbostom.org/2015/12/reformer-maajid-nawaz-and-wm-abdallah-quilliam-caliphate-supporting-namesake-for-nawazs-reformist-organization/
Angemon says
Great articles.
Stan Lee says
Nawaz is the beginning of endorsements flying in from other brothers in Islam. We’re likely to hear from Louis Farrakhan very soon, and what about a few of those 6,000 or so Saudi “Princes?”
The next thing Ellison will be telling Democrats is “What have you got to lose?”
A miracle will be if Ellison passes on the opportunity to use the race card.
RichardL says
Maajid makes mistakes: for his stag night he went to a strip bar. I mean, seriously. He is an odd duck and I am not giving up on him. Not sure he is a Muslim any more and I suppose neither is he.
Ellison would be wonderful! The contrast between sane patriots and insane Democrats would be very stark.
Jack Diamond says
odd duck? He’s a snake-oil salesman and showing that he and Ellison are birds of a feather.
The “outward-looking, progressive” Ellison said this in 2007 about 9/11:
“It’s almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of that. After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it, and it put the leader [Hitler] of that country in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted.”
In keeping with a man who regularly speaks at the conventions of CAIR, MPAC, MAS & ICNA. 7th Century progressives with cell phones. What is it that these groups profess regarding Jews, America, sharia, the Qur’an as their Constitution, jihad as their “way”, does Ellison not associate himself with?
gravenimage says
Jack is right, Richard–a Muslim going to a strip club does not make him a “moderate”.
And I don’t want a Muslim thug representing *either* party in a democracy–this is suicidal.
Merkexit says
I quit reading when I read his description of “the holy Koran”: a hate book full of actual bigotry and a call for genocide.
This imposter Iano friend of freedom.
Done.
DR JEROME GELB says
The Qur’an Ellison was sworn in on belonged to Thomas Jefferson, who acquired it upon his return from an official visit to London to meet with the Ambassador from Tripoli in response to Muslim Pirate raids on American shipping in the Mediterranean that resulted in the plunder & capture of over 30 ships and the kidnapping of over 1000 crew who were held for ransom or sold as slaves. Jefferson was shown passages in the Qur’an as justification for the piracy & upon his return to America purchased a copy to learn more about Islam. He was appalled with its violence and knew then that only force would stop them. When Jefferson was inaugurated in 1801, the Pasha of Tripoli demanded $225,000 tribute from the new administration. Jefferson refused & the Pasha declared war on America, the first foreign war to be fought by the new nation. 6 Naval frigates constituted the total U.S. Navy and Marines fought a series of sea battles before landing and bringing the 5yr war to an end in 1805. Algeria then took over the piracy against American shipping, culminating in the 2nd Barbary War from 1812-1815, which America again won. At one point, America was paying tribute of 10% of its GDP but all payment ceased in 1815. This backstory to Jefferson’s Qur’an is crucial to understanding how treasonous & insulting it was for Obama to state that Jefferson admired Islam & was enamoured with the Qur’an! Arranging for Jefferson’s Qur’an to be used by this Muslim Congressman to swear his Oath of Office, sets the tone of his entire agenda, namely advancing the stealthy spread and normalisation of Islamic Jihad. American National Security agencies failed to guard against Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the Obama Administration BUT must not fail to keep a very close eye on Rep. Keith Ellison and clearly now on Maajid Nawaz as well.
gravenimage says
Very true. Good post.
carol says
Dr. Gelb…Love these concise history lessons! Lately you see so many videos where Muslims like to indoctrinate that they’ve ALWAYS been part of the fabric of American society (not quite methinks).
This short video starts refuting that claim at approximately 1:45:
Judi says
I have long been sceptical of this so-called “reformed” muslim terrorist Maajid Nawaz and his dubious past. Both him and his Quillam Society were responsible for Tommy Robinson having a ‘Road to Damascus’ moment and renouncing his views on radical islam. It was later revealed that he’d paid Robinson £10,000 for this pronouncement. Robinson has since backtracked, realised he’d been ‘duped’ and has since become head of the PEGIDA movement in the UK. Amongst other things, he (Nawaz),has a slot on LBC, a popular British talk radio programme and even writes a column for a Jewish newspaper. All in all he gives the impression that he is one of ‘us’. In reality he certainly is not!
Dacritic says
One question I’ve always wanted to ask Maajid: “Why are you still a Muslim?”
gravenimage says
Muslim reformist Maajid Nawaz declares support for Muslim Brotherhood-linked Congressman Keith Ellison
……………….
Quite disturbing. But, sadly, a lot of Muslim reformers turn out to be anything but. Nawas has, in fact, opposed anti-terrorism in the past.
It is a bit vague, but it sounds as though he is anti-Brexit, as well.