I Refuse to Condemn: Resisting racism in times of national security [1 ed.] 1526151472, 9781526151476

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I Refuse to Condemn

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I REFUSE TO CONDEMN RESISTING RACISM IN TIMES OF NATIONAL SECURITY Edited by ASIM QURESHI

Manchester University Press

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Copyright © Manchester University Press 2020 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN  978 1 5261 5147 6  hardback

First published 2020 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

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‫بسم هللا الرحمن الرحيم‬ To Shaqira, Aniqah, Aaliyah, Jamal, Shakeel, Amaan, Lili, Hanna, Zahraa, Haytham, Duhaa, Zakariyah, Khadija, Aadam, Ibrahim, Ibraheem, Isa, Aaishah, Sulayman, Musa, Maya, Asiya, Aayah and Ilyas Fiza Hannah, Inayat, Maria, Madihah, Samihah, Adilah, Wajihah and Yusuf Aya, Yaqeen and Ameen Ammara Mayya Nusaybah, Faatimah and Ayub Maryam, Abdulhameed, Saleem, Ali, Sara, Eesa, Zain, Sophia, Musa and Akeem Sawera, Yusuf, Eshaan, Laibah, Hina, Imaan, Zahra, Amman and Sahil Aneesah Aduke Olorunkemi Sumaiyyah and Saifur Rehmaan Ayana and Amerah Sienna Taalia Yara, Rayan and Jana Idriis The words written in this book are by those who are fighting for your future. Honour them and keep them in your prayers, always.

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CONTENTS

List of contributors

page ix

Introduction: ‘You know nothing, Jon Snow’ – Asim Qureshi

1

I  How did we get here? 1 Remaking rule #1: ‘I utterly refuse to condemn …’ – Shenaz Bunglawala 2 They needed us, and now they are terrified – Fatima Rajina 3 The four stages of moral panic – Adam Elliott-Cooper 4 The duty to see, the yearning to be seen – Tarek Younis

31 43 54 67

II  Resisting the structure 5 Refusing to condemn as a political act – Remi Joseph-Salisbury

81

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Contents

6 Navigating refusal within the academy – Shereen Fernandez and Azeezat Johnson 7 Randomly selected: close encounters of the hive mind – Shafiuddean Choudry 8 Guilty without a crime – Saffa Mir 9 The struggle of a Muslim terror ‘suspect lawyer’ – Fahad Ansari

90 101 112 122

III  Resisting the personal 10 11 12 13

The (im)possible Muslim – Yassir Morsi The racialised ‘go-to Muslim’ – Sadia Habib Writing for the kids – Nadya Ali It is Allah who condemns – Cyrus McGoldrick

137 149 161 174

IV  Resisting the performance 14 Is this radical? Am I radical? – Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan 15 Grappling with shadows – Lowkey 16 That’s because I’ve read – Hoda Katebi 17 My art is for my people – Aamer Rahman

187 201 213 227

Glossary Acknowledgements Notes Further reading Index

237 239 243 263 265

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list of contributors list of contributors

CONTRIBUTORS

NADYA ALI Nadya Ali is a lecturer in international relations at the University of Sussex. Her research examines the UK’s ­counter-radicalisation strategy, Prevent, and its racialised and gendered government of Muslim populations since 9/11. Her work intersects with the wider themes of border politics, citizenship and British (post-)imperial identity formation in the War on Terror. She is currently engaged in a research project exploring the intersectional politics of austerity and Islamophobia, supported by De Montfort University’s Centre for Urban Research on Austerity (CURA).

FAHAD ANSARI Fahad Ansari is the principal solicitor and director of Riverway Law, a niche firm specialising in immigration and nationality law. Fahad also works as a consultant at Duncan Lewis Solicitors. He is regularly instructed in cases ix

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involving national security such as deprivation of citizenship, passport confiscations, naturalisation, exclusion and deportation of convicted terrorists. He was listed as a ‘Recommended Lawyer’ in the 2020 edition of the Legal 500 for Immigration: Human Rights, Appeals and Overstay and Civil Liberties and Human Rights. Fahad has been involved in community work around the War on Terror and Islamophobia for almost two decades.

SHENAZ BUNGLAWALA Shenaz Bunglawala is the deputy director of the Research and Strategy Unit, Penny Appeal, and formerly assistant director at Aziz Foundation. She has led research into Islamophobia, racial and religious equality and the impact of counter-terrorism legislation on British Muslim communities for more than a decade. She is a trustee of the Christian Muslim Forum and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

SHAFIUDDEAN CHOUDRY Shafiuddean Choudry is a career technologist and co-founder of the Riz Test. He holds a degree in computer science and has fifteen years’ experience in the tech industry, working on process automation, big data and digital transformation projects. Having taught himself to write code at a young age, Shafiuddean has always been fascinated with the way technology can be used for the greater good. He has spoken at several events on the importance of diversity in tech and recently went on to co-found the Riz Test to m ­ easure how Muslims are portrayed in the arts.

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ADAM ELLIOTT-COOPER Adam Elliott-Cooper received his PhD from the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford. His current research focuses on urban displacement in London. He has previously worked as a teaching fellow in the Department of Sociology, University of Warwick, and a researcher in the Department of Philosophy, University College London. He has also worked as an associate researcher in the Sociology Department at Goldsmiths, University of London, and the School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham. Adam received his undergraduate degree in politics from the University of Nottingham and his MSc in Globalisation and Development from SOAS, University of London.

SHEREEN FERNANDEZ Shereen Fernandez completed her PhD while acting as a teaching associate at QMUL, University of London. Prior to this, Shereen was a primary school teacher in London. Her PhD research looked at how schools, teachers and Muslim parents in London engage with the Prevent duty and British values.

SADIA HABIB Sadia Habib taught English Literature and Language in secondary school and college. She completed her MA in Education at Goldsmiths, University of London, and was later awarded a PhD for her research studies on the teaching and learning of Britishness. She recently co-founded the Riz Test to measure representation of Muslims in film and xi

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on television. She currently works at Manchester Museum on a project engaging young people with the h ­ eritage sector.

AZEEZAT JOHNSON Azeezat Johnson is a social geographer interested in developing conversations about Black (and) Muslim geographies which push against the racialisation of bodies as Other to a neutralised White self. Her PhD research (completed at the University of Sheffield in 2017) grew from this vein of thinking: it used the clothing practices of Black Muslim women in Britain to explore how the performance of one’s identity changes as we move through and interact with different objects, bodies, gazes and spaces. This pushed against a static reading of Black Muslim women (which are all too often constructed as either Black or Muslim). It also moved beyond the hypervisibility of the headscarf within academic and popular debates by pointing to the multitude of different presentations that are used.

REMI JOSEPH-SALISBURY Remi Joseph-Salisbury completed his PhD at the University of Leeds in 2016 before working as a senior lecturer at Leeds Beckett University for two years. In 2018, Remi moved to the University of Manchester to take up the position of Presidential Fellow in Ethnicity and Inequalities. Remi’s first book, Black Mixed-Race Men, was published by Emerald Publishing in 2018. His co-edited collection, The Fire Now: Anti-Racist Scholarship in Times of Explicit Racial Violence, was published in November 2018. He has published in national and international journals on topics covering his broad interests including race, racism, xii

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anti-racism, the ‘post-racial’, mixedness, masculinities and education.

HODA KATEBI Hoda Katebi is the Chicago-based angry daughter of Iranian immigrants. She is the voice behind JooJoo Azad, the political fashion platform hailed from the BBC to The New York Times to the pages of Vogue; author of the book Tehran Streetstyle, a celebration and documentation of illegal fashion in Iran; host of #BecauseWeveRead, a radical international book club with over thirty chapters internationally; and founder of Blue Tin Production, an all-women immigrant and refugee-run clothing manufacturing co-operative in Chicago. Hoda is an abolitionist and community organiser, previously part of campaigns to end surveillance programmes and police militarisation. She graduated from the University of Chicago in 2016 where her research explored the intersections of fashion, gender and the state in Iran, and will be starting law school in the autumn of 2020. She runs on saffron ice cream and coloniser tears.

LOWKEY Lowkey is a rapper and campaigner and has released his first album in eight years – the highly anticipated and epic Soundtrack to the Struggle 2. It acts as a sequel to his last official album, 2011’s widely acclaimed Soundtrack to the Struggle, which at the time BBC’s Charlie Sloth described as ‘the best album of the year, no probably the best album of the past few years period!’. After a hiatus which saw the British-Iraqi hip hop artist take time off to focus on studies and activism, Lowkey has returned to a different world xiii

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politically and a country in a state of flux. Despite this, his focus on issues around race, war, global poverty and politics endures.

SUHAIYMAH MANZOOR-KHAN Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan is a writer, spoken-word poet, speaker and educator invested in unlearning the modalities of knowledge she has internalised, disrupting power relations and interrogating narratives around race/ism, gender(ed oppression), Islamophobia, state violence, knowledge production and (de)coloniality. She read History at the University of Cambridge, and holds an MA in Postcolonial Studies from SOAS, University of London. She regularly writes, speaks, performs and holds workshops on Islamophobia, racism, feminism and poetry both nationally and internationally.

CYRUS MCGOLDRICK Cyrus McGoldrick is a Muslim born in the US of Irish and Iranian descent. He graduated with a BA in Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies from Columbia University in 2010 and an MA in Civilisation Studies at Ibn Haldun University in 2018, and is now a PhD candidate. His publications include the book of poetry I of the Garden (2014), a chapter on the political thought of Kalim Siddiqui in al-Din wa-l-Insan wa-l-Ala (ed. Heba Raouf Ezzat, 2017) and a translation from Turkish to English of Recep S¸entürk’s Malcolm X: The Struggle for Human Rights (forthcoming). He has worked for a number of Islamic social and human rights organisations, including the New York Chapter of the Council on American–Islamic Relations and the National xiv

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Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms, and continues to serve as an advisor and consultant for several American NGOs, including the Aafia Foundation and the media start-up Outpost.

SAFFA MIR Saffa Mir is a solicitor who graduated from the University of Manchester with a degree in Law. During her time at university she served as the vice-president of student affairs in the Islamic Society and co-founded campaigns including Preventing Prevent at Manchester. She was elected community officer at the University of Manchester Students’ Union and later as vice-president of student affairs at the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, the representative body of Muslim Students in further and higher education across the UK. Saffa has spoken extensively across the press and in Parliament, focusing on the experiences of Muslim students in higher education.

YASSIR MORSI Yassir Morsi has a PhD from the University of Melbourne in Political Science and Islamic Studies and is an honours graduate in Psychology from Monash University. His research engages with a broad range of critical race theorists in dealing with the Muslim question. Yassir writes as a columnist for The Guardian, Australia, and is the author of Radical Skin, Moderate Masks. He is a lecturer at La Trobe University in Politics and Philosophy and a recipient of the Australian Muslim Achievement Awards for Muslim Man of the Year, 2015, for his role in community teaching and activism. xv

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ASIM QURESHI Asim Qureshi (editor) graduated in Law (LLB Hons, LLM), specialising in International Law and Islamic Law. He completed his PhD in International Conflict Analysis from the University of Kent. He is the research director at the advocacy group CAGE, and since 2003 has specialised in investigating the impact of counter-terrorism practices worldwide. Asim is also the author of Rules of the Game: Detention, Deportation, Disappearance (Hurst, Columbia UP, 2009) and A Virtue of Disobedience (Unbound & Byline, 2019). Since 2010, he has been advising legal teams involved in defending terrorism trials in the US and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

AAMER RAHMAN Aamer Rahman is a writer and stand-up comedian whose work focuses on race and the War on Terror. He has performed sold-out shows at some of the world’s largest festivals such as the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe. He is best known for his stand-up pieces ‘Reverse Racism’ and ‘Is it OK to Punch Nazis?’ and has been listed as one of the Guardian’s Top 10 live comedy shows. His work is used at universities around the world to teach on politics and race.

FATIMA RAJINA Fatima Rajina completed her MA in Islamic Societies and Cultures at SOAS, University of London, and went on to complete a PhD after successfully securing a Nohoudh scholarship with the Centre of Islamic Studies, SOAS. xvi

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Fatima’s work looks at British Bangladeshi Muslims and their changing identifications and perceptions of dress and language. She is currently working on a project, Lutonians, along with a local photographer to document the everyday lived experiences of people from Luton. She has also worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, looking at policing and counterterrorism. Fatima was also a teaching fellow at SOAS, and, most recently, worked as a lecturer in Sociology at Kingston University London. She previously worked as a research fellow in the Department of Social Science, UCL Institute of Education.

TAREK YOUNIS Tarek Younis holds a lecturing position in the Department of Psychology at Middlesex University. His previous research explored the racialisation of Muslims as a result of statutory counter-terrorism policies (Prevent) in healthcare. He writes on the securitisation and racism of the psy disciplines; institutionalised Islamophobia; and the impact of culture, religion, globalisation and security policies on mental health interventions.

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i refuse to condemn

INTRODUCTION: ‘YOU KNOW NOTHING, JON SNOW’ Asim Qureshi

ET TU, JON SNOW? The much-loved Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow is interviewing me and asks: Do you now condemn what he does?1

The one question I never expected of him. I’ve never felt so completely undone. I mean … it’s Jon Snow. I’ve shared his videos umpteen times on social media due to his wellregarded reporting. He’s asking me about whether or not I condemn the actions of Muhammad Emwazi, the man who became the infamous ISIS murderer Jihadi John. Just prior to my interview segment, Channel 4 News plays a pre-recorded video with a female former teacher of Emwazi, who praised her student without any demands on her to condemn. Now, thinking back through it, what separated me from the teacher was my very visible adherence to Islam. As I watch back over the video today, I can see the palpable look of amazement in my eyes and the shock in my 1

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gestures. It’s not that this is the first time someone has asked me this type of question, but hearing it escape from the lips of Jon Snow took me aback. I explained to him that he is someone I admire and that I’m troubled by this line of questioning, but he insisted that he just wanted a straight answer, even if I was offended. I try my best to explain that CAGE2 as an organisation, and I as an individual, worked tirelessly to save the life of the aid worker Alan Henning (who was kidnapped by ISIS and killed by Emwazi), and that we felt the pain of his death just like his family did. I try and reason with him that his question presupposes that my Muslim faith is the only reason why he is even interested in asking for my ­condemnation. He rejects this, though: I don’t see you as a Muslim. I see you as part of a group  involved  in attempting to assist people who are in difficulty.

This does not make sense to me. I’ve never heard of this requirement from any advocacy group representing a very specific area of concern, being asked to condemn the violent actions of those outside of its remit. I make this point to Snow, that he wouldn’t ask anyone from Amnesty International or Liberty to condemn the future violence of a client they once represented. Snow suggests he would ask them the same, and because he is Jon Snow I concede and say that I condemn any form of arbitrary execution and violence. I am at pains not to say it in the language he demands – because I don’t want my life and work reduced to the notions of propriety that this White man demands. My life, my work, my ethics are caged through his fears of me, the Other. You know nothing, Jon Snow.3 2

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The famous line from Game of Thrones comes to me after the interview is over. He doesn’t know why this questioning is hurtful, why it fundamentally shifts my view of who he is and why this feels like losing a part of who I am – largely because I now know that even with Jon Snow, we cannot speak without first verifying our humanity. His startling lack of care towards offence that he might cause has real-world ramifications for me. Now, as I write in the same month as the interview five years on, I’m having the same palpitations that I’ve had ever since that interview ended. My heart rate is through the roof and I’m feeling the same nausea I did on leaving the set – that night he changed my physiology forever. Encoded in my body was a desire to never relive that moment, and so every single time a news story attacks CAGE or me, my body re-experiences that trauma, transporting me back into that interview room. I try to intellectualise what is happening; I literally have a conversation in my own mind about how I know this is the body’s fightor-flight system, trying to help me escape something that it previously didn’t like. To no avail, this is the new me now. Forever changed by Jon Snow’s insistence, that I assure him I condemn. I am fortunate in the sense that I have studied and been trained to recognise the psychological and physiological impact of trauma – so while I can do little about its physical reality, I am able to understand what is happening and not succumb to it. Unfortunately, there are many others who don’t have this knowledge, and so their r­ elationship to re-experiencing such trauma is heightened. In that period in February 2015, Jon Snow wasn’t the only commentator to mischaracterise me. The Daily Mail,4 The Telegraph,5 the then prime minister David Cameron6 and even the current prime minister Boris Johnson7 all seemed 3

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to suggest that my call to understand Emwazi’s actions within a wider context was somehow evidence that I condoned them. The media criticism felt vicious and few commentators8 sought to engage with what I had actually said at the time, rather than what was being inferred based on a racialised othering of my person and statements. Since then, CAGE and I have been largely constructed based on this one moment by the right-wing and tabloid press, think-tanks and the politicians hostile to our calls against structural racism and for accountability. Their weaponisation of that moment has not only served as a means of attempting to invalidate our work, but also has had the knock-on effect of instilling fear into the wider Muslim community. This is all despite my own recognition of the mistakes I made during the period9 and an external review CAGE conducted of my messaging10 – publishing our findings in a unique act of accountability. The message is clear: if your accountability sits outside of pre-determined contours of the narrative the state permits, then the authorities will make life unbearable for you.

THE LANDSCAPE Some may question why such a book is necessary. Indeed, when I invited others to take part in this volume, I was somewhat unsure of what might emerge on the other side. Would my experience with Jon Snow and others be something that they related to? What this volume does is to really centre how critiquing the expectation of condemnation is not merely an academic experience, but rather, for all those who have reflected on its meaning, that it has everyday implications for them. Perhaps one of the most surprising things about this volume is the way in which the 4

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contributors helped to complicate my own understanding of this deeply difficult subject – sometimes in ways that were extremely painful to read. Few works have been written on the subject of condemnation, with perhaps the most well known being Todd H. Green’s Presumed Guilty: Why We Shouldn’t Ask Muslims to Condemn Terrorism, which draws together a compelling argument from a scholar outside of communities of colour on all the reasons why such calls for condemnation are not only incorrect, but are actually counter-productive to building cohesive relations between communities.11 This point is also made by Baroness Sayeeda Warsi in her 2017 book The Enemy Within: A Tale of Muslim Britain, where the Tory politician highlights not only the problems with condemnation culture, but also the ways in which this is reserved for communities of colour, as no such expectation is made of the larger White society – for instance, when Tommy Mair murdered the British parliamentarian Joanne Cox due to his White nationalist beliefs.12 Of course, the irony of my experience with Muhammad Emwazi, the man I once described as ‘a beautiful young man’ before he became an ISIS executioner, comes into sharp focus, as the very media outlets that weaponised these words against me were now describing Mair as a child who was kind, lonely and disturbed. The Daily Mail chose to not even cover the killing on its front page, relegating coverage to page 30 of its paper the following day,13 then choosing to mitigate Mair’s offence by suggesting that Cox had not taken his concerns about housing seriously – seemingly blaming his victim: ‘Did Neo-Nazi murder Jo over fear he’d lose council house he grew up in? Terrorist thought property could end up being occupied by an immigrant family – and the MP wouldn’t help him.’14 5

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I don’t want my readers to misunderstand my intention. As I write in more detail in my 2019 book A Virtue of Disobedience, I feel very strongly about mitigating all violent crime, because human beings are too complicated to be reduced to simplistic understandings.15 I flag the Daily Mail’s response here specifically to highlight the double standard in the response between the way that White nationalist violence is treated in comparison to that carried out by people of colour. While I began writing this introduction about the ways in which the question of condemnation has personal significance in my life and work, the bringing together of this volume was much more about attempting to understand the culture of condemnation as a lived experience by those who are subject most directly to its logic. Scholars and activists across the Western world, who have shared a similar lived experience to me – from North America to Europe to Australasia – share their stories of struggle and resistance. What we relate are the typologies of condemnation, but more significantly, how this requirement has an impact in both visible and invisible ways. In such volumes, it is customary for the editor to outline the contributing chapters in order of their publication. I have organised them into four general parts: I II III IV

How did we get here? Resisting the structure Resisting the personal Resisting the performance

I struggled with placing the chapters in these rigid categories, though, as the themes the authors tackle traverse the 6

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entire volume. So, for the reader, while I encourage you to read the entire work due to the brilliance of what this group has to contribute, I also encourage you to dip in and out of the chapters in any order you like. You will miss in this introduction the ‘objective’ tone of my referring to the authors by their surnames – so ElliottCooper is Adam, and Ali is Nadya – because these are not activists and scholars whom I have simply invited out of a sense of evidencing a problem; rather, they are friends, colleagues and companions who have stood alongside one another on the ramparts as we have faced the violence of structures when holding them to account. As I mentioned above, you will also find missing any attempt to ‘convince’ wider readership of the problem. That’s not what this book is about. Adam writes of how often ‘simple truths have to be spelled out, because the innocence and humanity of Black youth is never presumed and often negated’. We are not trying to meet some academic liberal objective requirement to prove our case, we are writing to show praxis – that for our friends, family and future generations, a path has already been undertaken which they can follow and indeed build on. Readers will find the tone of the writing very personal, and at times uncomfortably so, because as those fighting racism, we are simultaneously subject to its logic. Meaning is not only derived from the work we produce, but how this fight relates to our own lives. For the purposes of this introduction, rather than summarising each chapter and section of the book, I have instead chosen to identify certain themes that have emerged from the writing, in order to provide a sense of how the issue of condemnation arises in ways that are both familiar and surprising. As will be seen, there is no homogenous experience 7

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that connects the authors, but rather a system and structure of violence that is based on a racist knowledge production that is cultural, physical, economic and one that produces trauma that is internalised in many different ways.

AN INESCAPABLE COLONIALISM Kehinde Andrews, Professor of Black Studies at the University of Birmingham, caused outrage in the media when, appearing on the breakfast TV show Good Morning Britain, he explained that the British empire paved the way for the ideology of the Nazis, and that it in fact was responsible for longer and deeper harms than had been understood in the UK.16 Andrews was reproved for being ‘arrogant and anti-White’. In explaining the current manifestations of racism in the Western world, scholars and activists are routinely ‘told’ that this is something to be relegated to the past, that it has no significance for a contemporary ‘postracist’ society. Fatima reflects on her grandfather’s presence in the Mother Queen’s land, having travelled from Bangladesh to the UK, resulting in a grandchild who would be taught about the ‘nothingness’ of her own history in school. A romantic memory of Britain that reconstructs itself as non-violent, benevolent, law-abiding and peaceful, as Adam connects the dots for us: The romantic memory of Britain’s past appears even more fantastic, when we are forced to recall that the period of peace and tranquillity to which patriots wish to return was also the period of decolonisation, where military invasion and labour camps were among the techniques in which Britain maintained law, order and respectability. By unpacking the ways in which Britain is fondly misremembered, we cannot only offer a useful corrective, but reveal the ways in which racism 8

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INTRODUCTION plays a fundamental role in imagining a better past and condemning modern multiculturalism.

