Yesterday saw the launch of the Quilliam Foundation, a British “counter extremism think tank” started by ex-islamists Ed Husain and Maajid Nawaz. Here is what Nawaz wrote in The Sun this week:

A new standard needs to emerge. Protecting “our own” means all the people of our country, not merely one religious faction. Freedom of speech is a non-negotiable right. Just as some Muslims invoke this right when they attack freedom and democracy, others may invoke this right when drawing cartoons criticising our faith. If Muslim sensitivities are a reason not to draw the cartoons, then others’ sensitivities are also a reason not to attack freedom and democracy.

Sunny Hundal comments on the launch event and the Quilliam people’s challenges.

Now why write about this in a Norwegian blog? As the cartoon controversies and many other conflicts have shown in the past few years, stories and developments involving extremism — in the name of islam, but not only that — are domestic now. In this sense, the old concept of foreign news is dead. The launch of a think tank in London is a British event, but also a Norwegian/Scandinavian and Middle Eastern. Tellingly, I first read about the Quilliam initiative in an article in the Swedish magazine Axess, written by a Swedish muslim writer.