Simon Cottee
Simon Cottee is an academic who works as a senior lecturer in
criminology at the
University of Kent, and is a regular contributor to ''
The Atlantic''. He previously worked at
Bangor University and the
University of the West Indies' Trinidad campus. He is the author of ''The Apostates: When Muslims Leave Islam'' (
Hurst Publishers, 2015), which the publishers claim is "the first major study of
apostasy from Islam in the Western secular context". In a review published in ''
New Humanist'',
Alom Shaha wrote that the book "brings sensitivity and empathy to an intensely polarised debate".
Nick Cohen, writing in ''
The Spectator'', argues that Cottee "shows how elements in the
left and
academia are happy to denounce Muslims who exercise their freedom to abandon their religion as 'native informers' who have gone over to the side of western imperialism". Cottee is also editor, with Thomas Cushman, of ''Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left'' (New York University Press, 2008). Cottee's published research also includes
journal articles on topics including the murder of
Theo van Gogh and the motivations of terrorists. He has argued that
gang culture offers a way of understanding the appeal of
ISIS . Cottee also argues that the group's propaganda videos have a "pornographic quality".
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