This is an important corrective. The amnesia associated with British colonial history belies the roots on which the house of liberalism and modernity is built17 – one that Suhaiymah reminds us is through the racial hierarchies envisioned by Enlightenment philosophers such as Immanuel Kant. To truly understand the place of Muslims and people of colour as not merely the subjects of the nation-state and neo-liberalism, but as communities that have alternative ways of thinking and being, requires a reformulation of the very premises that underpin society’s expectations of the Other. The parents of Cyrus, of mixed Iranian and Irish heritage, were quick to inform their children of the role America played in slavery, genocide and political repression, so he was aware of how society around him had been organised to whitewash that violent history from its contemporary trappings. Their suspicion of the US was not simply a matter of being ideologically tied to a negative view of America or being contrarians to the state; rather, it was much more about how the state organises itself and responds to what it perceives as threats while maintaining its hegemony. While many of the examples provided in this book relate to people of colour, perhaps Fahad provides us with a good example of racialisation within the context of national security. As a lawyer born in Ireland, he reflects on the killing of the lawyer Pat Finucane on 17 January 1989 – murdered with the complicity of the British state. Finucane’s representation of IRA members made him a target for the British state, and so we see that legacy continuing with the targeting of lawyers/activists/scholars who are all attempting to hold the violence of the state to account. In the culture 9

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of condemnation, presenting yourself outside of the good ­citizen/bad citizen binary can result in a great deal of harm.

THE UBIQUITY OF WHITE SUPREMACY We breathed in White lore because it was like air, being both invisible and abundant.

Nadya’s words capture a sentiment that is expressed regularly throughout the chapters in this volume, that there is a ubiquity to White power that provides the central organising framework to which communities of colour respond. There is much contestation over what ‘White’ means, with Tarek choosing to write in terms of ‘Power’ instead. There are good reasons to choose the latter term, particularly within a national security context, considering the seemingly exponential rise of Hindutva nationalism in India and Han-centric cultural genocide in East Turkestan. With many White Muslims also the subject of ‘racialisation’ within the context of national security, our ideas about how racism as a system and structure of power works are complicated. That said, many of the authors in this volume have chosen to use ‘Whiteness’ as a construct that they feel describes a structure of violence, and so it is important to understand the use of the term in how they describe it, and as Wilderson remarks – the use of this terminology is about ‘theorizing power politically rather than culturally’.18 Perhaps the clearest example of this in the volume comes from Sadia, who addresses her chapter, ‘Dear left-wing White liberal friend’. For Sadia, ‘Whiteness’ is something that was so pervasive and presented as the norm of her daily life, that it stood as a barrier between her and her colleagues who would also look at her as a female Pakistani Muslim, one in need of saving from her own backward 10

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culture. This dynamic between them has turned Sadia into what she terms the ‘go-to Muslim’, the one who is there on standby to be badgered with ‘the most bizarre assumptions and offensive questions’. There is something lost in these interactions that can never be quite recovered. Azeezat highlights this too when she writes of a trip to the US with colleagues, who without a moment’s hesitation were willing to make jokes about a burning cross in front of a Black Muslim scholar they were with. What this Whiteness does is to relegate any pain or frustration that friends and colleagues might feel to another realm, one in which the lived reality of racism does not exist – because for them it does not. This is what Azeezat refers to as ‘White innocence’, a way of seeing that renders invisible the pain of those who suffer at the hard end of racist violence. In a similar vein to Nadya’s description of breathing ‘White lore’, she writes: White supremacy is the ground that we walk upon and the air that we breathe and yet we are still asked to work within a framework of White innocence. As the death toll continues to rise, expectations of ‘collegiality’ or ‘academic debate’ are reliant on detachment from our pain.

Part of this is the question of who has the right and the authority to narrate the pain of people of colour. Fatima reminds us that it is the ubiquitous nature of ‘Whiteness’ which means that our narration is often told through the lens of how White people may come to understand us – that we end up consuming ourselves through an image that has been force-fed intergenerationally. For Aamer, there is no debate or discussion, though; racists are not an audience he is interested in educating. He believes that we first need to write for ourselves outside of the expectations that are imposed on us, even if it means that racists might become 11

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more racist – that his art is for his people, and to suggest that his comedy might sway others would be beyond naive.

PUBLIC SAFETY RACISM A feature of contemporary racism is that, particularly at a structural level, it is provided through the cover of ‘public safety’. This is how racist assumptions have underpinned policy-making and policing, by framing them in terms of keeping the public safe from harm. Although it has a much longer history, dating back to the rise of a formal police service and surveillance system in response to the Enlightenment non-state violence of Jacobins,19 the UK’s contemporary obsession with policing minority groups at its most potent emerged in the 1980s. This was through the application of SUS laws based on Section 4 of the 1824 Vagrancy Act, leading the stop and search of disproportionately large numbers of young Black men.20 Despite this profiling policy being deemed racist, profiling policing came back to haunt the UK in the post-9/11 environment, as the War on Terror suspected Muslim communities of being potential future threats. The profiling of British Muslims began almost immediately at ports of departure or entry into the UK, with the UK Border Agency being granted unprecedented powers to stop tens of thousands of British citizens a year, making it a terrorism offence to refuse to answer questions and without (in the first decade after 9/11) providing them access to a lawyer. This was portrayed as an issue of public safety, as it was not known where these people were going to or coming from, and so they needed to be stopped, searched and questioned – at times for up to nine hours. It would later emerge that these stops had little to do with security, 12

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but rather were more useful as data fishing and capture in mass surveillance, in order to build a more extensive picture of Muslim life in the UK.21 Such systems were later advanced from human profiling to algorithmic profiling. Computer coding was brought in to replace the function of human discrimination with humandesigned discrimination, through the use of technology. Shafiuddean reminds us that an airport is really nothing more than a well-designed system, one in which developers can bake ‘unintentional biases into the code itself’. When he is stopped at the airport before boarding a flight to the US, he is able to understand the role of algorithms that went into his profiling: Shafiuddean Choudry 187 cm 25–39 Republic of Ireland, The Netherlands, Belgium, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia Muslim Enhanced checks

While it is claimed that algorithms cannot discriminate in the same way that humans do, ultimately it is human beings who give meaning to the algorithms’ biases. This was captured well by Safiya Noble’s Algorithms of Oppression, as the scholar seeks to evidence how digital platforms in daily life, from Google to Yell, have reinforced the racist stereo­ types of developers.22 In his chapter, Lowkey evidences the way in which stops are used at borders to explicitly obtain certain types of information, which can then later be ­algorithmised as part of the system of surveillance. The coupling of human discrimination with technological discrimination has produced some truly terrifying results.23 For instance, global counter-violent extremism 13

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(CVE) initiatives, such as those initiated by China against its Uyghur population in East Turkestan, resulting in the mass surveillance of millions of people using tools such as facial recognition software. The proliferation of such ‘pre-crime’ policies can be traced back to the UK’s Prevent strategy, which in 2015 placed a reporting duty on all those in the public sector space on a statutory platform. Saffa, as a student activist at the time, connects Theresa May’s ‘Hostile Environment’ policy against immigrants with the entrenchment of Prevent powers in the UK. During her time as the vice-president of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS), she heard stories of cameras being installed in Muslim prayer rooms at university campuses and student Islamic societies being required by universities to hand over their membership lists. This exceptional treatment sits within a much wider profiling practice that separated Muslim students across the UK from their counterparts. The insidious nature of Prevent, and the way that it became formalised within the structure of universities, is something that Shereen encountered in other ways. During her ethics committee meeting to finalise her PhD project, she was told that the only way in which they would permit her to interview school children was if she agreed to report any child who expressed questionable views in accordance with the school Prevent policy – something that Shereen was not willing to do. Acceptance of her conducting such research was purely predicated on the notion that she become complicit in reporting on her own future subjects. Universities and schools are far from the neutral and open spaces they are supposed to be. Rather, as Sadia tells us through an anecdote, Muslim and Black students are subjected to the discriminatory views of teaching staff, with headteachers willing to say to students, ‘It’s one of your lot 14

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again,’ after a terrorist incident. Tarek relates how he was told as a child by his former teacher that she didn’t like his kind living in her neighbourhood, and Cyrus was called ‘Taliban, sand nigger, camel jockey’ by his fellow students. These are the daily racist interactions that young people have to bear, knowing full well that their options to challenge these behaviours are limited due to the power differential that educators enjoy. In the attempt to play their role in keeping society ‘safe’, these educators resort to racism as a tool of pathology. The pathologising of people of colour extends to their cultural and political output as well. Melanin, music, clothing, etiquette, intonation and hundreds of other markers, both chosen and biological, distinguish Black culture from what is considered to be appropriate behaviour within society. The links between policing views on gang and terrorist violence are all too clear, as both are treated as being linked to specific communities, existing outside of normal British life.24 Adam’s work challenges some of the racist stereotypes that exist by assessing the way drill music is ­understood by wider society: But despite the target of these policies being almost exclusively young Black men, those leading the charge against drill music deny that their campaign is either political or racist. Their concern with drill is moral, a concern over public safety and national dignity. This purported concern with maintaining the well-being and civility of Britain’s Black communities in fact reveals a highly political, racist and often violent campaign against Britain’s Black youth. It is also one of the ways in which we can expose how cultures of racism become a vehicle for discriminatory policing.

This is a theme that is picked up by Remi, who situates his work with the Northern Police Monitoring Project (NPMP) 15

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within the context of the over-policing of the Manchester Carnival. Remi describes in detail how, despite the lack of association between a shooting in Manchester with the carnival itself, somehow the violence was placed in its orbit. Remi’s calls for calm over the way that Black people are discriminated against is not met with understanding and concern, but rather he shares how those who he grew up with took to his Facebook in order to share videos of Black people attacking Whites – suggesting a ‘racial equivalence’ – but really illustrating how some crime by Black people is highlighted to achieve specific functions. The first is to draw attention to the dangerousness posed by Black men, but the other is to express how racism is not a public safety issue in the way that terrorism, gangs, drill music or knife crime are made out to be. When considering the nature of racism in the UK, Nadya importantly reminds us and the children she is writing for that the country is led by Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, the man who thought it acceptable to compare Muslim women in niqab to ‘bank robbers’ and ‘letter boxes’,25 while describing Black people as ‘picaninnies’ and as having ‘watermelon smiles’.26 This is the thing about public safety racism, it comes from the very top of society, and so the eventual violence of the state against communities of colour has cover from the highest echelons of Power – it can’t be racism if politicians and the mainstream media are parroting those same lines, right?

THE EXPECTATION OF CONDEMNATION As mentioned earlier, the chapters in this volume largely focus on the ways in which the authors have been forced to confront and resist an expectation to condemn. The only 16

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data-driven chapter opens the volume, as Shenaz draws on a study that was carried out by Britain Thinks for a UK-based charity, seeking to understand how to reduce the animus that exists towards Muslims in the drive for Muslims to improve their communication strategies. The outcome of the polling, survey and focus groups led to Britain Thinks recommending rule #1: that any Muslim organisation must respond to terrorism incidents by condemning unequivocally. In her chapter, Shenaz unpicks rule #1 by rethinking the data that led to this rule being established. What the study evidenced was that, from the outset, Muslims are the least well regarded of any religious or non-religious group in the UK, ‘with Muslims scoring 4.96 compared to non-religious (7.01), Christians (6.79) and Jews (6.19)’. Those surveyed were asked about their views of these groups after express condemnation was evidenced, only for the view of Muslims to increase as a mean score to 5.39, a marginal increase and well below views on other groups mentioned. This is despite 54 per cent of those surveyed expressing that British Muslims had a special responsibility when it came to terrorism. In her rethinking of rule #1, Shenaz asks the important question, that if the baseline view is already low, and condemnation statements do not even marginally help in reducing those negative views, what is the point of condemnation in the first place? Or: ‘To put the results differently, one might simply say, to hell with condemnation.’ I want to briefly return to the incident with which I started this introduction, the interview with Jon Snow. This perhaps connects well with the point I finished with in the previous section, about how the words used by public figures matter and have hegemonic significance within society at 17

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large. That night didn’t end with Snow. As I returned home from the Channel 4 studio, I found that I was being bombarded with messages from Michael, a White man whom I met in Palestine and travelled with for almost two weeks. He is someone I grew to have a great deal of affection for, but here he was, calling me names for my refusal to condemn on Snow’s terms. I tried to reason with Michael. I explained how playing into that narrative reinforced that somehow all Muslims were responsible for the atrocities committed by a few, but he didn’t want to know. In the end, I was forced to block him, only for him to switch to another social media platform and harass me there. I ended up blocking Michael completely out of my life, because it felt too much like a betrayal, that he wasn’t willing to understand how his expectation of me was one that was unfair and harmful to Muslim communities. It reminds me of how invisible racism is, because we don’t concentrate on it as something that is felt … it is something that is lived. Remi captures this poignantly in the introduction to his chapter, where he writes of the anxiety he feels in the immediate aftermath of an attack that Muslims (and indeed Islam itself) or Black people might be accused of. This is an anxiety that is shared by many, not because they feel that they have a responsibility or locus to the act, but because we know how this will play out in the media, among our colleagues and even our friends. As he writes: ‘Calls to condemn haunt us; follow us; threaten to overwhelm us; silence us. The pressure to condemn our own (and other marginalised) communities lingers in the air: it is ubiquitous. Sometimes the pressure is spoken, more often it is silent, but always it is felt.’ This pressure that is ‘felt’, in Remi’s words, isn’t just about how Muslims and Black people internalise the 18

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narrative of the War on Terror and accusations of being gangsters, it’s about the very relationship we have with our neighbours. Yassir offers reflections on how we exist in a ‘social court’ that has trained us to respond in very specific ways, except for him, it is the very act of condemnation that separates us from the neighbours we seek safety with. Meeting the expectation to condemn in order to be labelled ‘safe’ carries with it an automatic excommunication from normality – for in the process of condemning, we justify our coming into humanity, a humanity from which we had been excluded until that moment. Sahar Ghumkhor writes of this in her recent book, The Political Psychology of the Veil, where she evidences that condemnation is not enough according to the Australian prime minister. Rather, for it to be valid, condemnation must be something that is ‘meant’, that somehow those to whom it is being projected must ‘feel’ the sincerity of the condemnation for it to ever be valid.27 For Ghumkhor, the demand to perpetually condemn demands perpetual confession from Muslims who are willing to condemn their own, denounce certain interpretations of their religious text, to evidence their capacity to critique their religion – to be able to step outside of it. Such integrationist requirements measure – or even monitor – Muslim capacity for secular modernity as a practice of freedom in the name of security.28

Yet, even the most active of us, even the most aware, even the most ‘woke’ does condemn. Why you might ask? Because it is tiring. Because what exists on the other side is too difficult and too painful to manage, and so we condemn in order to find safety. Remi writes of how the NPMP felt pressurised to condemn the interpersonal violence that took place outside of the Manchester Carnival in order to ‘disentangle our political demands from any potential tarnishing’. This 19

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is not because the NPMP is unclear about the demands, but because of the ‘utterly ridiculous’ expectation that comes from wider society, which must be met in order to maintain any semblance of ‘respectability’. Tarek takes a somewhat different approach to the expectation of condemnation from the side of the ones who engage in condemning. For him, the question is much more about why we find ‘the approval of others so alluring’. Tarek tells us of the moment he is standing in a stadium that is full of people and politicians in Canada, coming out to support the Muslim community after over fifty people were hurt and killed in an attack on a mosque in Quebec. He tells us that he has a speech written that will hold those politicians (present in the stadium) who preached at the altar of White nationalist violence to account, and yet he is brutally honest in informing us that he fails to deliver it – choosing instead to speak about coming together and healing. The stadium roared with approval, ‘We are Quebecois! Nous sommes Quebecois!’ So Tarek is now left reflecting with us on why that moment passed, why he did not take the opportunity to hold those who cemented an environment of hate to account: What was it, in that terrible moment, which led us all to draw the gaze towards ourselves – our nationalities, no less? To me, it is the sight of the dead which provoked an insupportable reaction: to look at them, to truly bear witness to the circumstances of their death, had inspired anger towards Power which had legitimised the killer’s thoughts of Muslims. But this anger makes us seen in a bad light. Instead we implore Power’s gaze towards us, demanding its good light even more.

Tarek informs us that so much of our complicity with the expectations and calls for condemnation is based on a yearning to be ‘seen’ by those who carry power, so that we can 20

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exist in a place that is beyond reproach – that we become ‘good’. As with Remi’s example of the condemnation by the NPMP, racism is accommodated for a larger, greater good, but the one who condemns never comes away unscathed by this Faustian transaction – we lose something from ourselves whenever we do. Just south of Canada in the US, Cyrus writes of his time at the Council on American–Islamic Relations, which he deemed ‘a condemnation factory back then’. Perhaps one of the most forthright chapters in its tone, it will be uncomfortable reading for many, describing an internal tension between feeling the need to step up and make a difference against the oppression of Muslims, seeing from the inside the uphill battle that peaceful resistance can (paradoxically) often be, and resisting calls towards unjust violence, even while violence is committed against us. To understand this struggle is vital for all of us in this conversation, and to pretend it isn’t happening would be disingenuous. Cyrus outlines a history of enduring racism and of years of hard work to establish local political resistance, an effort often fruitless, ignored and marginalised. This is contrasted with a sense of community with his brothers and sisters in Islam, and a deep empathy for decisions made in the light of righteous anger, and defence of home, family and values – a defence he compares to the kind of US violence he has not been allowed to condemn. He brings the reader back consistently to a fundamental point about the nature of Islam and unjust violence: it is Allah who condemns.

THE PERFORMANCE OF BETRAYAL In 2018 the BBC commissioned Suhaiymah to deliver a short video on the subject of violence as part of its ‘In My Humble Opinion’ series. The editor engaged in an exchange 21

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with Suhaiymah, requesting she change the text she had prepared, as she did not want people to say, ‘Oh she’s being an apologist for violence.’ Suhaiymah explains that the policing of her argument was expressed as being in her best interest, but her own desire to remain true to her knowledge and words pushed her to insist on the text being performed as it was. I think about how easy it might have been for her to concede – after all, the argument is often invoked that when you are given a platform, then regardless of its imperfect nature, you should use it. As Tarek reminds us: ‘Power always creates lucrative openings for everyone to enter its good grace as long as they play by its rules.’ The better-known public figures in this volume are potentially at most risk of playing to this good grace, as they seek to penetrate larger audiences. This is a balancing act that is very difficult to manage – for the consequences are that one is rejected from the mainstream, or that one betrays one’s own truth, or that of one’s community. Perhaps contrary to received wisdom about the way that celebrity functions, Aamer, Hoda, Lowkey and Suhaiymah have each refused to engage in a politics of performativity, where being given a platform is considered to be more important than their messaging. Aamer’s insistence on being true to his politics has resulted in a reconfiguring of who his audience actually is – his own communities: The conversation needs to be as much about values as just mere representation. If someone makes a TV show about a Muslim cop, then everyone will lose their mind, because this is different, and they are not terrorists. It uses a Black/Brown person to legitimise, and let’s be honest, glorify an oppressive institution.

Hoda’s presence as a hijab-wearing visibly Muslim woman in the fashion industry is often reduced to perform a certain 22

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function. Invited to speak at the Chicago Humanities Festival in May 2016, her presence was offset against well-known ‘Muslim reformer’ and Trump-supporter Asra Nomani. Hoda reflects on the assumption that this was presented as a ‘balanced’ debate about the hijab, by pitting a hijab-wearing Muslim woman against another who does not – but more importantly has been involved in the securitisation of Muslims in the US and abroad. As Hoda points out, balance in this case would have been to bring two Islamic scholars who are steeped in the theology, who take opposing views and allow them to debate, rather than the farce she took part in which was really a performance for ‘an audience of White, non-Muslim, older, and primarily upper-class women and men’. Quoting the Organisation of Black Unity, Remi takes on the idea of representation politics further, pointing to writer and broadcaster Trevor Phillips, former chairperson of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, as an ‘Uncle Tom’ – a moniker given by Malcolm X to describe those who betray their own communities. Remi argues that such people are specifically given platforms because they are willing to condemn their own communities outside of a fuller context of their lives, they punch downwards at their own, rather than holding Power to account. The gatekeeping and performativity take place in different ways. While individuals like Phillips directly insert themselves in debates around racism and integration, there are more insidious ways in which this manifests. In his chapter, Lowkey writes of the way in which he felt his political voice was kept off the mainstream BBC radio by the DJ Tim Westwood. The same DJ would later describe Lowkey’s fellow rapper Akala as a ‘communist’, and go on to perform for British troops in Camp Bastion in Afghanistan. 23

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Lowkey’s critique of Westwood is less to do with the man though, as much as it is more about the structure within which this DJ is given a position of privilege – and how he chooses to exercise that privilege: While Westwood is often portrayed as Britain’s embarrassing but tolerated uncle, when taken together his choices seem at best subconsciously ideological. Later, on the basis of these issues, I publicly refused to appear on TimWestwoodTV, but I cannot help but wonder if Prevent-style intervention may have had some role in this situation? As personally culpable and actually repellent as I find Westwood to be, he is the product of a machine and one cog in a juggernaut, of a magnitude of which we are nowhere near fully aware.

There is another category of those who perform, though – who claim to not be close to Power, and even evoke the philosophy of intersectionality, while simultaneously betraying their own ethics. This was perhaps most starkly present in 2019 when Suhaiymah and many others withdrew from the Bradford Literature Festival, over the festival having procured funding from the Building Strong Britain Together government funding scheme – closely linked to the racist UK Prevent programme. Those who had previously supported Suhaiymah and her work were now criticising her decision to boycott with one journalist writing in The Guardian, ‘having principles is a privilege not everyone can afford … Making a public declaration of withdrawal helps no one but one’s ego.’29 This is a telling statement, and one many of those involved in this collection hear too often, that the platform, the performance, is the pinnacle of representation. I do wonder if those who engage in racist programmes, with cultural capital that stems from their closeness to Power, think of those who might be harmed by the very policies they acquiesce to through their presence. 24

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Claims to being ‘woke’ or ‘intersectional’ only ever remain platitudes while they are uncoupled from a praxis of resistance. As Tarek forcefully tells us: ‘But know I would rather trash my PhD than partake in the War on Terror.’

