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: