Today the Centre for Social Cohesion was pleased to host a lunchtime talk by Nonie Darwish, head of Arabs for Israel and author of "Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel and the War on Terror" (Sentinel HC, 2006).
Darwish recounted growing up in the Nasser-era Gaza Strip, enveloped by Egyptian state propaganda urging violent jihad against Israel.
Today, Darwish blames such thinking for the death of her father, an Egyptian commando assassinated by Israel for his role in the deaths of some 400 Israelis during the 1950s.
In 1978 Darwish emigrated with her husband to America, eventually becoming a U.S. citizen and shedding the doctrines of Islamic extremism.
Galvanised by 9/11, Darwish now calls on Western media to support moderate Muslims by exposing radical discourse she says has saturated the Middle East and is seeping rapidly through Muslim communities in the West.
"This is not just about us," she told guests this afternoon, referring to moderate Muslims. "This is about you."