A PRAXIS OF RESISTANCE The murder of Altab Ali on 4 May 1978 resulted the mobilisation of Bangladeshi groups to march in the streets of East London. As Fatima informs us, despite the need for protection from racist groups, they were given no support or protection from the police or any government agency. These moments come at great personal risk to individ­ uals and communities, as they seek to come into being. We are told by Fatima that citizenship and belonging is always conditional when it is something that must be fought for, and thus there is no presence, there is no permanence, while there are battles to be won. In his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire explains that the solution can never be from inside the logic of oppression: ‘The solution is not to “integrate” them into the structure of oppression, but to transform that structure so that they can become “beings for themselves”. Such transformation, of course, would undermine the oppressors’ purposes.’30 How do we become beings for ourselves when the structure is so overwhelmingly violent? Many of the authors in the present volume seek to centre family in their discourse on resistance. Tarek writes of the lessons that were imparted to him by his mother, and how on occasions, he has forgotten her face as he strayed from her teachings. Fahad shares his mother’s concerns over his activism, after the detention and torture of his maternal grandfather in Pakistan for political organising, but at the same time holds up his father 25

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as a legacy that he is trying to fulfil. His praxis isn’t one that was taught, it was one that was witnessed with the eyes of a child, and etched into his memory – a source of strength for him to draw on in times of need: Despite, and arguably because of, his unshakeable firmness in his belief system and refusal to succumb to the social pressures around him to condemn his faith, my father became beloved to the local community within which he lived to the extent that they pressurised the parish priest to celebrate mass for his departed soul, something that remains as rare today for a Muslim as it was then. He secured the kind of acceptance that others compromise fundamental aspects of their identity to achieve; yet he did so by remaining resolute on his convictions and not allowing others to ideologically separate him from other parts of his community through the politics of condemnation.

This is pedagogy. Part of the way in which we teach is by doing, by being seen, but sacrificing and showing that even in difficulty, there is something that is always achievable. At times that achievement remains in the hearts of men and women, but such success is an act of germination, not loss. Yassir tells us that in the process of proclaiming our truth in these auto-ethnographies or self-interrogations, we risk reducing ourselves to academic labels that have little meaning – rather he is doing ‘what all believers always do, I am bearing witness to God’s arrangements’. This refusal, to withdraw to an internal space for the self, as Shereen and Azeezat inform us, is about the personal not being up for debate – we must refuse in order to maintain our own integrity. As mentioned above, Tarek would be willing to trash his own PhD rather than becoming complicit in a system of violence, but equally, Shereen’s praxis of resistance meant that even embarking on the notion of doctoral studies could never be separated from her ethics as a Muslim. Rather 26

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than succumbing to playing the role of an informer on her potential future child subjects, she refused to permit an ethics committee to make her complicit: ‘I was fiercely protective of my imaginary participants; although I had not yet recruited any participants. I was already aware that they would be part of my community, thus forcing me to construct such protective boundaries.’ Praxis is not just in the now, it is also about the future, about making decisions that ensure that somehow our actions, in the course of our activism or scholarship, do not go on to harm future generations. It is the reason why Nadya ‘writes for the kids’, because our work, lives and ethics are directly connected to the world they will grow up in. This is about the love we have for one another, and the love and hope we have for them: Out of the heinous violence of Christchurch, the everyday Islamophobia of the UK, the Islamophobia which is manifest in the camps of East Turkestan or in the lynchings in India, I am reminded that the feelings that drive me to resist, and even to take hope, are feelings of the deepest love I hold for each of you. That you might grow, study, worship, agitate, organise, work, and live in a place that is worthy of your lives. Kids, the difference between those who fight for what they love and those who fight to dominate and oppress is vast. Whatever comes next, remember, you are loved.

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Part I How did we get here?

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1 REMAKING RULE #1: ‘I UTTERLY REFUSE TO CONDEMN …’ Shenaz Bunglawala

It was March 2019, and I was attending a meeting in Washington, DC, with American Muslims at the forefront of challenging Islamophobia in the US when I was reminded of the significance of those few words Muslims are invariably called upon to proclaim in the aftermath of a terrorist incident: ‘We utterly condemn …’ The meeting involved several well-known American Muslims, familiar to those who are well versed in American Muslim institutions and their media representatives. We were being presented evidence of rigorous media analysis tracking coverage of Islam and Muslims in the American media, details of investment in the training of Muslims in strategic communications and the demonstrative impact this had had during the ‘Muslim ban’ (not ‘travel ban’ – the Trump administration’s preferred terminology to escape opprobrium for the explicit and intended focus of the restriction to travel to the US on Muslims). It wasn’t part of the presentation, but I vividly recall the former CAIR (Council on American–Islamic Relations) 31

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spokesperson making the remark. Not a glib throwaway, an afterthought to the more serious matter of investing in strategic communications to battle a more hostile environment in the US and the discernible pay-offs in developing a more media-savvy Muslim cohort. No, he was in earnest and emphatic when he said that Muslims had no business condemning terrorist atrocities. To do so was merely to surrender the play. Forget challenging Islamophobia, you would (in)advertently entrench it beyond measure. He wasn’t the only one among our small group to express disquiet or discomfort at this seeming expectation that, as Muslims, we should be the first to condemn terrorism and seek to disassociate the act from Islam, from fellow Muslims, from all decent citizens of [insert name of country].

COMMUNICATION RULE #1 The charity foundation that I had worked at until the previous month commissioned a piece of insight research as part of a project to ‘shift the dial’ in attitudes towards British Muslims and create a greater disconnect between ‘Muslim’ and ‘terrorism/extremism’.1 Foremost among the recommendations drawn from the research findings was the first rule for communicating on the issue of terrorism: ‘begin with unconditional condemnation in the strongest possible terms, seeking neither to explain nor excuse’. When I returned to London, I couldn’t help but satisfy my curiosity about rule #1 and sought to look again at the research. I wanted to identify what made this rule so important to the aim of distancing Muslims from acts of terrorism in the public’s mind. There had certainly been engaging discussions with British Muslims who were involved in deliberations over the course of the project and, indeed, 32

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discussion at the very end of the research when the findings were laid bare before us. There were those who looked at rule #1 and dismissed it outright. This particular line of argument was not for them; why should we condemn? There were others who looked upon the rules and saw rule #1 as the lesser of other evils, one to be tolerated if it meant a shift in social attitudes was more likely to come about. Given the high propensity of individuals surveyed in the research to strongly associate Muslims with terrorism, maybe rule #1 was a good starting point. But this begs two questions: 1. What if you’re not comfortable with the expectation to condemn an act for which you, individually and collectively, bear no responsibility? Do you, the person called on to condemn, not figure at all in the communication rules? 2. Even if you were to put your personal dislike aside, does it really make a difference to condemn? What if communication isn’t just about what is said by a speaker, but about the integrity of the content being communicated, the agency inherent in the act of speaking out? What happens with the dissolution of this agency when the speaker parrots not their own words but words chosen to mollify an audience, is it possible for a Muslim to be ambivalent about something like this? Can Muslims offer condemnation without considering why the listener may seek it, what preexisting ideas or prejudices the listener harbours that make the words ‘I utterly condemn’ soothing to their ears? I looked again at the data, this time not to review the findings but to understand why condemnation is paramount. What purpose does it serve? What emotive quality does it represent to the audience? Why it is conditional to a slight 33

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shift in attitudes towards Muslims? Where does the need to hear these words come from?

THE DATA This chapter draws upon two datasets from the insight research conducted in 2017. This first part derives from focus groups which were held in November 2017 during an exploratory phase of research and later in December 2017, in five locations around the UK in places where there are both high- and low-density Muslim populations: Colne, Coventry, Norwich, Slough and Sutton Coldfield. The second part is from a nationally representative omnibus survey undertaken in December 2017,2 with qualitative and quantitative analysis of a narrative tested with the public to gauge preferences and potency relating to words presented in a statement by Muslims after a terrorist attack which begins ‘I am appalled by this horrific act and utterly condemn any act of terrorism. There is no justification for this mindless violence’.3 Survey respondents were asked a series of questions about Muslims generally and were invited to identify particular words in the statement which they liked or disliked, and to elaborate on their thoughts and feelings upon reading the statement. The narrative was tested against a question asked before and after the statement, ‘Overall, how positively or negatively do you regard Muslims?’, to assess implicit and explicit changes in public perceptions towards Muslims. The survey sample was further disaggregated into three groups, positive (6–10), neutral (5) and sceptics (0–4), each differentiated by their positivity rating towards Muslims on a scale of 0–10, to measure changes in the subset groups before and after reading the statement. This 34

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chapter is based on the findings from both the exploratory stage and the later narrative testing stage. It is worth noting at the outset that the survey showed that Muslims were the least well regarded of all the faith and non-faith groups named in the survey: Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Sikhs and non-religious. This was the case both with the before and after statement questions with Muslims ranking lower than all faith groups in both cases. The mean score on attitudes towards Muslims was lower than for all other groups with Muslims scoring 4.96 compared to non-religious (7.01), Christians (6.79) and Jews (6.19). The mean score after reading the statement that expressly condemns terrorism increased marginally from 4.96 to 5.39 with the ratings for the other three groups also rising to 7.09, 6.87 and 6.3, respectively. It can only make you wonder whether, on a purely transactional basis, if being asked to condemn is to appeal to hearts and minds, and they, for the most part, remain unchanged, is it worth it? Or to put it differently, given the breadth of topics that Muslims can talk about with fellow citizens, what advantage is there to placing an onus of communications about terrorism if the message barely registers on the barometer when measuring a shift in attitudes? Yes, the research did show that terrorism is a big driver of the negativity felt towards Muslims, but condemning acts of terrorism cannot alone result in significant shifts in such attitudes. During the exploratory phase, which was designed to elicit direction for the formulation of the narrative which could later be tested, various statements were put to the public. This was done to measure positive or negative responses to potential arguments that sought to present the causes of terrorism as arising from alienation of Muslim communities, 35

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their relative poverty and deprivation and military action abroad and British foreign policy.4 Other arguments tested were explicitly ‘religious’ in connotation, referring to ISIS- or al-Qaeda-inspired terrorism as emanating from ‘a misunderstanding of Islam’, Islam being a religion which ‘encourages violence’ and ‘Muslim teachings being extreme and violent’. Pertinent here is the argument that was tested: ‘Muslims always stand up in solidarity with victims after terror attacks (#notinmyname). This shows they condemn the actions of terrorists and should not be associated with them.’ The argument was unfavourably received with focus groups disputing whether Muslims ‘always’ stood in solidarity with victims, and criticising the use of a hashtag as a marketing tool to appear ‘trendy’. Notable in the response to the argument tested with the public was the end result: ‘Participants simply didn’t believe this statement to be true.’ Indeed, the exploratory phase of the research identified two main points that later informed the formulation of a narrative that resulted in communication rule #1. Firstly, the research identified a clear demand for ‘some form of vocal condemnation from Muslims’ in response to terrorist acts and secondly, participants in the focus groups displayed a ‘complete lack of awareness’ of any response that had been made by Muslim communities to terrorist acts to date with the underlying assumption that this was because there had been none. When presented with evidence of Muslim responses – newspaper clippings and TV clips – those evincing demonstrations of victim solidarity and Muslims openly condemning terrorism were positively appraised. These results were mirrored in the omnibus survey with a majority of respondents (54 per cent) stating, ‘British 36

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Muslims have a special responsibility to work to prevent terrorism inspired by al-Qaeda and ISIS,’ compared to 21 per cent who said they did not. And, in contrast to the focus groups, almost half (48 per cent) claimed to be ‘aware of British Muslims’ responses to terrorism inspired by al-Qaeda and ISIS’, compared to 27 per cent who said they were not. Interestingly, similar numbers (45 per cent) also said they wanted to ‘hear more from British Muslims in response to terrorism inspired by al-Qaeda and ISIS’, compared to 27 per cent who said they did not want to hear more. Breaking the figures down by positivity ratings, those who held positive perceptions of Muslims were more likely to say they wanted to ‘hear more from Muslims’ than those with negative or neutral views; 54 per cent compared to 43 per cent and 43 per cent, respectively. Moreover, those holding a positive perception of Muslims were also more likely to say Muslims were generally willing to condemn ISIS- and al-Qaeda-inspired terrorism compared to neutrals and sceptics; 73 per cent compared to 57 per cent and 32 per cent, respectively. Those with positive perceptions were also more likely to say they were aware of British Muslims’ responses to terrorism (58 per cent) compared to neutrals and sceptics (45 per cent and 46 per cent, respectively).

THE EXPECTATION TO CONDEMN Is there, then, a causal link between favourable views towards Muslims and being more aware of Muslim responses to terrorism which convey their condemnation? The survey data doesn’t permit the exploration of this question but it is worth considering whether there is demonstrable causality at work here, where those who exhibit positive perceptions towards Muslims do so because they hear or know 37

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of Muslim responses explicitly condemning terrorist acts when they occur. If those who harbour negative views about Muslims are also those who don’t hear Muslims condemning terrorism, would more condemning win them over? When asked whether they felt ‘more suspicious of Muslim after instances of terrorism inspired by al-Qaeda or ISIS’, 48 per cent said yes and around a third (34 per cent) said no. Among those with negative perceptions of Muslims, four in five said they felt more suspicious (81 per cent). Again, would condemning terrorism diminish the degree of suspicion cast on Muslims in the aftermath of acts of violence? In the narrative testing, respondents were invited to ­highlight specific words or phrases in the statement that they liked. The sample was split to test the narrative with alternative formulations of the shoulder of responsibility with Sample A presented with the narrative ‘there is a responsibility on our shoulders as Muslims to help prevent these attacks from happening’, and in Sample B ‘Muslims’ was replaced with ‘British citizens’. The words in the first paragraph of the statement referenced above scored the highest of any words in the entire statement across the samples. These words were ‘appalled’ (27 per cent), ‘condemn’ (28 per cent), ‘no’ (23 per cent), ‘justification’ (26 per cent), ‘mindless’ (21 per cent) and ‘violence’ (20 per cent). Of all the words tested in the narrative, it is ‘condemn’ that rated the highest among all the ‘liked’ words. The only other words which came close to being liked to a similar degree were ‘responsibility’ (22 per cent), referring, as in the paragraph above, to the responsibility of citizens to prevent these attacks from happening, ‘Muslim’ (18 per cent), ‘doctors’ (29 per cent), ‘nurses’ (19 per cent), ‘paramedics’ (19 per cent), referring to the many Muslims in the medical profession ‘working to save the lives of the 38

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victims’ in the aftermath of an attack, and the word ‘united’ (18 per cent), a plea to stand together as a country against those who ‘sow fear and division’.5 It’s not enough to merely condemn the violence of terrorists, Muslims also need to show how they are practically supporting the security agencies to prevent attacks and helping first responders in dealing with its aftermath. If we examine the reasons given for why the statement was liked specifically by references to the word ‘condemn’, there are different responses depending on whether the respondent’s perception of Muslims was positive or negative. Among the positives, reasons for liking the statement and the explicit disavowal of acts of terrorism were linked to the notion of a special responsibility borne by Muslims to condemn and combat terrorism: That Muslims are condemning the acts of these terrorists supposedly doing it in the name of Islam and want to help to stop this from happening.   It condemned the violence and explained what the Muslim community is doing to combat extremism.   Someone acknowledging that they have a special responsibility to condemn terrorism in the name of Islam. This does not happen often enough and directly after an atrocity.6

Other responses referred to the performative facet of communications, with condemnation necessary to represent what Muslims ‘really think’ about terrorism as if without it one couldn’t know or be certain what thoughts and feelings Muslims harbour on terrorism: It condemns the acts of violence and represents the vast majority of British Muslims. It showed that Muslims also condemn the attacks.

The ‘also’ in the response above is fascinating in the assumptions that underlie the use of the word. 39

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Among sceptics, reasons for favouring the statement and the clear condemnation of violence were linked to suspicion that Muslims do not, or not readily enough, condemn terrorism, questioning the sincerity of Muslims when condemning terrorism, and overtly ‘othering’ Muslims by referring to them as being on ‘our side’ or acting as ‘British citizens’ when they condemn violence and speak out against ‘their own’: Liked it because the author condemned the atrocities carried out by terrorist groups. Too often Muslims remain silent. It suggests the Muslim community do care and condemn what is happening; however, you rarely hear enough of these things. Good that they condemn these things but it’s not always that believable. Understood that as British citizens they have to condemn this; otherwise, they support it. On ‘our side’ and condemn these acts of violence. To condemn their own is good. I liked the outspoken condemnation of the attackers. I wish all Muslims would speak like this, as it is apparent that some attackers are radicalised in mosques.7

Looking deeper at the narrative analysis, we can discern an emotive and demonstrative quality to the liking of the statement based on respondents’ references to how it made them ‘feel’ and what it ‘shows’ them about Muslims. If the culture of condemnation is part of the communication toolbox that sees empathy between subject and audience as predicated on condemnation, separating the two is essential to rewriting communication rule #1. Individuals positively disposed to Muslims referred to the  narrative and to it showing ‘how decent Muslims feel about the terrorism in this country’, ‘how against terrorism the British Muslim community is’ and a ‘commitment to 40

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the rest of society from the majority of Muslims’, as though neither of these stand up to scrutiny unless prefaced with a condemnation. The othering of Muslims is also ever present in the contractual obligation implicit in the notion of a commitment to the rest of society; condemn or be ­condemned, it would appear. Sceptics referring to what the statement showed them reveal startling tropes about Muslims that often pervade the culture of condemnation becoming steeped in the unwritten rules for Muslims communicating on this topic. Individuals referred to the statement showing ‘that Muslims are just the same as anyone else’ as if this could be a matter of dispute, or that it showed ‘solidarity towards humankind, rather than fellow religious associates’, as though Muslims should only ever display one attachment, not the multifaceted identities that shape all other communities. Others spoke of the statement ‘showing they were human and thought the same as most people’, as if the humanity of the Muslim is in question each time terrorism strikes and a collective sigh of relief can be breathed when words of condemnation roll off the Muslim tongue. The othering returns as individuals refer to the statement showing ‘a solid commitment towards Britain and all British people’, and that ‘in fact not all Muslims want to kill all non-believers’. While some respondents questioned whether Muslims actually feel the way fellow Britons do about terrorism and if condemnation was just a tactical move, others referred to the statement connoting the way many people in society feel about terrorism and it making it easier to include Muslims in the collective whole. As one respondent put it, ‘It’s how most people feel about terrorism. People need to hear that most Muslims feel the same way that they do about terrorism.’ 41

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It is the ‘need to hear’ that is so significant because it is the distillation of what the culture of condemnation represents, the presumption that Muslims cannot naturally evoke the same responses to violence as fellow citizens. Their voices of condemnation must ring loud and clear and it is in that resounding clarion call that their normalness takes shape. The full scope of quantitative analysis isn’t possible given the space limitations in this edited volume, but I have tried to condense some of the findings to demonstrate where the need for condemnation arises and how audiences respond when it is offered. Two concluding observations that I wish to include are as follows. Firstly, the ‘shift in the dial’ on public attitudes towards Muslims that was intended as a primary objective of the research shows a less than modest return. Among the samples as a whole, the mean score on attitudes towards Muslims rose from 4.96 to 5.39 and rose slightly more among sceptics from 2.04 to 2.8. Secondly, condemnation is insufficient to address the widespread negativity towards Muslims that is present in society and a much wider campaign would be needed to create a greater disconnect between Muslims and terrorism/extremism. To put the results differently, one might simply say, to hell with condemnation. As our American Muslim colleagues succinctly explained, they refuse to be defined by terrorism and won’t partake of the culture of condemnation because it is not Muslims’ responsibility to show fellow citizens that they are just like them, but the responsibility of those who demand condemnation as an entry card to social inclusion to confront the prejudices that obstruct them from seeing Muslims for who they really are.

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2 THEY NEEDED US, AND NOW THEY ARE TERRIFIED Fatima Rajina

What does it mean to be a British Bengali? What are the historical links between the Bengal region and Britain? What circumstances arose for this community that came to settle in the East End to then build up solidarity with other racialised communities and fight the state? There are many lessons to be taken from these pivotal moments in history, how we find ourselves entangled in them and how, now, they can inform our contemporary galvanisation against those in power and help bring about a more equal, just and egalitarian society. I draw upon the struggles of the East End because my family history hails from the region and of those who fought on the streets of Tower Hamlets, who are from Sylhet, Bangladesh. These moments in history have very much informed my understanding of holding truth to power and refusing to allow a dominant narrative about Muslims to flourish. The resilience we witnessed in the East End provides us with some basic toolkit for resistance.

