Radio presenter Maajid Nawaz says he was punched in the face by a stranger in London’s West End last night in what appeared to be a racially motivated attack.
The LBC host and founder of the anti-extremism Quilliam Foundation think-tank told Twitter followers that he had bent down to pick up his phone behind the Soho Theatre when an unknown white man shouted racist abuse and then hit him in the face.
“The suspect had fled the scene before officers arrived, no arrests have been made and an investigation has been launched,” the London Evening Standard reports.
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Nawaz said that several witnesses overheard the racist abuse, and that they had given statements to police.
The anti-extremism campaigner uploaded a photo of his injuries, including a cut on his forehead, which he said might have been made by a signet ring worn by his assailant.
“My forehead will probably be scarred for life,” he said in a follow-up tweet. “But we will find you, you racist coward, and you will face British justice.”
He thanked those who had reached out to offer their sympathy and support in the aftermath of the attack, saying: “I’ll be okay. We grew up with this.”
The Metropolitan Police confirmed that officers were called to a report of a racially aggravated assault in Dean Street at 7.10pm.
In his 2012 memoir Radical, Essex-born Nawaz described how he was cornered by a group of skinheads in Southend at the age of 15, and only saved from harm by the intervention of a passerby.
The incident helped push him towards radical Islam, the BBC reports. After renouncing his extremist views while in prison in Egypt for involvement with the banned Islamic Liberation Party, in 2007 he returned to Britain as an anti-extremist and a campaigner for moderate, secular Islam.
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