On the merits, SPLC seems to have made the right choice. Nawaz’s inclusion made the report look more like an attempt to police the discourse on Islam than a true inventory of anti-Muslim extremists, of whom there is no shortage, and opened SPLC up to charges that it had strayed from its civil-rights mission at a time when it's more important than ever. But the terms of the settlement are troubling at a time when free speech and the free press are under fire, sometimes from the very same people who threaten civil rights.

SPLC also posted a video apology. It said that the payout will go toward Quilliam’s work and will be paid for by insurance. “It was the right thing to do in light of our mistake and the right thing to do in light of the growing prejudice against the Muslim community on both sides of the Atlantic,” Cohen said. The statement does not specify which elements of the field guide were incorrect. SPLC did not respond to a request for further comment.

There was no lack of irony to SPLC labeling Nawaz an “anti-Muslim extremist,” because Nawaz has described himself as a former extremist—but an Islamist one. A British-born Muslim of Pakistani descent, he joined the radical group Hizb ut-Tahrir as a teenager, and eventually ended up in an Egyptian prison. Nawaz came to see Islamism, the ideology that combines the religion of Islam with politics, as a dangerous problem, and one that is separable from the religion. Back in the United Kingdom, he opened Quilliam, named for an early British convert to Islam, to fight Islamist extremism.

Nawaz is undoubtedly controversial. To what is broadly his left, critics find him to be far too strident in his criticism of Islamism and too apt to align himself with right-wing politicians. To the right, critics view him as too much of an apologist for Islam still. Nawaz has also said he receives death threats.

Yet even some of Nawaz’s critics were perplexed by SPLC’s choice to include him. Unlike other figures on the list, including Frank Gaffney or Pam Geller (or some figures who aren’t, like Donald Trump), Nawaz does not argue that Islam itself is the problem. There’s also the small problem that he is a Muslim himself, which separates him from figures like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, another controversial figure, included in SPLC’s report, who was raised Muslim but now identifies as an atheist.

SPLC cited four particular reasons for Nawaz’s inclusion on the list. As I noted at the time, the first two—his tweeting of a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad and visiting a strip club—were both tacky at worst. SPLC said Nawaz wanted to criminalize the niqab, or face veil; Nawaz countered that he favored a “policy” against the veil, not a law against it. SPLC and Nawaz also quarreled over a list of Islamist groups compiled by Quilliam, which SPLC said enabled government targeting and which Quilliam said was intended to defend the listed groups.