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THE EMPIRE AND I Growing up and attending school in Britain, I was made to believe that South Asians, and others from former colonies, arrived on the shores of Britain solely for economic prosperity without any other historical ties. Of course, as a young, impressionable teenager, I believed in this historical trajectory that was presented to me because I trusted my teachers. I did not know any better, one could say. I did not know, other than a few conversations at home, that there had been a sustained, one-way relationship with the Indian subcontinent for centuries. That the culture I originated from was a savage one and required saviours (read: White people) in order for us to enter modernity and learn how to be human.1 When one starts consuming oneself through the image presented to one by and through White people, then one holds it to be true. The ubiquitous nature of Whiteness means truth is equated to a White body narrating it. And like many other racialised Brits, I was not aware of how subjects of the empire were required to fight for the Queen against the enemy states in WWI and WWII.2 It is only recently, through the deliberate discussions around colonialism and empire across various social media platforms, that people are learning about histories unavailable to them within the school national curriculum. This deliberate erasure in our history lessons should become an impetus for survival, and one has to resist the wilful amnesia of the state continuously. I learned about the resistance led by the Bangladeshi community and others much later in life. I encountered this history during my MA studies. I was twenty-three years old then. I went through most of my life believing that African, 44

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Asian and Caribbean communities in the UK existed outside of Britain’s history. This is, of course, far from the truth. The anguish and despair I felt while learning about these histories was, quite honestly, jarring, because I felt convinced that we were mere ‘migrants’. I put ‘migrants’ in quotation marks because that is not what any of us were or are. Our ancestors came to these shores because they, the White Brits, were ‘there’, in our lands first. Following WWII, when my grandfather came to this country, he came as a subject of the empire to rebuild the Queen’s land. This country’s wealth was accumulated through the looting and extraction of resources from India.3 The anguish left me feeling at a loss because one learns that one’s identity went through this process of decimation and annihilation because it did not meet the requirements of Whiteness: to have one’s existence extracted out of history and to be told one’s people lack the integrity and resilience to know what is good for them. I became interested in exploring more of the Bangladeshi/ Bengali history in the UK not only as some form of compensation for my lack of knowledge but also to learn more about the anti-racist activities and campaigns from the community as well as their collaboration with other racialised communities. The more I learn, the more I realise how little I know. This very humbling experience led me on a journey of discovering remarkable stories about movements, associations and historical moments where communities responded collectively. I realised then I had buried myself within a history that told me my people did not exist. I had constructed me, myself and I through the White gaze. I was unable to name this prior to this journey. I became aware that I had been designated a passive, compartmentalised role in history. This history consisted of nothingness, and 45

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I had to slowly unlearn this nothingness to learn about my existence as someone emerging out of multiple historical narrations. As I continued to discover the stories and started interviewing people for my PhD about their participation in these struggles, I realised how isolated many felt. Many expressed how every day they could hear the deafening silence of the institutions around them and their lack of protection for the community. They felt the unspoken fear from their relatives and the surrounding Bengali community. The struggle to let their family ‘back home’ know they are officially a Londoni (a term used to denote one’s British status in Bengali even if one is not from London) who has made it without mentioning the pain they carried with them every day. After all, you made it to the Queen’s land – why would there be suffering when the Mother is there to look after you? They could not reveal to their relatives back home the shadow they have become in the East End. This pain of remaining silent yet aware of the loudness of the oppression circulated the area and, ultimately, became the very impasse for collective resilience and recognition. At this point, there was simply nothing more to lose. These interviews illustrated how suffering in silence and isolation did not function as shields for protection and as many racialised people will know to put one’s head down and ‘get on with it’ was no longer an option. Resistance meant survival and non-resistance meant perishing. Amidst the cacophony of my research, I came to confront the reality that the state monopolises violence and makes it known to its racialised communities where it stands. A reminder that these communities ought to know their place and therefore know not to resist. However, those of us who belong to these communities understand and know that our 46

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very existence is a form of resistance. Our very embodiment in public already determines how the state (mis)treats us. Where it places us. I know we all know that we do not get to choose our racial positionality. The ubiquitous nature of Whiteness means we can never truly escape this violence. In the East End, as much as the Bengali community’s suffering became the very impasse needed to fight the state, I cannot help but also feel that racialised people always have to go through meaningless pain to prove their worth. We consume our othering, of being unwelcome aliens, that we no longer attempt to subvert the essentialist constructions of ourselves. Instead, maybe we find ourselves in a place of trying to understand what it even means to embody a racialised self and (re)configuring how to recreate ourselves and our community. To understand the link between the East End of London and why there is a large Bangladeshi community there, I think it is of utmost importance to consider where the British Raj started. While reading this chapter, I want you to remember that Britain’s ties with India through the East India Company began in the Bengal, India – to be more specific, it started in Kolkata.4 Many of the lascars (seamen/ sailors who hailed from the Indian subcontinent) who worked on the ships were from across the Bengal, including other areas of the Indian subcontinent. When those ships arrived on the docks of the East End, many were known for ‘jumping ship’.5 Many of these men started new lives and married local women, while others were horrified by the Mother Queen’s land as it did not quite live up to the heaven they had been promised nor the image of what the empire’s metropole would entail. It was a true deception. Britain prides itself on being a country, disregarding its role in causing oppression, subjugation and 47

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marginalisation of its racialised communities – mostly consisting of people from former colonies. America emerged through its genocidal acts against the Native Americans, and Britain, I would argue, came into being through and vis-à-vis its empire. Britain framed itself on an international platform through the power it held over vast territories of land and its jewel in the crown: India. Little did Britain know that as much as it needed my granddad’s labour, the grandchildren of its former colonies will be uniting to ­disrupt its construction. Now, they are terrified of us.

ALTAB ALI AND THE BANGLADESHIS IN THE EAST END OF LONDON I want to use the broad anti-racist struggle of the Bangladeshi community in the East End as a basis for what I hope to cover in this chapter. The battle to be seen, to have access to decent housing and education, was a fight the community pursued (although one needs to question why there is such a desire to want equal access to an unjust system). Surely, if you are a citizen, then why is there a need to fight for your rights to be treated as one? If you have to fight, it means you are not a citizen, and your status within the nationstate is conditional. It is imperative to point out that this conditionality is very much racialised and contingent upon expressing never-ending gratefulness. This conditionality is then extended by, and firmly entrenched in and through, bureaucracy. The same bureaucracy that often shrouds the fear of the ‘Other’ behind words and legality. The Other whom we are happy to consume – as bell hooks termed it ‘eating the other’6 – but we can never set the terms and conditions. The event that catalysed and moved the Bangladeshi community of the East End to mobilise to demand their 48

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recognition within the British state came about in 1978. It was the murder of Altab Ali, a twenty-four-year-old garment worker, in a racist attack on the evening of 4 May 1978, on Adler Street in Whitechapel. Ali’s murder is considered to be ‘the start of a UK-centred struggle against racism, which marked a turning point for the local Bangladeshi community’,7 and triggered the Bengali community’s political participation and youth activism in the UK, especially within the borough of Tower Hamlets. Noting that racism and discrimination against the Bengalis, other Asian communities, African and Caribbean communities was present in the early 1970s, Leech (an East End Anglican priest) argued that the killing of Ali in 1978 was the turning point.8 This moment led to the organisation and mobilisation of the various communities and gave ‘Brick Lane a symbolic role in the national anti-racist struggle’.9 The local Bangladeshis did not solely organise the resistance that emerged during this time but this was achieved in collaboration with many other communities. For example, the Bangladesh Youth Movement (BYM), based and founded in East London, cooperated with several organisations, including the Action Committee against Racial Attacks in Hackney, Tower Hamlets Defence Committee and the Anti-Nazi League on ‘organising a huge demonstration and public meetings to show the solidarity, strength and determination of black communities to defend themselves after the death of Altab Ali’.10 I do want to emphasise that this particular resistance towards the state and mobilisation emerged out of a frustration of not being seen and listened to. There was resistance before, and even during this historic moment, within the housing and education sphere where the Bangladeshis were being treated as second-class citizens. 49

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But the key question to ask is: what was it about this particular moment that pushed and stirred emotions within the community to resist? Is it that the community was again reminded of its viscerally violent everyday reality that it had nothing more to lose in taking on the state and taking to the streets? What lessons can be taken away from this, and how has this community’s resistance become a constant motivation and reminder of the struggles that ­continue to exist within our society today?

EXISTING OUTSIDE OF THE NATION The political realities dictate(d) that racialised communities remain subordinates to the majority, thus, proving difficult to keep up the momentum of resistance. In facing this reality, I have found it profoundly gut-wrenching and painful. It is from and through this pain I accepted that outsourced violence ‘over there’ will forever signify the lesser human status of Black and Brown bodies. That our very functionality in the West mostly exists through the prism of the civilising mission. Desiring a change in political systems and undoing structures will require cross- and intergenerational work. Resilience is rarely a choice and rarely fixed to a specific time, history and/or space. Resistance, I would argue, emerges out of the systematic exclusion and erasure from political processes, including the narrative around the current securitisation narratives. Local Bangladeshi groups mobilised to seek justice for Ali’s death and organised a march from Whitechapel to Whitehall. Countless people I interviewed across Tower Hamlets who participated in these direct actions received little to no support or protection from the police, the local government or the national government. 50

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The reminder of existing outside of the nation came for the community in 2019 when Shamima Begum had her citizenship stripped by the then home secretary Sajid Javid. Begum, a British citizen, fled to Syria in 2015 to join ISIS. A few years later she was found in a refugee camp in Syria, and the frenzy ensued. Every aspect of her life was dissected for public consumption and the stripping of her citizenship, I would argue, added to the further securitisation of the Muslim community in the UK. Her otherness became the centre of discussions, including focusing in on her Bengali and Muslim identity. This case, in addition to the past struggles against the state, illustrates how precarious citizenship status is vis-à-vis the state. The very existence of legislation to monitor and surveil British Muslims functions to entrench their marginality. That does not, therefore, mean Muslims should not continue to fight the state and hold it accountable. It means it is necessary to consider our positionality within society and that the fight will take a particular shape and form. In this sense, Ali continues to serve as a reminder of the alienation and isolation the community faced, politically and socially. His death gave birth to the fire to fight and to remind the British state that it could no longer push the racialised history of Britain to the periphery. This history is messy, entangled, interdependent and has never been one of passivity. The community rebelled. This rebellion was not new in the East End. We witnessed this in 1936 when the local communities, including the Irish, marshalled for the Jewish community and fought back against the fascists, that is, Mosley’s Blackshirts.11 The case of Ali was also a firm moment when the community accepted and learned that silence will not protect them. Again, it is when one is pushed to a point where one recognises one has nothing to 51

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lose, and the political realities will not shift unless one puts up a fight, that people genuinely accomplish great victories – albeit temporary ones. I think it is necessary also to consider that in addition to feeling alienation and isolation, the community encountered humiliation. There is nothing more demoralising than knowing that brutality against one is routine, is a part of one’s quotidian, mundane routine. The dehumanising encounter in the everyday does nothing more than chip away at one’s life, one’s existence. Life is important, and the banality of life should not have to be upheld by an illusion of security and safety for racialised people.

SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER I want to share something that happened to me in 2018 to illustrate how in the everyday a racialised person can be reminded of their place in society. I was out with a friend hoping to get some brunch. We entered Cote Brasserie and requested a table for two and were told there were no tables available. We remembered it was Mother’s Day, but we also sensed not being offered a table had little to do with it being Mother’s Day. After we left the restaurant, my friend phoned them and put on his White accent – a tactic many people of colour utilise to be taken seriously. We were offered a table for two immediately. We challenged them, asking why we had been rejected from the restaurant just a few minutes ago. I knew the restaurant was not going to take our complaint seriously and decided to put it on Twitter. After putting out some tweets about what we had experienced, we were contacted by journalists from various media outlets, and Victoria Derbyshire contacted us directly to appear on her BBC show. Appearing on the 52

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show was very daunting, but I knew it was a necessary step to hold the company accountable. It is unacceptable that a company can employ racism and think it can get away with it. It was unpleasant because of the social media trolling I encountered, but my friend and I also knew we were sick and tired of people getting away with racism. The resistance I am hoping to see in my lifetime and beyond is solidarity between different communities. To take on the state together while we also simultaneously address our inter- and intra-community issues. I want us to fight systemic racism, hand in hand, with each other and for each other, in solidarity, as was the case when communities galvanised following Ali’s death. Such coalitions ought not to function as a marker of being the ‘same’ but as a marker of the communities’ willingness to accept differences. In accepting the differences, we have to, at every cost, avoid reproducing the very hierarchies we are all trying to dismantle. In this sense, criticism is crucial in this unity; otherwise, tapping into gestural solidarity is another extension and reproduction of the violence I spoke of earlier. The exploited, the oppressed and the downtrodden need to propagate class and race solidarity to realise the potential to create an alternative society. I want resistance to function not as a mere means to an end, that is, a response to a specific problem, but to understand the very violent, underlying structural causes of the problem(s). I want us to create hope, nourish hope, for hope is where love is born, and without this, this alternative world will only remain a dream.

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3 THE FOUR STAGES OF MORAL PANIC Adam Elliott-Cooper

Me: Nothing. Me: Absolutely nothing. Sky News Producer: So, have you ever been in a gang?1

‘Should Disney films be censored for their racist stereotypes?’ ‘Is Jamie Oliver’s jerk rice cultural appropriation?’ ‘Are the Oscars diverse enough yet?’ Most of the stories exploring racism on popular television chat shows and talk radio revolve around culture and fixate on the most superficial, or even trivial, aspects of racial prejudice. News items exploring questions relating to racism which have little tangible effect on people’s lives, perhaps only distantly connected to the realities of racism (affecting housing, employment, immigration status, criminal justice or health), can create the impression that anti-racism is a somewhat petty culture war. Specifically, they create the impression that racism is more concerned with ever-shifting perceptions and feelings than it is with the material reality of people’s lives, with politics. Taking into consideration the importance of cultures of racism enables us to better understand how the 54

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The four stages of moral panic

media use images, ideas and language to reproduce stereotypes. Analysing a cultural phenomenon in isolation isn’t necessarily a useful way of determining whether it should be deemed political. Often, the political nature of a thing, person or event is most vividly illuminated by any establishment response it receives, generally led by politicians and the media. The 2011 British ‘riots’ following the police killing of Mark Duggan are often dismissively characterised as greedy, looting teenagers after free goods. The Notting Hill and other Caribbean carnivals in England are downplayed as an excuse to play loud music and get away with smoking a bit of weed.2 As for rap music, how can something so shallow and crass ever be considered political? Yet, while we can choose to find political significance in these social phenomena, perhaps by speaking to those involved, investigating their histories or recognising these experiences first-hand, TV pundits and government spokespeople take a different approach. On the one hand, they will generally dismiss any political meaning in these events, while on the other, they will advocate a highly politicised response. Special powers will be introduced to police public events, utilising new technologies such as facial recognition and the monitoring of social media to collect evidence on large numbers of participants.3 Politicians and police will advise judges to hand out harsher sentences, with separation between law making and the courts being denied even the customary lip service.4 Opinion pieces and talking heads will lament the decline of British values or civic responsibilities, longing for the fantasy of a British past that was free from conflict, unrest or cultural difference.5 In 2018, drill music drew headlines as police, politicians and commentators began to blame it for the existence of 55

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violent crime, or its perceived rise. Associated with ‘gangs’, this emergent sub-genre of hip hop was widely condemned as symptomatic of British society’s moral breakdown.6 Images of young Black men appearing in music videos with their faces covered added to public consternation. But despite the target of these policies being almost exclusively young Black men, those leading the charge against drill music deny that their campaign is either political or racist. Their concern with drill is moral, a concern over public safety and national dignity. This purported concern with maintaining the well-being and civility of Britain’s Black communities in fact reveals a highly political, racist and often violent campaign against Britain’s Black youth. It is also one of the ways in which we can expose how cultures of racism become a vehicle for discriminatory policing. In addition to this, these public conversations can also offer an opportunity to provide alternatives to punitive, law-and-order policing. Identifying the need for progressive drug reform, investment in youth and other social services and a rolling back of the use of police and prisons as a solution to social problems is vital if we are to tackle the problems that exist in oppressed communities across the country. The moral panic was a term popularised by Stuart Hall in his ground-breaking Policing the Crisis (1978). In the book, Hall and his colleagues demonstrate how a new category of crime was invented in 1970s England – mugging.7 By collecting together a lot of different previously existing crimes into this new category, the press, politicians and the police could create the impression that these social problems were new, different and alien to British culture. This last point is crucial – by presenting the problem as alien to the national way of life, blame can be more easily laid at the door of immigrants, racial Others disrupting the moral 56

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fabric of society. A social problem (or perceived problem) which appears to emerge from a group of racial outsiders, be it a violent incident, a protest in which property is damaged or a form of cultural expression considered too vulgar or violent, can elicit moral panic. One of my favourite examples of this is an article from the Daily Mail about rock ’n’ roll music, which began to grow in popularity among English music fans in the 1950s: It is deplorable. It is tribal. And it is from America. It follows rag-time, blues, dixie, jazz, hot cha-cha and the boogiewoogie, which surely originated in the jungle. We sometimes wonder whether this is the negro’s revenge.8

Admittedly, today’s newspaper editorials have turned down the volume, ever so slightly, in their uproar over Black cultural expression. But, like the scandalising of rock ’n’ roll in previous decades, it is often difficult to know where to begin when it comes to effectively responding to the outlandish claims made or implied about Black social and cultural life. In what follows, I think through the stages which popular pundits traverse in their processing of the perceived moral decline of the nation. By proposing draconian, often ridiculous punishments for Black youths and fantasising about British history and values, with its attendant denials of all accusations of prejudice, these moral crusaders expose how racism is reproduced while also providing an opportunity for anti-racist alternatives. I hoped this process might be easier to explain if I divided the responses of the media into four stages: shock, anger, sadness and acceptance. Like grief, these stages involve the affected news reporter or commentator processing the crisis being faced, and by being cognisant of each stage, we can hopefully help them, and their audiences, to work through it. 57

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STAGE ONE: SHOCK When a form of cultural expression associated with Black communities, such as drill music, makes it into one of the top stories of the evening news or gains the attention of the Home Office, the initial reaction is generally shock. Seeing young Black people expressing themselves in this way immediately tells the pundit in question that what is taking place is wholly different from familiar, respectable forms of cultural expression. Hearing young Black people recount stories of violence and drug distribution is met with wide eyes and open mouths. And while we should always be shocked at stories from our streets in which harm is caused or risk is taken in the possession and sale of criminalised drugs, can we really be surprised? Our emotional reaction may lead us to be taken aback by the pain and struggle being recounted in these lyrics, but given what we know about society, are these experiences wholly out of the ordinary? Film, theatre and many other aspects of popular culture recount, if not glamorise, violence and harm. Despite decades of repetition, it still bears saying that Black popular cultures are almost always accused of being a, if not the, source of the nation’s moral decline. But TV pundits and political spin doctors not only have to justify their own surprise, but also must ensure that their audiences are equally flabbergasted. In one instance, a Sky News presenter was so shocked by drill music that freedom of expression was inversed. Sitting in the news studio, I was asked to justify why drill artists should have civil liberties. Rather than the onus being on the law to prove that a form of expression was somehow harmful, drill artists are necessitated to prove the benefit of their expression in order for it not to be prohibited: ‘What is the benefit, then, if this 58

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injunction didn’t exist, of allowing them to perform with lyrics that some people are concerned about? Is there any benefit to allowing young people to express themselves in this way?’9 It felt odd, being asked to present concrete evidence of the benefits of a form of cultural expression. I would have similarly struggled to list the benefits of John Adams’s violent opera The Death of Klinghoffer, the last four Bond movies or Rule, Britannia! at the Last Night of the Proms. But these forms of cultural expression are never forced to justify their existence, or face prohibition. To do so, regardless of what we may think of them, would not just be unwarranted, it would feel ridiculous. It should be clear by now that the reason for drill music to justify its existence, for its artists to justify their claim to fundamental liberties, is because these young Black men are not considered worthy of such freedoms. The most difficult thing about responding to racist questions isn’t necessarily the racism they infer, as much as the self-restraint required in responding to them in a manner which doesn’t reinforce the underlying assumptions being held about all young Black men, including myself, the young Black man to whom the question was put.

STAGE TWO: ANGER One of the first questions asked by news presenters are words to the effect ‘should this be allowed?’. It is important to be clear about what is being implied here: the reasoned response to a form of cultural expression in these circumstances may simply be an outright ban. For me, the criminalisation of a form of cultural expression associated with a racially minoritised group has sinister echoes of fascism. We 59

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need only take a moment to think of countries which have banned forms of cultural expression associated with a racial or ethnic minority to realise that these proposals are, at the very least, authoritarian. But to the presenter and their audience, this marks common sense. If this form of cultural expression is the root of society’s decline, then if we are to maintain law, order and peace surely it should be removed? Little thought is given to how a genre of music or a specific cultural expression could be banned. Who would define which cultural outputs or events fit into the genre – will we have experts on drill music provide strict definitions, including beats-per-minute, rhyming patterns and aesthetics which can be identified by the police or concerned members of the public? Can lyrics that recount violence, harm or law-breaking be banned in a country in which James Bond is a national icon, and violent modern opera remains the pinnacle of high culture? Even a momentary reflection on banning cultural expression leads us to rethink the practical and political implications of such a proposal. There is an important reason why these ill-conceived proposals tumble so easily from the lips of TV or radio presenters. They already consider these artists to be guilty of crimes for which they must be punished, as do their audience. Given the draconian sentences that would be imposed if their perception of justice were really to be done, banning their cultural expression can be framed as a light touch. Apart from the odd tokenistic puff piece, news stories about Black youth generally centre on crime.10 Playing audiences a snippet from a song that recounts a crime taking place provides the comfort that arises when suspicions are confirmed. We have to remind presenters and audiences that rappers haven’t actually committed a crime by rapping, and that suspicion is not grounds for sentencing. Further to this, 60

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we also have to remind those around us that these young people are human beings worthy of the same civil liberties as anyone else. This includes cultural expression. Even people who are not British citizens, undocumented people who are at risk of deportation, are still protected by international laws, which protect their rights to cultural expression. These simple truths have to be spelled out, because the innocence and humanity of Black youth is never presumed and often negated. The anger at Black cultures which dare to recount stories or experiences of violence and crime is pushed in a slightly different way by the police. The police in England and Wales spend over £36 million every year on PR,11 so while it is important for the police that government and news outlets are as concerned about drill music as they are, the police take the message directly to the public themselves. News studios are often occupied by Police Federation regulars, equipped with slick media training, stats and facts and the all-important first-hand experience of confronting the thieves and killers their audiences fear most. It is here that police officers will argue that drill music amounts to violence,12 that lives will be saved by preventing rappers from publishing their music online or performing it on stage. It doesn’t matter if, over the last fifteen years, violent crime has fluctuated in ways that bear no relationship to the release of rap or any other genre’s music. If they can’t be locked up for committing a crime, then they shall be punished for describing one, for speaking about crime, for incorporating those stories and experiences into an art form. Again, these professional police spokespeople reaffirm the anger of the presenter and audience – not only have an expert speak, but an expert with the gritty real-life anecdotes to prove it. But this anger doesn’t last – once the punishment has been 61

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handed down, and as much justice as can be squeezed past the red tape of civil liberties has been delivered, a different, more sombre and reflective feeling comes over the police and their cheerleaders.

