/lit/ - Literature

David Wulstan Myatt[1] (born 1950), formerly known as Abdul-Aziz ibn Myatt[2] and Abdul al-Qari,[3] is a Tanganyika-born British author, poet and philosopher, the founder of The Numinous Way,[4][5][6] a former British Muslim,[6] and a former neo-Nazi.

The counterterrorism author Jon B. Perdue describes Myatt as "[a] British iconoclast who has lived a somewhat itinerant life and has undertaken an equally desultory intellectual quest” and is "emblematic of the modern syncretism of radical ideologies".[7]

Myatt is regarded as an "example of the axis between right-wing extremists and Islamists",[5][8] and has been described as an "extremely violent, intelligent, dark, and complex individual";[9] as a martial arts expert;[10][11] as one of the more interesting figures on the British neo-Nazi scene since the 1970s,[10][12][13][14] and as a key Al-Qaeda propagandist. [15]

Before his conversion to Islam in 1998,[16][17][18] Myatt was the first leader of the British National Socialist Movement (NSM),[4][19] and was identified by the British newspaper The Observer, as the "ideological heavyweight" behind Combat 18.[10]

Myatt came to public attention in 1999, a year after his Islamic conversion, when a pamphlet he allegedly wrote many years earlier, A Practical Guide to Aryan Revolution, described as a "detailed step-by-step guide for terrorist insurrection",[20] was said to have inspired David Copeland, who left nailbombs in areas frequented by London's black, South Asian, and gay communities.[21] Three people died and 129 were injured in the explosions, several of them losing limbs. It has also been suggested that Myatt's A Practical Guide to Aryan Revolution might have influenced the German National Socialist Underground.[22][23]

Since 2010, Myatt has written extensively about his rejection of his extremist past and about his rejection of extremism in general.

Myatt has translated works of ancient Greek literature, translated and written a commentary on the Greek text of eight tractates of the Corpus Hermeticum, and written several collections of poems. He is currently translating and writing a commentary on the Greek text of the Gospel of John.