Leading militant in split with Islamists
By Peter Beaumont Rethink leads Briton to break with group Blair wanted to ban after 7 July One of the most senior members of the controversial Islamist Hizb ut-Tahrir movement, the group which Tony Blair pledged to ban after the 7 July bombings, has dramatically defected. Maajid Nawaz, a Briton who was jailed in Egypt for four years in 2002 and allegedly tortured after being accused of reviving a banned political group and plotting to overthrow the government, says that he no longer agrees with the movement’s attempts to transform Islam into a narrow political ideology.