STAGE THREE: SADNESS The criminalisation of Black popular culture isn’t always delivered with a contemptuous smile from an arresting officer, a snide quip from a talk show host or opinion writer, or even the moralising disdain from a judge’s closing remarks. Sentencing a culture to the social gallows is often done with a heavy heart, a regret that the justice system was left with no choice but to resort to such punitive measures. Now enters nostalgia, looking back on a nation which was once if not wholly peaceful, then certainly more civilised. It has become a cliché to recall a time when you could leave your front door open, you knew your neighbours and young people showed respect.13 But these are the sentiments parroted continuously through column inches and broadcast across television, radio and online. The British Crime Survey, since it started nearly forty years ago, found that people’s perception is always that crime has gone up, regardless of whether the crime in question is increasing or decreasing. According to the survey, crime in England and Wales has been undergoing a fairly steady decrease since 1995, but popular perceptions tell the opposite story. Increased attention on purportedly new types of crime, such as those linked to rap music, help to bolster this misperception. The myth that these new types of crime are associated with racial minorities helps to galvanise a fantasy of Britain’s past which was White and unchanging, and therefore more law-abiding and peaceful. 62

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This national nostalgia is hugely powerful – it is encapsulated with slogans like ‘Take Back Control’ or ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’. The former helps to construct a national fantasy in which politicians, the police, teachers and parents were firm, respected and bestowed with the power necessary to keep order, both at home and in Britain’s vast empire. The latter projects an image of the law-abiding, responsible, calm British citizen, who, without complaint, accepted a life of rationing, hard work and a clip round the ear if he or she stepped out of line. Compared to this romantic memory of the past, multicultural cities in twenty-first-century Britain are presented as crudely excessive, disorganised, deviant and, as John Cleese famously remarked, no longer English. Cleese summed up these opinions by remarking, ‘I suspect I should apologise for my affection for the Englishness of my upbringing … But in some ways I found it calmer, more polite.’14 On leaving England for the tiny former British colony of Nevis, now a tax haven and holiday destination for the super-rich, Cleese explicitly cited lack of knife crime as one of the benefits of his new life away from London. Not only does Cleese’s nostalgia construct a fantasy of life in England, his move to a Caribbean island with a population of little over 11,000 Black people far poorer than he belies his desire for an imperial nostalgia as well. Puncturing this fantasy is important – one way this can be done is through identifying the problems of urban poverty in 1950s or pre-war Britain, from slums, to exploitative working conditions to gender-based violence and to child abuse. After the 2011 riots, a single article was written about gangs in Manchester and Glasgow following research published by Andrew Davies on violence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.15 The rest of the press 63

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presented ‘gangs’ as if they had emerged in the last two decades, and were made up of Blacks, or, as David Starkey famously remarked, ‘whites who had become black’. The romantic memory of Britain’s past appears even more fantastic when we are forced to recall that the period of peace and tranquillity to which patriots wish to return was also the period of decolonisation, where military invasion and labour camps were among the techniques by which Britain maintained law, order and respectability. By unpacking the ways in which Britain is fondly misremembered, we can not only offer a useful corrective, but reveal the ways in which racism plays a fundamental role in imagining a better past and condemning modern multiculturalism.

STAGE FOUR: ACCEPTANCE Towards the end of many broadcasts in which a presenter is trying to dissect a problem like drill music, they turn to the million-dollar question. They put their guest on the spot, and ask the question they’re sure their audience has been waiting to hear: Do you accept that violent lyrics are a bad thing? But you surely can’t support young people making music with this kind of content? In other words, we demand that you condemn this music and the young people that make it. There is no productive answer to this question. If you say no, then you implicitly support the harms recounted in every lyric of every drill song ever recorded. If your response is a yes, then by extension, you must agree that, at the very least, these artists are morally degenerate. Our only response to this question is to address the social problems which lead to young people experiencing criminalisation and harm. If politicians, the police and much of the press genuinely wish to reduce or eradicate violence 64

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within low-income communities (and whether this is the case is debatable), then we must have proposals for how improvements can be brought about. While there is no blueprint for eradicating the kinds of social problems which lead to criminalisation and violence, there are a few popular proposals. These generally work along the lines of eroding the presence, power and legitimacy of the police and prisons in the task of making communities safer. There is no evidence that more police or harsher punishments improve public safety, and indeed ample evidence of these institutions causing further harm to the people who come into contact with them.16 Rather than trying to control and punish suspect communities, areas which suffer from neglect, low investment and over-policing require different kinds of resources. Reintroducing educational resources, such as the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA), cheaper or free higher education or additional support for young people who may otherwise be expelled from school are straightforward and achievable proposals. Reinvesting in youth services, including mental health and emotional provision, employing local people who are known and trusted in the community are further effective suggestions. Investing in women’s refuges and other spaces of safety is vitally important for LGBTQ+ people, women and children facing violence in the home. Community spaces can also be utilised for young people to express themselves artistically, through forms of expression which we may not agree with, but can be done in an environment in which problematic expressions can be challenged productively by their peers and elders. With greater foresight, we can propose more council housing, including for young people, increasing the living wage and state-led employment creation. The reduction or eradication of the 65

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policing of borders will further reduce the factors that push people towards criminalised forms of income generation. The mainstream press finds the trivialising of racism almost irresistible, continually relegating the issue to stories which centre celebrities or pop culture. Conversely, when they pursue an issue which is deeply racist in its subtext and material effects, all accusations of racist outcomes are generally denied. It is vital that we refuse to be drawn into conversations which trivialise racism and that we reject the criminalisation of racial minorities in the name of safety, morality and justice. By denying the racism which underpins the moral judgements handed down to Black youth and other racial minorities, we can set the terms in which racism is discussed. It is the establishment’s reliance on racist stereotypes and racist forms of governance that provide an opening for anti-racists to expose White supremacy using the media as a platform to offer tangible alternatives.

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4 THE DUTY TO SEE, THE YEARNING TO BE SEEN Tarek Younis

On a cold winter’s night, my mother took my brother and me to a hospital on the other side of Berlin. It was the early months of the Second Intifada, when the majority of Palestinians were killed or maimed in demonstrations.1 I was told Germany had flown in two Palestinian youth who required immediate medical attention. We entered their room quietly, not to disturb whatever peace was found among flickering lights and pale, dry walls. The older adolescent – eighteen years old perhaps, my brother’s age – was awake, while the younger one slept in a separate chamber. I remember the emptiness in the room, and wondered if anyone else but my mother knew of their stay. She stood by the older adolescent’s bedside and they conversed. My Arabic was Egyptian-manageable, so I only grasped fragments of a story told in a Palestinian dialect. My mother, keen as she was of my limitations, translated fragments of the story. The boy in the other room, she told me, was my age – fourteen. He had been shot in the leg. 67

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Before leaving, my mother pressed a finger to her lips and took us into the other room to witness the sleeping child. A strange assemblage of beams and bandages enclosed his leg. I remember thanking God he was asleep. I wondered what it felt like to be shot; why anyone would want to shoot a child; what the cost of a leg really was. Most of all, I wondered if it was worth visiting someone who was asleep, in an empty room, with no one to remember the event but ourselves. I realise now that was the point. My mother died suddenly not long after that hospital visit. My mother taught me the responsibility to see, pitted against our very nature to be seen. When we ask ourselves how we have gotten here, that hospital room’s sombre and gazeless silence has always struck me as important. In a book on the value and refusal of condemnation, my story will ultimately revolve around the angst of being illseen or, worse, not being seen at all. It is, then, ultimately a story of cowardice and I write this for those who, like me, are cowards. We must remember that it is only through fear one learns to be brave. The focus of this chapter, then, is on sight. I draw on my experiences, where the gaze of others constitutes the means and the end of my efforts. My story will be shared in ­segments – different moments unveiling different sides of an experience. I will look at that terrible marriage of cowardice and silence, each begetting the other. It is one thing to not condemn, it is another to know that my silence and the fear to ‘condemn condemnation’ is born of an everpresent desire to remain seen.

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THE MARRIAGE OF COWARDICE AND SILENCE My school in Berlin was privileged by its demographics – White and middle class. Almost everyone I knew took their education seriously. I was the only Muslim in my year. Political science was not a course I enjoyed. At the time, in the early 2000s, it was an endless exhibition of the EU and its hegemony, which meant questioning that dreaded potential of Turkey’s joining. It was obvious that the subject was of the teacher’s choosing. She appeared stuck on the Muslim question, always interrogating the place of Muslims in Western society. One day, completely out of the blue, my political science teacher requested I stay behind after class. I was unsure what to expect: I would get into trouble for clowning around anywhere, but I was particularly quiet in her class. I waited for the class to empty then, without forewarning, she approached and admitted she didn’t want people like me in her neighbourhood. I nodded unthinkingly, unsure if it was to bring an end to our interaction or to give her the assurance she sought. I immediately recounted the experience to my English teacher. We were close and I knew she understood the gravity of the situation. As expected, she turned crimson and ran off, keen, I’m sure, on finding some retribution on my behalf. Whatever she found, I never saw. So far, my story is but one iteration of a post-9/11 tale told countless of times. It turned otherworldly soon after, however. Frustrated, I shared my story with a Muslim friend outside of school. We rarely spoke and, as fate would have it, he told me his teacher had recently told him the same thing. We laughed about this odd synchronisation of racist teachers across Berlin, and I found solace in the divine coincidence. 69

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Then my friend admitted he punched his teacher in the face. I was taken aback, unsure of myself. I was angry at my teacher as well, of course, but this emotion had amounted to very little. I felt embarrassed, not because I didn’t consider violence as an option, but because this fated phone call inspired a harsh revelation: I may not punch, but I learned it was fear, not good manners, which saw me shirk from conflict. I felt I was suddenly forced into a conversation with an alternate version of ‘me’ whose dimension split at the moment of injury. A ‘me’ who didn’t bow so quickly to oppression, as unwise and unethical as the fist may be. A ‘me’ who had the courage and creativity to find retribution, beyond the meagre choices set before me. My friend surely took notice of my unease and filled the silence. My teacher was a woman, he joked, and after all it was only correct to punch men. I didn’t tell him all I knew to do with anger, any confidence I had, was to bottle it in; perhaps arbitrarily displace a portion of it unto an English teacher, which I knew would amount to nothing. I didn’t tell him I didn’t even have the heart to disagree with my teacher. I didn’t tell him I just found out I was a coward. I wanted to be seen, but I feared the unwelcoming, rejecting gaze, so pronounced in moments of conflict. So, I remained catatonic for the remainder of the two years I had with this political science teacher. I had forgotten the face of my mother by then. She would have reminded me the other’s gaze mattered very little. In the end, political science pulled my marks low. Despite attempts to make up for it in other classes, my final GPA (grade point average) ensured I couldn’t enter my programme of choice at any university in Berlin. 70

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OUTSIDE OF GOODNESS The question why it is difficult to refuse condemnation misses the woods for the trees. My self-interrogation would rather invert the question on its head: why is the approval of others so alluring? For Muslims across the Global North, the want to condemn terror is salient,2 but it is only one account of a want to be seen. The War on Terror needs no introduction, but insofar as it reflects a dynamic process – fluid, intangible – I need to briefly give my account of it. The War on Terror stands at the intersection of two of the greatest ideologies of our time: capitalism and the global military–industrial complex, on the one hand, and nationalism and the management of belonging, on the other.3 I refer to both ideologies as ‘Power’ throughout this chapter. Naturally, Muslims have a special relationship with the War on Terror. On the one hand, obstructing the war industry’s relentless march against evil is akin to standing outside of goodness itself. To stand and resist the War on Terror is to be made to feel as if you’re on the side of terror. On the other hand, not exalting the nation is to stand outside the boundaries of the ‘populace’. To stand against the nationstate is to render all suspicions true – that you, in fact, do not belong. In both ideologies, to be seen (as in accepted) by Power has immense benefits – material and incorporeal.

BECOMING THE ‘GOOD’ MUSLIM I moved to Montreal after high school, leaving behind any discoveries I made of myself or Power, wandering further away from my mother’s wisdom. I remained inclined towards do-gooding nonetheless and saw myself as a 71

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‘Muslim activist’. But the desire to be seen features in even the most principled of intents. I engaged fervently in both community activities, on the one hand – especially those relating to Muslim youth, which led me down a path of clinical psychology – and political activism that was both domestic and international, on the other. I separate Muslim and politics here because, of course, such are the terms of ‘good’ Muslims. I remember distinctly the backlash I received as president of the Muslim Students’ Association when I suggested we should be at the forefront of a movement on Palestinian rights – ‘the MSA is not political,’ I was told. The attention given to me for becoming a Muslim male psychologist, by both Muslims and Power alike, was tremendous. Western psychology is a particular artefact of Power – a secular theology of sorts – and Muslim representation within it is highly coveted. My background and experience in working with the Muslim community, especially youth groups, suddenly saw incredible overlap with Power’s desire to pacify the very distress it causes by ‘soothing from within’. Power always creates lucrative openings for everyone to enter its good grace as long as they play by its rules, and I was well on my way to becoming a psychologist who knows and plays his role. Representation is key in this process of pacification, and who better than a Muslim psychologist, who represents an ideal of secular sanctity (mental health professionals as secular priests of the soul) and diversity politics? In a few short years, like others blessed with both opportunity and privilege, I was suddenly being invited to consult on clinical and social issues pertaining to Western 72

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Muslims. Luckily, I had incredibly astute mentors who offered as much guidance and critical literature as I could digest (especially questioning psychology’s relationship to Power). And yet, even then with all this critical reflection, I still remained convinced of that age-old maxim of Power: ‘If you want to make a change, join us and change it from within’. I soon began consulting for the Montreal police, as part of a special committee which discussed Muslim/Arab concerns. It was not uncommon to discuss issues regarding terrorism/radicalisation in these meetings. When they arose, the narrative remained static: yes, there are ‘bad Muslims’ out there, but there are ‘good Muslims’ (especially in the room) who were model citizens. Our model-ness – our very presence – was the physical manifestation of condemnation. I held my misgivings at this thought, though I learned to assert (and failed at asserting) my apprehension at other times. Most of all, I learned that silence was an act with its own incalculable reward. This gift revealed itself at a US–Canada border control.

THE PRIVILEGE OF GOODNESS My cousin and I planned a road trip to New York. He was a football player who travels for training, including to Turkey. Naturally, we were held up as we crossed the northern border. As the hours passed, my cousin and I joked how the officer was checking his information under the ‘sports’ page – surely ‘travels to Turkey for football’ is flagged for suspicion. But the officer then returned my cousin’s documents and it turned out it was me all along – I was the cause of our wait. 73

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I began questioning the cause of our delay as we entered the second hour. The agent didn’t give an explanation. He said he still needed to check the system. ‘Do you think someone who consults for the Montreal police would be a problem?’ I asked, frustrated. The agent looked up from his monitor. ‘Prove it.’ Incidentally, I had just the evidence: a letter of recommendation on my phone from one of the assistant directors of the Montreal police. I showed it to the agent. He took the phone in his hand, stared it at it for a moment, and returned it. ‘You should carry this with you every time you cross,’ he said. He handed back all our papers and we drove off. My cousin and I laughed as we drove off unto the Catskill Mountains. But I felt ashamed: this was not how my parents raised me. What of those who never had a letter? How do they fare, stripped of privilege? Until today, I continuously receive offers to aid the War on Terror, in some form or another. I’m a Muslim, male, clinical psychologist who specialises in the cultural and political dimensions of mental health; I have a long background of working with vulnerable youth within the Muslim community and social issues more broadly; I have a research background in Islamophobia and civic engagement. These are all highly desirable qualities for Power, especially given the number of Muslims who join counter-terrorism off their religious identity alone. But know I would rather trash my PhD than partake in the War on Terror.

NOUS SOMMES QUEBECOIS! In 2017, a shooter entered a Quebec City mosque and shot the rows of fifty-three people as they prayed the 74

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night prayer, killing six people and injuring a further nineteen.4 Over 2,000 people filled the halls of the Montreal Olympic Stadium where the funeral prayer was held. I was asked to give a short speech alongside others. I initially wrote one for the Muslims in the audience. In the speech, I bore witness to the anger many felt towards the Quebecois political establishment which long legitimised the killer’s prejudices. Some of the politicians were there that day. But I never gave that speech – I held back out of cowardice. Instead, I made the usual declaration of ‘overcoming adversity together’ and in turn, as if mocked by my own spinelessness, the stadium shook with a chant: ‘We are Quebecois! Nous sommes Quebecois!’ What was it, in that terrible moment, which led us all to draw the gaze towards ourselves – our nationalities, no less? To me, it is the sight of the dead which provoked an insupportable reaction: to look at them, to truly bear witness to the circumstances of their death, had inspired anger towards Power which had legitimised the killer’s thoughts of Muslims. But this anger makes us seen in a bad light. Instead we implore Power’s gaze towards us, demanding its good light even more. ‘We are Quebecois! Can’t you see us?’ Here the powerful and unsure ‘do not get angry!’ shouted by Ralph Ellison’s protagonist to onlookers of an elderly Black couple’s eviction in Invisible Man resonated strongly with me. One is not allowed anger, of course, because the experience of anger – even if righteous – cannot exist outside Power’s gaze. The refusal to condemn, then, is a refusal of existing wholly in the gaze of Power. For a brief moment, the Quebec mosque attack made us aware of Power’s gaze. But then we quickly forget the gaze 75

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and return to life within it as it defines the parameters of our experience – ‘do not get angry!’ I wrongly believed our salvation is in our being seen, when our task is to see. When we feed someone in need, we should shun the cameras and the proclamation that ‘this is the true Islam!’ – but feed more, nonetheless. As awful as that silence may be, as strenuous as our rejection of cameras will require, we must learn to find peace in rejecting Power’s recognition. One may claim to act in the unseen, or be seen only by God or for the sight of a particular group (‘the oppressed’). But insofar as the gaze of Power encompasses all our actions, so too must its refusal be active. Put differently, for every public act committed by Muslims in the sight of others, there must be an equal impulse to resist this act from being subsumed by capitalist or nationalist ideologies, which engulf all within the good Muslim/bad Muslim binary. We must realise it is the performance of seeing, rather than the status of being seen, which binds us together. But for anyone reading this who, like me, is a coward, it will not be easy. For the greatest idol will always be the self’s yearning to be seen.

REFUSE TO CONDEMN, RESIST TO BE SEEN My mother taught me we are far from the rational creatures we think we are, and that a loaf of bread will bring two people closer than all the world’s philosophies combined. She taught that community is not an intellectual construct, but a performative one. The refusal to condemn is not simply to refuse the ‘good Muslim’ label – it is a resistance of our yearning to be seen 76

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by Power. To refuse to condemn, then, is to face the fear of mobilising on our own terms. There is no bravery without cowardice, no strength without vulnerability, no wisdom without ignorance. Insofar as the two drives of the world stand at their strongest – that is, capitalism and ­nationalism – our intentions will always waver between our desire to please God and Power. It is bravery, ultimately, which I faltered with, but it is that same bravery that I need to refuse to condemn and, inevitably, fall out of grace of Power, most likely to be replaced by others who will gladly take my place. It is bravery I need to refuse to be seen. But it is not easy. I see the wisdom in my mother’s death, so shortly after that fateful hospital visit. The dual test of seeing and not being seen is one we carry until our very last breath.

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Part II Resisting the structure

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5 REFUSING TO CONDEMN AS A POLITICAL ACT Remi Joseph-Salisbury

Coming up in tonight’s news at six, woman killed in terror attack … youth violence escalates as two die and several more are injured.

Hearing news bulletins, I feel a stirring of emotions: fear, apprehension, worry, anxiety, dread. The questions come to my mind almost instantaneously: Are the perpetrators people of colour? Are they Muslim? The questions reflect my constant worry – a worry I know is shared by many. I worry about the ways the media will construct the events. I know that, if the person is Muslim, all Muslims will be blamed. Islam will be blamed. I know that, if the person is Black, all Black communities will be held responsible. Blackness will be responsible. I know that, even before their identities are revealed, people are already imagining Muslim terrorists and Black gangsters. The racist associations are deeply seared into the popular imaginary. I know that, as anti-racist activists, academics, and organizers, we will be asked to condemn the actions. The events will be used as a way to undermine our work: to shift the 81

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focus away from structural racism and Islamophobia, to the apparent failings of our own communities. Isn’t it time the Black community took responsibility for its young people …? Whilst you’re playing the race card, is the problem not closer to home, with Black families …? Where are the elders …? Where are the imams …? What are Muslim communities doing to prevent this from happening?

Whilst White perpetrators of terror are constructed as ‘lone wolves’, people of colour are seen as part of a monolith. We must come out, therefore, to condemn and disavow – or must we? Calls to condemn haunt us; follow us; threaten to overwhelm us; silence us. The pressure to condemn our own (and other marginalized) communities lingers in the air: it is ubiquitous. Sometimes the pressure is spoken, more often it is silent, but always it is felt. The pressure to condemn serves a purpose. It seeks to limit our capacity to agitate. Often, it is weaponized to undermine us, or to shift the focus away from structural and state racisms, and onto our communities.

CONDEMNING THE CONDEMNED OR SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER? Through my anti-racist organizing, I have often faced calls to condemn Black communities, and to condemn Muslim communities. I recall a number of years ago several videos and articles were posted to my Facebook wall. The videos were of Black people attacking White people, in supposedly ‘racist’ attacks. People I grew up with – apparently irritated or bemused by me using my account to draw attention to anti-Black racist violence – posted these videos. Their posts were an attempt to undermine my speaking out, to imply a ‘racial equivalence’1 between their isolated (and highly 82

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dubious) sources, and a century’s old pattern of oppression and anti-Black racist violence. ‘What do you think about this?’ they asked. ‘It goes both ways,’ they explained. Their provocation was a call for me to condemn an act of violence committed by a Black perpetrator against a White victim. This condemnation would be weaponized. It would be extrapolated to signal the failures of Black people, and the fallacies of my arguments. But, why should I condemn? There is already a loud chorus of condemnation that follows people of colour. The status quo is to condemn. Through the media, political rhetoric, popular culture, our courts, and our education, there is already a clamour to condemn people of colour for every misstep. Modernity is characterized by our condemnation. As an anti-racist activist and academic, my task is not to condemn those already struggling against oppressive systems, but to speak truth to power. In the words of Cornel West, my duty is to ‘let suffering speak, let victims be visible and let social misery be put on the agenda of those in power’.2 The emphasis is on power. Our obligation as antiracist activists and scholars is not to work for the establishment, but to fight the power. Our task is to dismantle the unequal distribution of power and to challenge those who wield power over others. In this sense, we are firmly on the side of Fanon’s wretched of the earth. I have no interest in condemning those that racialized capitalism has already attempted to condemn to a life of misery and struggle.

