Shiraz Maher

Early life

Maher was born in 1981 in Birmingham to British-Pakistani parents. His father was an accountant, and when Shiraz was an infant the family moved to Saudi Arabia. He stated he had never been very concerned about Saudi culture, noting he “lived in a Western compound, with everything you could want: tennis courts, swimming pools, cricket, basketball, bike races, all gender-mixed.”

One day when he was eleven, he was wearing a Daffy Duck T-shirt bearing the slogan “I Support Operation Desert Storm” and a Saudi man challenged him about the sentiment. “I said, 'Why not? Saddam's a terrible man.' The man said: 'No. This is an American conspiracy. These people use us as an excuse to establish bases on holy soil.'”

In 1995, when he was age 14, Maher moved back to Britain. In 2000, he enrolled at the University of Leeds.

Radical phase

Reacting to the attacks on 9/11, Maher thought to himself that America deserved the attacks as reciprocation for meddling with the affairs of the Arab world, and supporting Israel. “You shall reap what you sow, and this is what you've sown for a long time.” He later said that 9/11 “activated” latent anti-American ideas he had picked up in Saudi Arabia. After the attacks, he gave up alcohol, ended his relationship with his girlfriend, and joined Hizbut Tahrir. By the time the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, Maher had recovered his Muslim faith and moved into an apartment across the street from a local mosque.

He became a graduate student at University of Cambridge. Meanwhile, he rose in ranks at Hizb ut-Tahrir, advancing from cell leader to regional director. He was even invited to join the group's British executive committee. In 2005, however, he began to hold doubts about Hizbut Tahrir. At Cambridge, he encountered numerous sects of Islam and decided that Hizbut Tahrir's ideology was erroneous and led to terrorism. He left Hizbut Tahrir on 7 July 2005, the day the London Underground bombings took place, killing 52 people.

Post-radical years

After leaving radical Islam, Maher joined the other side, dedicating his life to opposing jihad. For a time, he ran Standpoint magazines “Focus on Islamism” blog with Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens. He produced a television program for BBC's Panorama entitled “How I became a Muslim extremist.” He also worked for Policy Exchange, writing a series of studies on national security. His report on reforming the government’s counter-terrorism strategy was praised by both Michael Gove, then Britain's Secretary of State for Education, and Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank, former Chief of the Defence Staff.

Maher is today a senior fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, King's College London, where “he researches Europe's homegrown Islamist movement and profiles the droves of young Britons who are decamping for Syria and Iraq to wage jihad with ISIS, aka the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham.” He also researches the development of Salafi-Jihadi ideology, and jihadist organisations in the broader Middle East. As a result of this research he has been invited to give evidence before three parliamentary committees. In addition, Maher works as an adjunct at Johns Hopkins University, where he co-teaches a course on radicalisation with Peter Neumann. He was a visiting lecturer at Washington College during the spring semester of 2012.

Views

Maher has said that the British government spent years ignoring the radicalisation of a generation of British Muslims. “In the late 1980s, early '90s,” he said, “this country opened its doors to radical Islamist preachers from around the world who began to preach a very hard-line, totalitarian message about what Islam should look like.” Sohrab Ahmari wrote in the Wall Street Journal that, thanks in part to Maher's efforts, “the British branch of Hizbut Tahrir has been decimated ... Hizbut Tahrir rallies used to draw 20,000 supporters. Today 'they struggle to get 1,000.'”

Maher has stated, “Did bin Laden win? Yes. He did not want there to be a strong hand in the region for the world's greatest and most powerful force for good—the United States. And voluntarily we chose to disengage, and watched as these radical millenarians came in and took over ... This is a disgrace and a humiliation.” Maher has described Iran's Press TV and Russia Today as “propaganda channels.” He has praised Benjamin Netanyahu for bombing Syria, has described it as a “palpable falsity” to call Israel an apartheid state, and has urged the European Union to blacklist Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation.

Honors and awards

Maher was awarded the first Konrad Adenauer Foundation Fellowship in Energy Security. He was a fellow at the European Centre for Energy and Resource Security (EUCERS) where he explored the impact of political unrest in the Middle East on energy markets.

Publications

Maher's articles have appeared in Standpoint, Foreign Affairs, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Spectator, The Wall Street Journal, The Independent, The Daily Mail, Haaretz, The Jewish Chronicle, and The New Statesman, and on the websites of BBC News and the Gatestone Institute. His reports and studies include the following: