Maajid’s Valentine

When I atten­ded Ted Glo­bal last sum­mer in Edin­burgh, one of the peo­ple I ejo­yed mee­ting the most was this English-Pakistani guy called Maa­jid. He did a really good TED talk on how to fight reli­gious extre­mism, based on his own expe­rience as a refor­med mem­ber of radi­cal Isla­mist groups, him­self (How radi­cal? Radi­cal enough to have spent time in Egyp­tian pri­son for it…).

Fast for­ward to the pre­sent, the other day he emails me out of the blue. Terri­fic! He wan­ted to com­mis­sion a Valentine’s Day gift for his sweetheart. Nice!

So I went with something fun and color­ful to brigh­ten up a dark, English February, taking my ins­pi­ra­tion, on his sug­ges­tion, from Pakis­tani bus art, which is crazy-amazing stuff.

He’s a lovely, gra­cious guy, Maa­jid, and was a plea­sure to work with. Go check out the extremism-fighting orga­ni­sa­tion, Qui­lliam that he’s head of– inte­res­ting stuff.

Rock on…

[Maajid’s Ted talk on YouTube…]