‘BLACK-ON-BLACK CRIME’ OR RACIST POLICING? For a few years now, I have been part of the Northern Police Monitoring Project (NPMP),3 an independent, grassroots, abolitionist group that seeks to draw attention to police 83

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violence, police injustice, and particularly, police racism. Our work focuses specifically on the police, the state, and those institutions who act as an extension of contemporary policing. Informed by our analysis of power, we explicitly ally ourselves with over-policed communities and specifically, with communities of colour.4 One of our big events each year centres on Manchester’s Caribbean Carnival – an event that ostensibly represents a celebration of Black culture (usually) held in one of the most over-policed areas of Greater Manchester. Given that many of those who attend and perform at the event are Black, the carnival attracts a disproportionately heavy police presence. As Tanzil Chowdhury has shown,5 this is in stark contrast to comparably (and larger-) sized events with majority White attendees. Put plainly, racism dictates that some events – Black events – are policed more than others. In recent years, we have heard reports of Greater Manchester Police sending letters to many young people, particularly Black people, warning that – because of previous criminalization – they are not permitted to attend the carnival. We have publicly challenged this exclusionary practice, and each year, we call for the police presence to be ‘light touch’ (knowing that calls for no police presence would not be heard), and for the local community to have control over the organization of the carnival. In 2018, in the early hours of Sunday 12 August, on carnival weekend, news broke of gunshots having been fired. The story quickly developed of several people having been shot at a party following the carnival. Waking up to this news was horrible. Not only was the act of violence disturbing in its own right, but also – as an anti-racist organization who had been calling for community control of the carnival and for less policing – we had to 84

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grapple with concerns over what this meant for our organization and our demands. Indeed, almost every time a person of colour commits an act of violence, there is a danger that it will be used against us: to justify the over-policing of communities of colour. Once the headlines had been written, and the popular narrative had been constructed, it did not matter that, as the carnival’s chairperson said, the incident ‘had no connection to the carnival’. Nor did it matter that the gun fired pellets rather than bullets, or that the injuries were relatively minor. A similar incident occurred in 2017, when the Met Police tweeted linking a drug seizure in Catford to the Notting Hill Carnival. It did not seem to matter that Catford is actually over ten miles away from Notting Hill, or that – as Stormzy pointed out – the seizure had no tangible link to the carnival.6 In the Greater Manchester incident, unsurprisingly, the headlines, and the fallout from the attack, overshadowed our challenges to racist over-policing at the carnival. The incident was used to justify an oppressive police presence and to put us on the back foot. More significantly, we felt a pressure to condemn the violence – to show that we do not condone violence, and to disentangle our political demands from any potential tarnishing. Of course, the pressure we felt is utterly ridiculous. NPMP’s remit as an organization is to tackle state power, to hold the police to account, and to support over-policed communities. Our remit is not to condemn interpersonal violence – particularly when there are already so many willing to do this. Moreover, it should be perfectly poss­ ible to make arguments about racist over-policing, without implicitly condoning violence. That is, there is no relationship between the violence of that night, and our political 85

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demands. There is, of course, very little substantive evidence to suggest that the police are an effective agent for tackling violence or crime. Our stance as an organization is one that centres public health. Community investment – in education, in youth work, and in community centres – is a more effective intervention than punitive policing.7 These issues are evident within the current moral panic around serious youth violence, and the particular attention upon Black youth. Rather than focusing on the need to invest in communities, public discourse encourages us to condemn Black communities – and to switch our focus to the apparent scourge of ‘Black-on-Black crime’.8 This is a diversionary tactic. One that is often used against movements like Black Lives Matter. As Massie argues, ‘choosing between intra-communal violence and racial disparities in the criminal justice system is a false dichotomy based on the myth of “black-on-black crime”.’9 Rather than condemn the (heightened) wilful neglect imposed by racialized austerity, we are asked about the wilful neglect within Black families, the stereotype of the ‘absent Black father’, and the fecklessness of our communities. Isn’t it time the Black community take responsibility? Even aside from the fact that violence is not a uniquely Black problem (look at the history of Britain!) – and the reality that knife crime is not a distinctly Black problem – this is a toxic discourse.10 The rush to condemn youth violence (a symptom) is far greater than the rush to condemn the state and the systemic causes of that violence.

ENTER UNCLE TOM … This discourse opens up a real market for Black commentators (similar patterns are observable with Muslim 86

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commentators) who will condemn their own communities. Take Trevor Phillips, the former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and former head of the Commission for Racial Equality, for example. Through his condemnation and pathologization of racially minoritized communities, he enjoys regular airtime and a significant public profile. Given his background, his race, and his willingness to condemn communities of colour,11 he is often given a platform as a credible race commentator. The Organisation of Black Unity has suggested that the commentary of Phillips (and others like him) represents ‘some of the most offensive and simplistically inaccurate pieces on racism and ethnicity that have graced British media for a long time’.12 He is, they argue, the very embodiment of the ‘modern-day Uncle Tom’. As Malcolm X explained in his ‘Message to the Grass Roots’ speech, The slavemaster took Tom and dressed him well, and fed him well, and even gave him a little education – a little education; gave him a long coat and a top hat and made all the other slaves look up to him. Then he used Tom to control them. The same strategy that was used in those days is used today. He takes a Negro, a so-called Negro, and makes him prominent, builds him up, publicizes him, makes him a celebrity. And then he becomes a spokesman for Negroes.13

There is a whole industry open to people who will condemn the communities they are imagined to represent. For the establishment, these people serve an invaluable purpose. The shallow racial essentialism that characterizes our politics means that they are able to use their racial identity to signify legitimacy and authenticity. Not only this, but their racial identity shields them from accusations of racism. It is no coincidence that far-right groups so often spotlight their Black members (both Nigel Farage14 and 87

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‘Tommy Robinson’15 provide examples of this). The logic is familiar: I am not racist; I have Black friends. My group is not racist; we have Black members. My views are not racist; Black people share these views.

The words of Uncle Toms validate and legitimate the views of the White racists with whom they align. In exchange, they can enjoy the (shallow and temporary) White validation they crave – a pat on the back, and a platform that far surpasses that offered to those challenging racism. With Whiteness constructing Blackness as a monolith, these people become seen as the Black voice. Essentialist representational politics mean that the Black voice takes the place of the anti-racist voice. That is, to have a Black person speaking on the topic is seen to be the full extent of what is needed.

THE GOOD BLACK, THE GOOD MUSLIM, THE GOOD IMMIGRANT In a society underpinned by White supremacy, the pressure and impetus to condemn communities of colour is ubiquitous. This pressure creates conditions in which all people of colour must be perfect, for fear that any transgression is used to demonize whole races, and to invalidate anti-racist work. It creates a toxic environment in which we feel pressure to position ourselves as ‘the good Black’, ‘the good Muslim’, ‘the good immigrant’. We feel compelled to show that we, and our organizations, are the good ones. Talking of his encounter in a lift with a White woman, George Yancy recognizes his urge to explain, ‘I am not your typical Black male. I am better. In fact, if you look closely you will see that I’m not really Black.’16 As he goes on to 88

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suggest, however, such acts only ‘reinforce the prevailing racist imaginary while attempting to “other” one’s self’. Our acts of condemnation can serve a similar purpose to Yancy’s imagined outburst. By condemning others, we can signal our own superior morality. We show that we are different from the anti-Black stereotypes of the White imaginary. However, such acts do not challenge those ­stereotypes, but merely act to reaffirm them.

REFUSING TO CONDEMN As influential figures and institutions queue to condemn, and as Uncle Toms are given a platform to join them, refusing to condemn the wretched of the earth is a necessary political act. As anti-racists, our condemnation should focus on those wielding White power, particularly states, institutions, and structures. We must recognize whose side we are on. We must punch upwards!

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6 NAVIGATING REFUSAL WITHIN THE ACADEMY Shereen Fernandez and Azeezat Johnson

Commentator after commentator (including ourselves) have attempted to dissect the trauma of Shamima Begum within hours of giving birth to her third child in four years, two of which are now dead1 … This positioning of her as either a ‘victim’ or a ‘villain’ leaves no space for us to see her as living a flawed and complex life. …   We must refuse narratives that require Shamima to be an idealised victim or villain before we can see her involvement with ISIL as a consequence of how we confront inequalities in this country. How do we reclaim the humanity that is erased as her life and trauma become food for the public’s consumption?2

The news of Shamima Begum’s life in a refugee camp sparked fury in 2019, as the possibility of her return to the UK made headlines for weeks. In response to the way her humanity was devoured by the media and the public, we wrote an article which argued against the binary depiction of Shamima as either a victim or a villain. We refused to contribute to a narrative which not only harmed Shamima, but would have wider implications for Muslim women in 90

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particular, who often find themselves trapped by such simplistic depictions. A few days later, we were both copied into an email thread between academics who were discussing the piece. As the emails went on throughout the day, we found ourselves being dragged back into a conversation we desperately tried to avoid; one which again forced us to discuss Shamima in either/or terms. Was she a victim or a villain? Azeezat swiftly requested that we be removed from the email thread, only for one of the academics to respond, ‘And there’s me thinking you put this out for debate.’ This one line encapsulated the problem we faced; there are some discussions which are just not up for debate, whether in the sphere of academia or elsewhere. This led to us to think about refusal as a necessary act, especially in settings which require our constant emotional and physical labour. As early career scholars, refusal can be difficult to navigate, especially if you want to ‘make it’ in the academy. As we have seen in recent years, universities are increasingly participating in state violence (e.g. enforcing immigration checks on students and staff as well as implementing counter-extremism policies like Prevent). Such hostile ­ measures are weaved into the structures of these institutions so seamlessly that they are now considered the norm. There is a particular violence present in these bureaucratic policies and procedures that we are told to just follow: as we explore in this chapter, it is one of the ways we refuse to be complicit. Refusal is also about the interpersonal and creating boundaries where the personal, again, is not up for debate; where our lived experiences should not be scrutinised by the academic gaze. As scholars of colour, our research must incorporate elements of refusal because ultimately, it is about us. 91

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So in many ways, this chapter begins where our article ended: it draws on recent experiences in our respective academic journeys, where we explore what refusal looks like in the face of structural and interpersonal violence.

THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF SEPARATION: SEEING OURSELVES IN OUR RESEARCH Shereen Humanities-based disciplines often entail research training, where we are usually confronted with questions about our relationship to our research and participants. We sometimes find ourselves responding to questions such as ‘how will you ensure you do not bias your results?’ and ‘how do you remain objective with your findings?’ in order for our research to be considered ‘rigorous’ and ‘credible’. Conducting research on and with people is complex and we can sometimes find ourselves in difficult situations visà-vis our participants. Have they overshared with us? Are they saying too little? Do they trust me? These questions will often play on repeat in our minds during and after the interviews take place and, in many ways, push us to become more attuned to our participants. But something which I had to grapple with alone in my own fieldwork was the feeling of familiarity; the fact that I could see myself in my participants’ experiences and narrations. This became a source of being both protective and defensive when it came to my research and more importantly, my participants. Rather than see it as a limitation, I argue that such a connection elevates our research to higher standards of accountability which so often is ignored in academia. I recently completed a PhD on the topic of the Prevent duty, a counter-extremism measure which requires those 92

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primarily working in the public sector to report on individuals who may be ‘at risk’ to extremism and radicalisation. Specifically, I wanted to understand the impacts of the Prevent duty on teachers and Muslim parents in London, based on my prior experience as a primary school teacher and my concern with the expansion of counter-extremism measures on marginalised Muslim communities. My twoyear post as a primary school teacher was rocked by the increased problematisation and securitisation of Muslims in Britain. I witnessed the rapid demonisation of Muslim teachers through the Trojan Horse affair which led to visible Muslim educators questioning whether their presence and interactions in schools would be misconstrued as ‘undue religious influence’ on their students.3 I remember when my pupils who were aged between four and five would pretend to wear the hijab to ‘look like me’, leaving me worried that I would be pulled to a side about this. Later that year, news emerged that three girls from Bethnal Green Academy, including Shamima Begum, travelled to ISIS-controlled Syria. This particular case ultimately paved the way for the Prevent duty becoming statutory in schools and increased the surveillance and suspicion of Muslim students. These incidents propelled my decision to complete a PhD on the topic of Prevent. However, when I began this research in September 2015, public sector institutions were still working out how to now incorporate Prevent into their structures. Despite existing in different forms since 2003, when the Prevent duty became statutory, it was unclear what was expected of universities in particular when it came to ‘countering extremism’. There was a grey area in how universities were to deal with researchers conducting work on topics such as terrorism, extremism and radicalisation. How do they protect their researchers from being 93

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infected (to use the language of Prevent) by different strains of extremism and radicalisation? And more concerning was how students would be impacted by such scholarship. To complicate matters, I was entering this field of research as a visible Muslimah who had to negotiate the institution’s bureaucracy and demands when it came to fulfilling Prevent whilst knowing that my body could be easily marked as a potential risk factor according to Prevent training material. This section will highlight some of the challenges I faced when completing this PhD with a view to begin a conversation around our responses and refusal as scholars of colour to the increased securitisation and profiling of our ­communities, as directed by the state. The first step in any research journey is to secure ethical approval from your institution. Ethical committees must ensure that the research will not harm the participants or the researcher. My ethical review meeting was one of those moments during the PhD that I will never forget; it took place in a windowless room and I was one of the only people of colour in that room along with the clerk who was taking the minutes. After what felt like hours answering questions, it was decided that the project could not go ahead unless I completed certain tasks and agreed to the panel’s requests. There was one particular clause which reminded me that the ethical is political; that separating ourselves from our research is at times impossible. Initially I planned to interview children in schools on matters relating to belonging and identity, and I was told by the committee that the school’s safeguarding policy would still apply in these settings. With the inclusion of Prevent in such safeguarding policies, I would be required to report children whom I would consider to be ‘at risk’ of extremism and radicalisation, thus bringing me into the fold of the school’s security apparatus. 94

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My research inevitably had to change as I declined to participate in a system which sought to create insecurities through the misreading of our bodies as potential risks. Interviewing children was scrapped from the research plans and I often had to think carefully about where to conduct the interviews, so as not to ‘activate’ Prevent as I may have done with my interviews in schools. I was fiercely protective of my imaginary participants; although I had not yet recruited any participants, I was already aware that they would be part of my community, thus forcing me to construct such protective boundaries. My refusal to the demands of the ethics committee who ultimately controlled whether my research could go ahead was, for me, entirely necessary and non-negotiable. I became aware of how institutions enact the violence of the state through numerous bureaucratic procedures and regulations, often passing it off as a tick-box activity or a mundane requirement needed to progress on to the next stage. As I move on to the next stage in my career, I am recommitting myself to the importance of using our subjectivities as moral and ethical compasses as we navigate the hostile structures of institutions. I end this section with a recent tweet from Sara Ahmed, who teaches us daily about what refusal looks like in the face of institutional power. She tweeted, ‘For women of colour scholars, no matter how much your work is conceptual, or historical, or empirical, or all of these combined, you can still be read as just writing about yourself and your own feelings.’4 In relation to my own work, the relationship I have with my research has given me the courage to engage in a politics of refusal because I know too well that what happens within institutions can and will have dire consequences for us and our participants beyond the institution’s borders. As Azeezat 95

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will go on to show, we must recognise that our experiences are not merely academic debates up for consumption, but that our research is ultimately bound up with the personal, which is often conveniently forgotten.

OUR PAIN AS ACADEMIC DEBATE Azeezat This past year has crystallised the importance of writing this chapter. Shereen has already foregrounded the tensions with being a visibly Muslimah academic who challenges Prevent whilst working within institutions that enforce Prevent: this is important as we question what a politics of refusal can look like when working within institutions that reinforce the violence of the state. Yet I’ve been working through a bone-deep exhaustion that comes with the pretence of collegiality and White innocence that underpins so many predominantly White academic spaces in the UK. This section is used to confront the tensions in refusing White innocence when interacting with people in these academic institutions built on White supremacy and imperialism (even as those roots are vehemently denied). This is a dynamic that I have been feeling intensely as of late: there is such a dissonance in having to ‘debate’ and discuss the underpinning violence of White supremacy that informs these predominantly White academic spaces. Four days after the Christchurch mosque shootings, I was presenting a seminar that brought the pain of these conversations into sharp relief. During the Q&A, I was pressed by a White female academic to defend my refusal to participate in the emotional and intellectual labour attached to ‘convincing’ White people of the violence of White supremacy 96

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(outside of the context of the classroom). When she finally asked, ‘but what about academic debate?’ I looked around at the predominantly White audience (with only one other person of colour present in the room), and my composure broke. I felt my voice crack as I snapped, ‘it isn’t just academic debate because people are dying.’ In that moment I knew there was no space for grieving the Christchurch mosque murders while the colleague argued in defence of academic debate. My anger at the violence of normative Whiteness and White supremacy was never meant to fit within the research seminar format. I was bombarded with memories of other moments where I’ve reacted to the violence of academic ‘neutrality’ and how it reinforces inaction around White supremacy. Delivering critiques in anything other than a carefully modulated tone is immediately read as aggressive (through my embodiment as a Black Muslim woman). As Ahmed has stated, ‘when you expose a problem you pose a problem.’5 I’ve been sitting with the internalised violence of seeing myself become a problem when refusing to accept the neutrality of Whiteness within academic spaces. I write this to trouble my self-awareness of expressing the wrong emotions (in a wrong body) within the research seminar. As academics of colour, we have undergone years of training to not flinch when going to these overwhelmingly White seminars and conferences. I cannot count the number of times I’ve sat frozen in my seat while ‘experts’ lay out our pain and trauma for the audience’s consumption through their neat twenty-minute presentation slides. Calls to protect the sanctity of academic debate remind me that scholars of colour are meant to be divorced from the pain of this reality. Anti-Black violence and Islamophobia are not meant to be grieved within these institutions that never imagined us as 97

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scholars. Working in these spaces is predicated on the suppression of emotional responses to the violence we and our loved ones face: we are asked to cut out parts of who we are to fit within the confines of academic debate. The absence of mourning Black life is also reflected through how anti-Blackness is taught to students in classrooms and field trips. I’ve been processing this after returning from some teaching I did in the US where I was the only Black person in a group of predominantly White staff and students. While teaching about ongoing (interpersonal and structural) anti-Blackness, there was no space to process my own emotions (including navigating my fears of being a Black person in the US). We are meant to teach whilst divorcing from the embodied reality of our experiences of race. This inability to connect with the psychological toll of anti-Blackness was made painfully clear as we drove by an empty stretch of land with signs of the Ten Commandments and a massive cross. When seeing the cross, one of the White male senior academics laughed and said, ‘It feels like that cross should be burning,’ while the other chuckled and responded, ‘No comment.’ I was jolted by this interaction because it showed how the emotional and psychological terror that a Black person might feel at the sight of a burning cross in the US is irrelevant. Anti-Black violence can be invoked as a joke by people within the same institutions that have excluded our bodies so systematically. So, what intervention do we imagine teaching could make, when callous jokes about White terror are still accepted within our teaching spaces? This is what I keep returning to: White supremacy is the ground that we walk upon and the air that we breathe and yet we are still asked to work within a framework of White 98

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innocence. As the death toll continues to rise, expectations of ‘collegiality’ or ‘academic debate’ are reliant on a detachment from our pain. I’ve come to realise that for many academics, there is no need to confront normative Whiteness in their teaching, research or administrative roles: White supremacy is an acceptable status quo. This is why endless conversations about the ‘BME attainment gap’ or the absence of scholars of colour has not led to any fundamental and rapid institutional transformation. Many academics have (implicitly and explicitly) accepted that their functioning within these institutions is predicated on the discrimination of Black and Brown people. For a while, this fact of academic complicity was a source of anxiety when navigating collegiality within academia: it felt like no one could be trusted. However, I now believe that confronting the hypocrisy of White innocence is really about trusting myself. I am recommitting to refusing the absence of mourning Black and Brown lives (within and beyond these academic spaces). This chapter is part of me demanding the space to process my own anger and grief towards the world that we are living in; I refuse to sanitise these emotions for anyone. And from this recognition of the emotional, psychological and physical layers of White supremacist violence, let us begin to act.

A POLITICS OF REFUSAL We do not have any neat model for what refusing the dehumanisation of our lived experiences looks like: it is an ongoing struggle that all of us will have to navigate through our personal academic journeys. What we can say is that remembering our connections to a wider community is what makes refusal work possible. 99

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In writing this chapter (and being a part of this volume), we root ourselves within a community of people who see these implicit and explicit forms of racial violence.6 This involves shifting our focus away from the people and procedures that help these academic institutions uphold normative Whiteness. Instead of hoping for their acceptance and transformation, we see them as gates to be overcome. We dedicate ourselves to protecting and supporting the communities that have protected and supported us.

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7 RANDOMLY SELECTED: CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE HIVE MIND Shafiuddean Choudry

I can see it. I’m nearly there. A few more steps and I’ll be on my flight. Departure = Heathrow, Destination = San Francisco. I can see the flight attendants welcoming the passengers on with well-rehearsed smiles. Everything is as it should be, without a glitch. Nearly there. When you step back and think about what an airport really is, it’s nothing more than a well-designed system. A system designed to direct passengers into neat lines: stamped, ranked and filed. Each passenger in this sea of human traffic has an origin and a destination, and the system exists to transport you from point A to point B through a network of hallways and walkways as efficiently as possible. As with any system there are bugs and glitches, and when the system encounters a bug, there are rules and procedures to handle and process them. It’s to maintain order, to keep the system working as efficiently as possible.

