After completing his prison term in Egypt, Nawaz returned to the UK in 2006. In 2007, he resigned from Hizb-ut-Tahrir and resumed his bachelor's degree at SOAS.[34][35] He then founded the Quilliam Foundation, a counter-extremism think tank. He addressed the US Senate's Homeland Security Committee on the subject of Islamist extremism.[36] He also spoke at the "Sovereign Challenge" conference organised by United States Special Operations Command where he advocated the need to move beyond hard power, and look at new counter-radicalisation strategies.[37]
Nawaz played a major role in Tommy Robinson's exit from the far-right English Defence League (EDL), of which Robinson was the founder. He met Robinson in 2013 during the filming of a BBC documentary When Tommy met Mo, and subsequently met the EDL's co-leader, Kevin Carroll. Nawaz's personal story of turning back from Islamist extremism, and his counter-extremism work at Quilliam Foundation encouraged Robinson and Carroll to quit the EDL.[38] Later, Robinson also apologised to Muslims for the fear caused by his EDL activism.[39] The move was hailed by Quilliam as "a huge success in community relations in the United Kingdom", and a continuation of combating all kinds of extremism, including Islamism and Neo-Nazism.[40]
In July 2012, he published his autobiography, Radical.
Counter-extremist activismAfter completing his prison term in Egypt, Nawaz returned to the UK in 2006. In 2007, he resigned from Hizb-ut-Tahrir and resumed his bachelor's degree at SOAS.[34][35] He then founded the Quilliam Foundation, a counter-extr