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NOTHING IS BY ACCIDENT I present my boarding pass at the desk and a red light flickers on the screen with the words ‘Enhanced checks’. Glitch. I’m flying out with a colleague, Elliot, for a conference that I am very excited about. We’re deep in conversation and this interruption to what’s usually a standard procedure has jarred him. ‘Sir, would you mind following Security, we need to run a few extra checks. It’s standard procedure, we randomly select a few passengers from every flight.’ I tell the confused Elliot, who is offended on my behalf to board the flight, ‘I’ll be with you shortly, you go ahead.’ He reluctantly walks ahead and looks back over his shoulder as I’m held up. I can’t help but feel a little nervous, but I think, Okay, let’s just get this over with. As far as I’m concerned, I have nothing to be worried about. I’m the glitch. I’m the one that needs processing. As I follow the steward, in my head I’m reverse engineering the logic – why me? What logic did the software use to differentiate between me and Elliot? I break it down in my head: Elliot Alderson 178 cm 25–39 Ibiza, Republic of Republic, Thailand null null

Ireland,

Czech

And me: Shafiuddean Choudry 187 cm 25–39 102

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Based upon my rudimentary analysis, I guess a quick data model could be thrown together to analyse the correlation between a few data points. For example, if a British Pakistani has visited a place of interest within x number of years then flag them up. This is not to agree with the ‘algorithm’ by any means, but I can see how this technically could be put together. I’ll be honest with you, it appeals to my tech sensibilities, since at the very least it isn’t an arbitrary decision by a bigoted steward, right? I no longer need to smile hopefully each time I hand over my passport, plastering a phoney persona to appear as peaceful as possible. Now we have algorithms that will sift through the human traffic and pick out the exceptions. An efficient system. An algorithm can’t be racist, right? Wrong, but we’ll return to this later. I arrive in a crudely arranged ‘private area’ but being over six feet tall my head is clearly visible over the partition. I see the rest of the passengers flow efficiently along and welcomed on to the flight, unable to conceal their concerned looks as they glance in my direction. I can see the thoughts running through their minds, Will the glitch delay our flight? White British female, height 155 cm, age 25–39 breezes through without a blink. White American male, height 180 cm, age 40–54 is welcomed aboard like an old friend. ‘Please can you extend your arms, sir’ – as Security pat my arms down, my brain keeps stepping through the logic; so the information from my ESTA application – ‘Please turn around’ – coupled with each visa I’ve applied for, each country I’ve travelled through from my e-passport – ‘Lift your 103

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collar, sir’ – is probably enough to build a pretty decent data model. An algorithm to analyse and process thousands of passengers each second. Error 407: Proxy Authentication Required. I comply with each request, ‘shoes and socks off, please.’ The more I’m reverse engineering the data model that led to this moment, the more I feel overwhelmed. My initial excitement for the trip makes way for acidic anxiety. I feel a cold rush of cortisol coursing into my bloodstream. A bead of sweat rolls down my back and my breathing becomes increasingly shallow. What type of personal information have Border Control and United Airlines shared to warrant me being stood here barefoot, stripped of my dignity, gaining the scorn and suspicion of my fellow passengers? It’s one thing being judged by a person, a whole other being chewed through an algorithm, stripped of agency and categorised as a potential threat. Clinical and efficient. Algorithms aren’t interested in who we are as individ­ uals. Nuance is stripped away, the fat is cut and I’ve been reduced to a database entry. That life-affirming trip for a friend’s wedding in Syria back in 2005? A data point in a sea of data forever associated with you. Information used to assess your worth to be treated with the same dignity as White British female, height 155 cm, age 25–39. It’s all immediately searchable, indexed and categorised. A search result from the future. A red flag. A machinereadable record, parsed and filed. I know this because I’ve written them. I’ve architected countless data models and developed systems that take raw input data, filter out what’s important and generate an output, providing answers to your questions. But what questions are we asking and who’s asking them? The flight is almost full leaving just me and Black British 104

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male, height 190 cm, age 25–39 being evaluated as to whether we get to join the rest of the passengers. Awaiting our fate like a blinking cursor on a black-and-white DOS prompt; Abort/Retry/Fail.

LITERALLY, HOW DID I GET HERE? How did it get so bad? How did we get here, how did I get here? Literally, how did I get here? Let’s track it back: I took the Heathrow Express from Paddington, the Tube from Euston to Paddington, the train from Manchester Piccadilly to London Euston, an Uber from home to Manchester Piccadilly. Exactly how much data have I surrendered along the way? In this transaction, how much information have I willingly forfeit in exchange for the sake of convenience? Wait, before we move on, let’s understand what an algorithm is. It’s just a bunch of maths, a list of instructions to take raw material (data) and crunch it into something else: the output. It allows you to unlock your phone with your face using advanced facial recognition algorithms, or it allows car insurance companies to give you an accurate quotation within seconds. Algorithms are imperfect but they’re usually accurate at least 90–95 per cent of the time. But what if you’re in that 5–10 per cent? Worse still, what if there’s an error in how the algorithm is written? Algorithms are written and architected by people, people like me. We take an idea or a problem, analyse and understand it, design a solution and get to work. By reducing the problem down to a list of logic we’re able to type out pages of functions, IF statements, loops and logic to create a solution. We think of all possible scenarios, list them all out on post-it notes and the team crunches through them. Bugs are found and fixed until we have achieved what we call the 105

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minimum viable product (MVP). Then it’s good enough and ready to ship and ready for the masses. Occam’s razor: the simplest solution is most likely the right one. From now on in, it’s a matter of developing out some edge cases, some nice to-haves and fixing the odd bug as it’s reported. Time to celebrate with pizzas and doughnuts all around. When this is an app or a website, then great. But less so when it’s for something more significant or critical like facial recognition systems used in an airport, or algorithms used to determine how long to sentence a criminal.1 Suddenly good enough just isn’t good enough. Algorithms are incredible for what they can achieve, but they aren’t without their faults. Sometimes algorithms can be tools of oppression.2 They’re designed to optimise but when you’re away from the keyboard and in the cold light of day then they can be inadvertent tools of marginalisation. Sometimes it’s something that was never thought about but sometimes the fault lies with who is writing them. When a developer writes an algorithm, he or she can very easily bake in unintentional biases into the code itself. Will a twenty-something developer from a White male middleclass family in San Francisco be the best person to understand the use case of a Somali mother travelling with her family? According to algorithms, if you’re not an if or a then, then you’re an else. The Other. The edge case. It’s confusing, I know, but let’s bring it a little closer to home. In getting online quotes for car insurance you rely on algorithms crunching through your data and giving you your personal quote. Pretty straightforward, right? Tests show that two cases with identical details and postcodes but with different names – one as John Smith and the other as Mohammed Ali – will result in premiums that are significantly higher 106

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for Muslim-sounding names.3 Are things starting to become clearer? When biases and prejudices are abstracted into code then it’s no longer a person that can be held to account – ‘it’s not us, it’s the algorithm’. This tech-utopian world of algorithms provides very convenient cover for plausible deniability. Let’s get back to my question, how did I get here? Let’s take a deeper look. I checked in online, but by doing so I accepted the terms and conditions of United Airlines that I didn’t read. I know, I know, but don’t judge me, I mean – have you? Have you ever read the terms and conditions? I blindly clicked the checkbox that stands in your way between checking in online and being stuck in a queue. This user experience trick is used by firms ‘gating’ their functionality behind accepting policies. Accepting the policy is often the last step before getting the desired output or functionality – but of course at this point you’re already invested in getting on with it. It’s called the effort heuristic and by employing it at the right place the website knows that you’ve already judged the outcome as important as you’ve already put in the effort to enter your data in. May as well tick that checkbox. Click. Job done, data collected. To get from Euston to Paddington I used Google Maps. Of course, this means I’m subject to Google’s terms and conditions. Terms and conditions that Google updates on a regular cadence with little notice or fanfare. More data. I was logged into my Google account on my phone so that’s some more data that I’ve volunteered over to Google. More data. Google knows that I’ve stored my address under ‘Home’, which is in Manchester and I’m in London, so it sends me tips to ‘Leave now to make Flight UA931’. Ah yes, Google Assistant picked out my flight number from my Gmail account. ‘All your base are belong to us,’ one might say. 107

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You may think to yourself, dear reader, that you’re usually quite careful about the choices you make, but are you fully aware? Are you sure? How did you buy this book? Was it bought online? Just by visiting the website you’ve already surrendered plenty of information about yourself. Your device, your operating system, your IP address, which links you clicked, how long you spend on the page, how far down the page you scroll, which ads you clicked on – all of which is shared with any third-party advertising services. Also, thanks to poor understanding and implementations of the European GDPR regulation, you’ve already dismissed the cookie disclaimer without reading it.

DIGITAL FOOTPRINT The Snooper’s Charter (aka Draft Communications Data Bill) was originally proposed in 2012 by the then home secretary Theresa May but failed to pass on grounds of privacy concerns. However, years later in 2016, Prime Minister Theresa May passed the Investigatory Powers Bill. This intrusive Snooper’s Charter ‘lite’ extends powers for GCHQ to collect data on an unprecedented scale. So when I arrive at the boarding gate I’m not only being evaluated against my personal attributes but also on the previous twelve months of web browsing; every website, every social media account – all collected and mandated by law. Keep calm and consent. The only consolation I can offer you is that access to your data held on record by GCHQ is protected by a host of laws, but what of the data that is held by Google, or Facebook or any number of advertisers? This, my friend, is a whole other kettle of fish. None of the GAAF (Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook) gang of four are subject to such scrutiny – their number one goal is to collect data and 108

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monetise. You’ll have read any number of generic commitments to AI ethics no doubt, which are nothing more than pre-emptive moves to delay or curtail any notion of regulation (ethics washing much?4). When a commercial algorithm goes rogue or when data is exploited (‘Hey Siri, how do you spell Cambridge Analytica?’) there’s little to no recourse, it’s a black box, company intellectual property. Nothing that a full-page commitment to privacy statement in a newspaper can’t rectify.5 Your digital footprint when interacting with technology shapes how you are defined. Each ‘Alexa, what’s the weather like today?’, each aimless scroll through Instagram or check-in at the airport – we’re willing participants in this supply chain of surveillance capitalism.6 A lifetime of studying and working in technology has taught me that algorithms aggregate, they simplify and reduce. Moreover, is it possible to resist? How do I Ctrl+Alt+Del this Orwellian reality? I’m painting a picture of a data-driven dystopia and no doubt I’ll be accused of indulging in hyperbole, but in order to think about resisting against this anti-pattern it’s vital to understand the scale of the problem. Back to the question – is it possible to resist? Can we resist each biased scenario that culminates in a claustrophobic cage of systems and algorithms that exist to silently surveil and hoover up our data, to potentially be used against us? The answer is an unsatisfying and underwhelming ‘maybe but probably’, and not by much. But we can mitigate. We can better understand our digital footprint and we can certainly limit how much of our data we willingly volunteer. By hard resetting our perceptions of how valuable our data is we can gain clarity on how it can be used to marginalise us. 109

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Save for us going off the grid completely, there is not much we are in control of. Boycotting Facebook at this point may appear immaterial; even if you, I and 10 million other users cancel our accounts, this is still less than 0.5 per cent of their 2.4 billion-strong userbase. This might render you feeling hopeless, yet there is hope. In a datadriven economy, cutting off the supply chains is true power. Subverting the power dynamic allows you to take control. Data collection or volunteering our personal data have become such ubiquitous concepts that we have co-opted and internalised it as an innocuous first-class lounge checkin, or a #blessed #nofilter #winning Instagram post. None of this is normal, none of this is a given – it’s all part of a broader and larger agenda. My innocent photo of the plane prior to take-off is automatically stamped with EXIF data: date, time, geolocation, device details and more. Sharing this photo is equivalent to engaging in a transaction – Instagram provides me with a platform to gain my dopamine hit of ‘likes’, and I’m paying for it with reams of data. Is it worth it? Am I okay with consenting to being training fodder for Facebook algorithms? Facial recognition algorithms developed by the Big Four (GAAF) are the most sophisticated in human history. Yet they still misclassify, misinterpret and have disproportionate and unacceptable biases against people of colour. These algorithms are commercialised by being sold to Scotland Yard, law enforcement, border control and ICE. This intersection of big tech with law enforcement is a logical conclusion of Orwellian proportions, and a reality that we as users and consumers can resist. Let’s use our new-found vocabulary to guide our decisions and think critically about our data. We don’t share, like and post – we transact and fulfil orders from our inventory of data. 110

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Existing at any level in the tech industry as a person of colour is an active case of resistance. By being visible and heard in any meeting we (you and I) have already overcome visible and invisible hurdles that others haven’t had to. Being a part of the conversation is essential. If I, as British Pakistani, height 187 cm, age 25–39, religion Muslim, aspire to be seen as more than that, it’s incumbent upon me to call out every unconscious bias, add nuance to logic and be heard. Speak at conferences and be on the panel – we are more than qualified because this is our art, too. Ex-Facebook data scientist Jeremy Hammerbacher famously said, ‘The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks.’ While Jeremy laments a generation of lost potential and innovation in tech – I refuse to resign myself to a reality where the best minds of my generation are distracted and occupied with condemnation. We must refuse to condemn. This brings us full circle. Back to the airport. Black British male, height 190 cm, age 25–39 and I have been fully evaluated. We exchange a knowing nod. A new database entry is added: . I’ve been deemed worthy of warm smiles from the steward as I hurriedly tuck in my shirt, ‘Enjoy your flight, Mr Choudry.’ I board the flight feeling violated. Each leg of the journey leaves a contrail of personal data. Another entry in a database. Another claustrophobic data point.

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8 GUILTY WITHOUT A CRIME Saffa Mir

I often wonder at what point in my life did I fully realise that I was the Other? Is there a particular instance that stands out for me, or was it a collection of acts or did it hit me most when I least expected it, perhaps hidden in a passing comment during a conversation?  It would make sense to start from the beginning. I was born in the city of Manchester and raised in a household where our Pakistani culture was something to be proud of. I was too young to understand what being seen as different meant, or even know that I was different in the first place. In the multicultural metropolis I grew up in, the routine only involved going to school, then to mosque, maybe playing in the alley and repeat. The same as anyone else did, right?

SCHOOL ENCOUNTERS WITH RACISM The first bubble burst at the age of seven, when my family and I moved to a small village in rural Cheshire. My brother 112

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and I went from being at one with our similarly diverse peers to becoming the very visible minority at our new school. It took a while for my old school to send the new one our school records. In the meantime, they decided to place me in the bottom set1 without even a basic assessment. It seemed the colour of my skin, apparently, said enough for me. This did not change as I grew older. Throughout my teenage years I became used to being the only person of colour in the classroom and naively at the time, I saw no difference between myself and my peers. When my ‘friends’ would make terrorist jokes about me and likened my life to that shown in Bend It Like Beckham, my reaction would be to join in, believing that by doing so I would be accepted and find my sense of belonging among them. Despite living in ‘little village’ England, non-uniform days still meant strolling into school with my bright-­ coloured salwar-kameez flowing without a care in the world. At this point I still saw no difference between my friends and me. We went through the same experiences as all teenagers, like exams, fun trips into neighbouring cities and five years of growing up together. But then along came the small reminders that maybe we weren’t so similar. These included comparisons of my father to a picture of a terrorist and a classmate spitting in my hair. Reminding me that, despite all that I am, all I would ever be to them was different. I remember sitting in the car of my friend’s mum when a song played on the radio that I didn’t immediately recognise. It was the Beatles, and the friend’s mother made what to her seemed a relevant comment – that my ignorance was due to my parents not being born in this country. (In reality, it was because my parents’ taste in music was considerably better than the Beatles, but I doubt I’d have convinced her if I tried.) 113

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It was not until college where two pivotal moments occurred that I truly began to comprehend some of the moments that were shaping my experience as a teenager. One was encountering the autobiography of Malcolm X. I say ‘encountering’ and not ‘reading’ because the autobiography was more than just reading a book; it was giving me the language with which to put words to my experiences growing up in Cheshire. The language of oppression, of isolation and of racism were no longer abstract thoughts in my mind but experiences that had shaped my everyday life. At the same time, it was giving me the language to analyse the political landscape around me – it was the period of Theresa May’s term as home secretary where she introduced her hostile environment policy2 and where we saw a rise in deportations and harsher measures on people of colour across the country. Suddenly, my place in Britain didn’t seem so certain, as ‘Go Home’ vans were sent around communities in London boroughs.3 This was the time that my rose-tinted lens of modern-day Britain was shattered. I was the singular voice talking about human rights and civil liberties in my A Level Politics class, while all my peers were uniformly in support of her actions. This was when I realised that my call for freedom and liberty for all would be met with resistance from those who said they also wanted freedom and liberty for all, but that didn’t include those who looked like me. Suddenly, it felt as though I had become seen as extreme within my own classroom.

RESISTANCE TO PREVENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER Moving on to university, when I began my studies at the University of Manchester, I knew that working towards my 114

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degree alone would not be enough. I wanted to get involved in bettering the position of Muslim students in whichever way I was able to – a real, tangible difference. For this reason, I joined the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) in late 2014. I specifically chose to join the Student Affairs team, which leads on the political activity of the organisation, because the climate for Muslim students was uneasy, especially as the Prevent duty was in operation. Prevent is one strand of the CONTEST programme,4 which is part of the government’s overall counter-terrorism strategy. It places a statutory duty upon those working within specified authorities5 ‘to have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’.6 It asks those working within these authorities (which includes the education, local government and healthcare sectors) to spot signs of radicalisation. Signs which include, according to Educare, whether someone has ‘changed their appearance’, or if they ‘feel persecuted’.7 At the time of joining FOSIS, the now draconian Prevent duty legislation was still a bill making its way through Parliament.8 I joined at a pivotal time and in January 2015 we launched the #StopTheBill campaign;9 unfortunately, as we know now, this bill was to enter the statute book. The campaign ‘Students Not Suspects’ was created soon after in order to counter the narrative of Prevent and at a campus level we were encouraging a boycott of the legislation.10 By September 2015 I was in my final year of university and was then elected the vice-president of Student Affairs of the University of Manchester Islamic Society (ISOC). At this point the Prevent duty was now mandatory for public institutions to apply. So, it was timely that I then received an email from Ilyas Nagdee, an active member of the NUS Black Students Campaign (who later became the 115

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NUS Black Students’ Officer), asking if our ISOC wanted to launch a campaign against Prevent on campus. That day we co-founded the ‘Preventing Prevent at Manchester’ campaign. Initially the political apathy amongst the Muslim students in particular was a real barrier to the growth of the campaign. For this reason, we set about educating those on campus about this discriminatory piece of legislation. The campaign increased in success with small wins on our campus from an open letter signed by academics that was featured in the local Manchester Evening News11 to passing a non-compliance with Prevent policy motion at our ­students’ union. The most difficult part of this was that, at the same time as all this campaigning, I was studying a module aptly named ‘Counter-terrorism’ as part of my degree. Actively trying to resist a piece of legislation that at the same time I was subject to instilled a level of fear in me that I was trying so hard to ensure others were not impacted by. It was the encouragement I received from my personal tutor, Dr Graham Smith (course director of this very module), not to be silent in these lessons that I will eternally be grateful for. He constantly reminded me that the university experience and the lessons to be learnt for my personal development were not just in the lecture halls and seminar rooms but also in the active struggle I was involved in outside of my degree.

REPRESENTING MYSELF THROUGH REPRESENTING OTHERS As a result of this politicisation, I was no longer satisfied with piecemeal interventions and wanted to create a sustained movement, so I decided to run for a sabbatical officer position within the Students’ Union at the University of 116

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Manchester. After a successful election, I took up the post for a period which would see the embedding of Prevent in all aspects of study, rising hate crime and, towards the end of my term, the horrific attack at the Manchester Arena. After being elected, I was not able to celebrate for too long before being conveniently reminded of my place within British society. Remember the friend’s mum earlier on in the Beatles story? Well, many years after that incident I saw her again and upon filling her in about my time at university from gaining a law degree, to the active campaigning and being elected into this position, I was met with the response ‘you are doing so well for the women of your community!’. It was such a loaded statement. Firstly, exactly which community was she referring to? Having spent the last fourteen years living down the road from her, I could be forgiven for believing that she was one of the women of my community, the same community we both lived in. Secondly, going down the line of this different ‘community’ I guess I suddenly belonged to, what exactly did I do that was any different from the ‘women’ of this community? It served as another reminder that no matter what I did, even if we lived side by side, studied, worked, ate and socialised together, I would forever be the Other. Successive governments can scream at us to integrate into wider society, but until the wider society welcomes us as we are, these comments will always be said. Assimilation appears to be a self-fulfilling myth, always pointed out, but unachievable. Regardless of the above, this woman of the community was then elected into another position, this time as the vice-president of Student Affairs of FOSIS. It was in this role that I was able to witness the true extent to which the Prevent agenda was impacting Muslim students across campuses. Every day I heard reports of cameras being placed 117

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in prayer rooms and Islamic societies being asked to provide lists of their members. What worried me the most at this point was how normalised these practices had become for Muslim students. Whether they were aware of Prevent or not, to them, being questioned on their views as Muslims or the ISOC facing extra scrutiny in comparison to other societies on campus was the accepted standard. Being policed and interrogated to a higher extent than their peers, for these Muslim students, was just part of the student experience.12 In the same way drastic counter-terrorism legislation is passed in the wake of a terrorist incident without question, Prevent had just as easily seeped into academia to become an accepted part of the Muslim student experience at university. This included the subconscious silencing of oneself13 in the classroom out of fear of being misreported onto the Channel deradicalisation programme,14 to not being able to articulate, question and learn from individuals who did not pass through the questionable university speaker policies (recently found to be unlawful15). Prevent manifesting in these forms has meant that it has somewhat succeeded in creating a compliant generation of young people, as every stage of their formative years from nursery to university has been under the watch of Prevent. The implementation of Prevent was increasing, whilst at the same time we had a government cracking down on what it called the ‘chilling’ silencing of debate on campus.16 The hypocrisy of this point in case was laughable. It seemed the freedom of speech that it called for did not extend to the Muslim students on campus. Similarly, the so-called British values we are told to espouse, of freedom of expression, of liberty to say what we want and freedom to organise in a group of our peers, were all restricted as Muslim students and politicised students self-censored and were prevented 118

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from organising events through unnecessarily difficult processes.17

LIVING WITH THE TRIPLE PENALTY Beyond university, I could not forget about pursuing a career, and so job applications were filled out and inevitable rejections began to roll in. The reality of the ‘triple penalty’18 of being a woman, an ethnic minority and a Muslim was something that I faced head-on. After fifty-four rejections I was finally offered a training contract on my fiftyfifth application. Finally, a law firm that looked beyond my name, culture and religion, focusing instead upon what my ability and personality could bring to the organisation. In September 2018 I entered the legal working environment and it did not take long for me to realise I had been living within an echo chamber. I had gone from circles where the use of terminology surrounding race and religion was the norm, where discussion around counter-terrorism policies and questioning the media were acceptable topics of conversation, to now hearing about how I should feel sorry for Theresa May, how we should separate her politics from her as an individual. I had to bite my tongue when the topic of disengagement from politics was discussed and a colleague said that they based who they vote for in elections on personality over substance. All I could think was how wonderful it would be in such a privileged position where you can base your vote on who looks best on the screen, rather than thinking who will make policies that are not going to further demonise you and destroy the lives of ­millions of people in this country. This was the bubble bursting in front of me. Whilst I have surrounded myself over the past few years with people 119

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fighting injustices alongside me, the reality is that for most of my colleagues and indeed the wider public, they haven’t grown up feeling the need to do so. When discriminatory policies against people of colour are becoming increasingly normalised, they don’t have to think about how it may ever affect them. It got me thinking about what brought me into the world of politics/activism and I remembered how I got involved after realising that I couldn’t sit silently and watch as the world was making decisions that were going to impact me and my community negatively. Sometimes it’s the fact that we are left with no option but to fight against injustices. Left with no options because if we sit idly by, the few rights that we are afforded are curtailed. For this reason, my resistance in the workplace takes the form of questioning the views of others and throwing a different perspective into the conversation. If highlighting my personal experiences can get people thinking, if as a result even one person can begin to question what they read, the knock-on effect of this can never be underestimated. I say this because educating society on a grassroots level is what has led to the success in the anti-Prevent campaign. The achievements of the anti-Prevent campaign over the years cannot be underestimated, from the active opposition on university campuses to challenging government-issued guidance in the highest courts of the UK. But, where do we go from here? We live in a period of great uncertainty for Muslims and people of colour in the UK, and we have a party in government led by an individual who has compared Muslim women in niqabs to letter boxes and bank robbers.19 A so-called leader who says that it is only ‘natural’ to be scared of Islam if you have read the Qur’an.20 A government that has unrepentantly deported British citizens to their 120

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deaths.21 A government that has prepared itself to destroy our civil liberties and curtail our right to resist. Coming to terms with the fact that this is the environment within which we will be living for the next few years can be disheartening. However, it is imperative that now more than ever we carry on with the active resistance to the injustices around us. We must carry on talking about these injustices with our families and friends and in our mosques and workplaces. We should continue to question these injustices in the public platforms that we have access to from social to print media. But beyond this we can join organisations on the front lines of resisting injustice and donate to them, attend their events and support their actions and defend them. It will take a sustained, collective and united movement against injustices like Prevent to ensure that they are eradicated. On the night of the 2019 general election, when the exit poll was announced, I felt great despair. This despair did not last long because one thing that I will always have is my faith. Faith is something that will forever give me hope; the belief that this life is a test from God and that our reward is in the next life. Resistance can occur in many forms and for this reason, I end with the fitting words of the Messenger of God (God bless him and give him peace): ‘Whosoever of you sees an evil, let him change it with his hand; and if he is not able to do so, then [let him change it] with his tongue; and if he is not able to do so, then with his heart – and that is the weakest of faith.’22

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9 THE STRUGGLE OF A MUSLIM TERROR ‘SUSPECT LAWYER’ Fahad Ansari

Although I never realised it at the time, 1989 was one of the most defining years of my life. It was the year that my beloved father was killed in a road traffic accident, leaving my mother to raise four children on her own in a country to which she had immigrated just a decade earlier. It was the year when tens of thousands of Muslims in neighbouring Britain engaged in unprecedented street demonstrations against the publication of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. It was the year when Patrick Finucane, an Irish criminal defence lawyer, was assassinated by loyalist paramilitaries acting in collusion with the British security services. I was only seven years old but the events of that year undoubtedly helped shape the religious and political outlook I hold today. Anyone who has suffered the tragedy of a parent’s death during childhood will confirm that the actual memories of 122

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them are very few. The image that we retain of our departed mother or father consists of the fragmented, second-hand recollections of others. This only serves to accentuate the ‘Kodak moments’ preserved in our minds of the times when we observed them first-hand. Their actions or speech often may be trivial but when it encompasses the sum total of what you possess of one of the two most important people in your life, that behaviour, that attitude, those few words, take on an entirely greater significance which becomes definitive of the personality that we subconsciously strive to imitate as we grow older. One such principle that I learned from my father was to be unapologetically Muslim. It often perplexes me why my father, a Pakistani Muslim, chose to immigrate to Galway, a rainy coastal city in the West of Ireland, the total population of which was only about 40,000 while tens of thousands of his fellow-countrymen were settling next door in England. He and the handful of other Asian immigrants were a complete anomaly in the Emerald Isle. Yet, despite the inevitable pressure to assimilate and attain the feeling of belonging, he rarely compromised his religious or cultural heritage. He was not overly devout, more cultural than scriptural in his practice, but he was conscious of preserving his identity. Despite his lack of theological scholarship, he became the unofficial imam of the city’s fledgling mosque. Much to the shock of our strictly Catholic neighbours, the Muslim ‘priest’ was unashamedly married with children. When Muslims emerged in their thousands in 1989 protesting the publication of The Satanic Verses, my father’s own religious beliefs came under scrutiny. The Rushdie Affair is considered to be one of the defining events of the relationship between Islam and the West and the development of Muslim identity politics in Britain. The Valentine’s 123

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Day fatwa by Ayatollah Khomeini calling for Rushdie’s execution became a criterion by which the loyalty of Muslims was assessed. Did you support or condemn the fatwa? I recall even school friends asking me whether or not I would kill Rushdie if I encountered him. For my seven-year-old self, this was an interesting dilemma but one triggered by the innocent curiosity of young children. But for my father, it was a watershed moment to declare publicly where his ultimate allegiance lay. It cannot have been easy. He was one of a tiny minority of Muslims living amongst a Catholic community who was mesmerised by the seismic events unfolding across the Muslim world with the ripples now being felt very close to home. He had devoted over a decade of his life to building bridges with the locals. He risked losing his reputation, his friends and his livelihood. Yet, when questioned about his thoughts of ‘people like him’ calling for a writer to be killed, he did not bat an eyelid in defending his co-religionists and laying the blame squarely on Rushdie’s doorstep for a deliberate and provocative attack on Muslim sensibilities. He refused to condemn. Two days before Khomeini’s fatwa, prominent criminal solicitor Pat Finucane was shot dead while having a Sunday meal with his family at his Belfast home. The men who pulled the triggers belonged to a loyalist paramilitary group but the target was chosen by agents of the British state in an act of collusion David Cameron would be forced to apologise for over a decade later.1 Finucane’s crime was not that he represented members of the IRA but that he did so while also being a Catholic. His religious beliefs provided the justification for him to be regarded by some as a fully-fledged IRA member and to others as ‘unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA’, as Home Office minister Douglas Hogg 124

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notoriously put it in the Commons on 17 January 1989. Irish state papers released under the thirty-year rule confirm that Hogg’s comments reflected ‘a precise official briefing’ and did not constitute a ‘spontaneous outburst on his part’.2 Three weeks later, Finucane was dead. I do not remember anything about the murder at the time. Prior to working as a solicitor, I had for many years campaigned for due process for those detained in the War on Terror. The suspension of the rule of law had become a global phenomenon with those merely suspected of involvement in terrorism being subjected to transnational kidnapping and torture, euphemistically referred to as ‘extraordinary rendition’ and ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’. After qualifying as a solicitor, it was inevitable that no matter what area of law I practised in, those experiences would follow me. It was not a hobby that I could just set aside. Today, I specialise in immigration and nationality law within which I have developed a niche in cases which overlap with national security issues. I am regularly instructed by clients whose immigration status or citizenship has been revoked on the basis of alleged involvement in terrorism. The nature of my work is a constant cause for concern for my poor mother. I do not blame her. Her own father was a barrister who was detained and tortured in Pakistan on numerous occasions in the 1970s by the government for his political views. Naturally, she has tried to steer me away from a career of challenging the government in ‘political’ cases. Perhaps it is because I share her father’s DNA that I have stubbornly resisted her pressure. I do not believe that I, or any other lawyer in the UK, is at risk of being assassinated. But my mother does have genuine reasons to be afraid. Representing reviled individuals always 125

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comes with a health warning of suffering public opprobrium for simply doing one’s job as a professional. There is no category of client that attracts more public revulsion today than those accused of terrorism. Paedophiles, rapists and serial killers are deemed worthy of the legal representation which many would deny to terror suspects. The mob, egged on by the bloodthirsty tabloids (some masquerading as broadsheets), is hungry for its own sense of justice and we lawyers are the only filter between it and anarchy. Take, for example, the reaction of certain tabloids in November 2019 to reports that London Bridge knifeman Usman Khan had had his sentence reduced on appeal. Khan’s barrister, Joel Bennathan, QC, who has a track record of representing terror suspects, was castigated on Twitter by the deputy editor of The Mail on Sunday for ‘boasting’ about his role in the appeal.3 Many lawyers jumped to Bennathan’s defence and the story, or at least Bennathan’s role in it, ­fizzled out quickly without getting traction. Bennathan got off lightly, arguably because he did not share the faith of his clients. Had he been a follower of Islam, it is likely that the allegations would have involved smears revolving around his religious beliefs, his clothing and ethnicity. To demonstrate this point, one need only reflect on the incessant attacks on solicitor Mudassar Arani in the mid-2000s when she represented dozens of terror suspects including Abu Hamza. Often castigated in the press as ‘Al-Qaeda Lawyer’,4 no article was complete without reference to Arani’s Islamic garb and birth in Uganda, perhaps to emphasise her Otherness while attempting to impute the views of her clients upon her.5 In 2008, the Press Complaints Commission refused to uphold her complaint because it ‘did not consider that the factual references to her as a Muslim were in any way prejudicial or pejorative’. 126

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The underlying reasoning revealed more about the structural Islamophobia that exists in the UK than Arani’s actual complaint. Arani’s Muslimness was considered relevant largely because she ‘had become well-known for representing Islamic terror suspects’, ‘made regular appearances at Islamic-related events, in which she referred to herself as a Muslim’ and ‘had received a large amount on public money representing terrorist suspects and convicted criminals who were Islamic’.6 This all inevitably led to numerous death threats and calls to deport Arani (who is British).7 Former Conservative MP Patrick Mercer questioned the amount of money Arani’s firm received in legal aid8 and Labour MP John Spellar asked in Parliament whether it should be permitted to continue to receive legal aid.9 Notably, no such specific criticisms were made of the well-known firm that later represented Abu Hamza in addition to many other notorious terror suspects. Like Finucane in Ireland, the fact that Arani shared the faith of her clients was weaponised against her. The lack of support Arani received from within the legal community in the wake of the death threats can be starkly contrasted with the heart-warming solidarity shown in 2019 to Richard Egan, who was threatened for representing ‘speedboat killer’ Jack Shepherd. Using the hashtag #WeAreRichardEgan, groups, firms and individuals flooded social media backing Egan with statements of support also coming from numerous practitioner bodies10 and the Lord Chancellor, with even the former Lord Chief Justice ­describing the threat as ‘an attack on the rule of law’.11 For Muslim lawyers dealing with national security cases, solidarity appears to be, with notable exceptions, sorely lacking. In some instances, the source of the attack are fellow lawyers. 127

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In 2007, Arani was accused in open court of trying to bribe a defendant whom she did not represent. This triggered a year-long criminal investigation into Arani, which was ultimately dropped – but the damage was done.12 At the end of the trial, Mr Justice Fulford heavily criticised Arani’s firm for its late filing of defence statements. He dismissed her explanation for the delays – HMP Belmarsh not providing her adequate pre-trial legal visits – as ‘a smokescreen’ and her complaints against the prison as ‘wholly unjustified’.13 Twelve years later, in December 2019, veteran human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce made complaints of an almost identical nature about HMP Belmarsh’s blocking her from visiting her client Julian Assange to justify delays in preparing documents for that case. The court appeared more understanding with District Judge Baraitser commenting that it would be in the interests of justice for the lawyers to be given access to their client.14 Also in 2007, a High Court judge in Scotland pressed for contempt of court charges to be brought against human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar for criticising his client’s terrorism conviction as ‘a tragedy for justice’.15 In what was an unprecedented move, Lord Carloway accused Anwar of making unprofessional, defamatory and factually inaccurate attacks on the judiciary and legal process and of ‘hiding behind the cloak of his client’ to make politically motivated attacks on anti-terrorism legislation. Despite the High Court ultimately clearing him of the charges, it described his comments as ‘angry and petulant’, bolstering the trope of the emotional Asian.16 As a Muslim and a lawyer with a focus on national security cases, I am often filled with anxiety that the actions of a client who happens to share my faith will result in my family and I becoming the story: the centre of wall-to-wall 128

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coverage with insinuations of entryism, accusations of extremism and calls for condemnation. If and when that day comes, will I be abandoned by my profession like Arani or protected by them like Egan? Several lawyers I work with have confided in me that while they respect and encourage my outspoken views, it would not make tactical sense for them to publicly defend me as they already face an uphill battle winning over judges who often seem hostile. Whether that day comes or not, the reality is that my behaviour remains under scrutiny from the authorities and even from within the legal sector because of my open Muslimness. The nature of the cases that I am instructed in means that I am regularly required to persuade a sceptical bench that many of the beliefs of my clients, such as the supremacy of shariah law, the establishment of a caliphate and the necessity of armed jihad, do not fall exclusively within the realm of ‘extremist Muslims’ but are normative Islamic beliefs shared by over a billion Muslims around the world. This is evidently quite a leap from the normal expectation of Muslims to condemn such beliefs. Even the process of trying to demonstrate this fact results in the instruction of non-Muslim experts and witnesses largely to evade allegations of bias or partiality. In order to try and protect our clients’ interests, we often end up perpetuating this prejudiced practice. Amongst lawyers and clients alike, the unspoken assumption is that in a legal system embedded with structural racism, White cover is a necessity. Several years ago, a potential employer delayed offering me a position over concerns about an article I had written about Jordanian cleric Abu Qatada. The ‘article’ turned out to be a short letter I had written to that publication of choice for al-Qaeda’s finest, the Law Society Gazette,17 calling for due process for the cleric, who, by then, had been 129

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detained for over a decade without charge. Abu Qatada’s case was the subject of debate within the legal sphere and beyond, but it seemed that, for some, any comment I made raised suspicion. I was slowly discovering that even within my profession, there was very limited safe space to air my views. In 2016, I experienced first-hand how my political activities were manipulated by the government to try and remove five children from their parents. It was brought to my attention that lawyers for a Local Authority had made insinuations about my professionalism in the course of care proceedings before the High Court involving a client whom I was separately representing in deportation proceedings. A year earlier, his ex-wife had asked me to attend an appointment with a social worker. I advised her that I was not a family law practitioner and, in any case, was conflicted. I did ask the Local Authority’s solicitor to postpone the appointment until such time as she had secured representation. I thereafter travelled abroad for two weeks and had to deal with a serious family illness on my return. Within this time, the Local Authority lawyer tried contacting me but I was unable to respond promptly. What transpired continues to shock me. The Local Authority applied for an interim care order for the children, who were assessed as being at risk of harm due to the mother’s extremist mindset, evidence of which included her attempt to instruct me, someone connected to CAGE and HHUGS. CAGE is an independent advocacy organisation seeking to hold governments to account for excesses in the War on Terror. HHUGS is a registered charity that provides emotional, financial and practical support to the families of those impacted by counter-terrorism laws and policies. I am proud of my work and association 130

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with both organisations and reject any pressure to distance myself from them. Their respective remits are only perceived to be controversial by those who view them through a lens of bigotry and prejudice. It was further alleged that I had initiated ‘superficial engagement with social work professionals’ and adopted ‘delaying tactics’ which the Local Authority lawyer referred to as a strategy adopted by Al-Muhajiroun. I would have hoped that my being an officer of the court would have resulted in my explanation for the delay in responding to their emails being taken at face value. Sadly not. My confessional background formed the prejudiced prism through which my actions were viewed, not as a legal professional attempting to balance priorities but as a duplicitous liar adopting the modus operandi of a proscribed terrorist organisation. The most concerning part of this debacle was that I would never have learned of this attempt to slander me in court had one of the lawyers involved not contacted me out of concern at the unfairness of the process. I often speculate as to whether such allegations are levied against lawyers of other faiths who associate with CAGE and HHUGS such as Gareth Peirce, David Gottlieb and Geoffrey Bindman, QC. It felt as if my religious identity and beliefs were being pathologised against me behind closed doors without any possibility to rebut them. For a brief moment, I was privy to an inkling of the Kafkaesque nightmare that several of my clients experience when compelled to litigate their cases through the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC), a specialised tribunal that operates a closed material procedure which allows sensitive material that the government relies on to be protected in the interests of national security. This 131

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effectively means that evidence is kept secret from appellants and their lawyers, a process which contravenes the ordinary meanings of due process. Appellants are deprived of their citizenship, left stateless in foreign lands, excluded from returning to their homes and separated from their families on the basis of evidence they will never be able to see. I would be lying if I denied ever being concerned that some of my own views might form part of the closed material against a client. If it could happen in the family court without my knowledge, why would it be any different in SIAC? My fears are not irrational. In August 2019, it emerged that a report by the Police Investigations and Review Commissioner (PIRC) in Scotland into the death of Sheku Bayoh referred to the police holding intelligence files on Bayoh’s solicitor, Aamer Anwar.18 It is of sufficient concern that the police held such information about Anwar but that this was mentioned without any relevance smacks of a smear campaign. Just three months later, it was reported that legal documents submitted to a Spanish court by lawyers acting for the sacked consul-general to Scotland disclosed that Anwar was described in diplomatic emails as ‘the leader of the Islamist group’ within the Scottish National Party (SNP), who believes that ‘Spain has to be recovered by Islam’.19 It is at the very least conceivable that like Finucane and Anwar, the police and other agencies hold intelligence files on me which could be used as evidence in SIAC against my clients as I believe it was in the Family Court. Of course, this is something I will never know. The obvious question arises as to why I do not rein in my religious beliefs if they have the potential to cause so many problems. Strategically, in the short term, this makes sense and I sometimes engage in self-censorship for fear of my actions being utilised against my clients. However, 132

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whenever I focus on the bigger picture, I realise that such behaviour only lays the groundwork for future Muslim lawyers to condemn their own belief system on a systematic level to the extent that it would in essence become criminalised. But that is not what my late father taught me. That is not his legacy. Years after his death, I discovered his collection of lectures of the Islamic thinker Muhammad Qutb and charismatic South African preacher Ahmed Deedat. Their robust views and admirable resistance must have influenced him. Despite, and arguably because of, his unshakeable firmness in his belief system and refusal to succumb to the social pressures around him to condemn his faith, my father became beloved to the local community within which he lived to the extent that they pressurised the parish priest to celebrate mass for his departed soul, something that remains as rare for a Muslim today as it was then. He secured the kind of acceptance that others compromise fundamental aspects of their identity to achieve; yet he did so by remaining resolute on his convictions and not allowing others to ideologically separate him from his ummah through the politics of condemnation. This was his success. I am his legacy.

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Part III Resisting the personal

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10 THE (IM)POSSIBLE MUSLIM Yassir Morsi

BRANCHES When I was younger, I often visited my local park to pray maghrib. And in the troubled years since, while enduring the racial turbulences shaped by the War on Terror, I would seek solace there. I would take a long walk to ruminate on politics, the world, my rage and the scars they left. But when I went there recently the park felt so different. The same trees and benches, pathways and fences were still there, but they were so unfamiliar, distant and unfair to me. I felt judged as if I was unwelcomed; a stranger to my own childhood. At sunset, remorse gripped me as I placed one hand on a tree to untie my laces with another. The park was once rich with delightful things. I used to see signs that taught me God’s majesty. Everything pointed upwards. But as I write now, I have gathered what I have lost since those early years. The park has been consumed by other memories. When I now look at the big eucalyptus tree, I remember when I sat there after Gaza was bombed. I threw pebbles into those bushes by the swamp to count my prayers for 137

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Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, and on and on. An innocent park had grown into a graveyard sprouting everywhere Muslim political tombs, like an innocent child had grown into an adult’s shadow. Two Islamophobic decades hid from me the ihsanic, took from me the tree and the spiderweb between its branches. It recoded the surrounding godly signs without me really noticing. As I have hinted it also took something else far more valuable. I am a committed Muslim, yes, but not the same Muslim. The shadow I cast is different. I am filled with less intrigue and joy about discovering the depths of religion. I am tired, personally distracted and disorientated. I came to realise this in the last year since Christchurch. With this sobering thought, while readying myself for prayer, I slowly fell back that day against the trunk, unable to agree whom – between my shadow and I – we ought to condemn for this change. And this stare between myself and my shadow brings me to my chapter’s point about the internal inflictions formed unwittingly by the social p ­ ressure Muslims face to condemn terrorism.

SPIDERS Some years ago, I did a radio interview about ISIS. Halfway through, the host whispered a sympathetic ‘yes’ to a point I made about racism. She had seemingly found her hook and promptly asked me to tell the audience more about the troubles Muslims face today. She prefaced this by explaining how ‘she could not imagine’ the difficulties ‘innocent Muslims’ face witnessing evil done in their name. Her cohost then started ranting about how there exists a deranged, violent minority in every religion. As a Catholic, he claimed to know all too well about it. 138

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I listened to them become increasingly animated at what myself as a Muslim must bear. They went back and forth in sharing a growing outrage at the racist idea that all Muslims are silent about terrorism. Indeed, ‘like Dr Morsi’, the vast majority of Muslims are ‘brave enough’ to condemn these lunatics. Of course, I hadn’t in the interview condemned anyone. In fact, I hadn’t said anything at all about terrorists. But, just like that, after building me up as an example of their good, brave Muslim, they gave me the mic to verbally nod (and maybe thank them for their solidarity). At that exact moment, I was searching for one of many arguments-cum-hammers to break my hosts’ (mis)appropriation of my politics. My head was a traffic jam of dissenting contentions. Mentally stuttering before the abundance of hammers, along with managing my quiet indignation, I cleared my throat for I felt something lodged there. I wanted to control my tone as the pressure of being live on air forced me to respond quickly. For the hosts, my very slight delay in answering confirmed my supposed deep hurt for the generalisation that associates Muslims with terrorists. I was interrupted before I began. I think they thought I was ­tearing up. Totally misreading me, the co-host started hollering how stupid racists are. I continued to listen to their anger about Islamophobia for two minutes or so. Eventually, the first host turned to me, ‘We’d like to thank you for your time and as a fellow Australian, we wish you all the best.’ There is a point to be made here how I wasn’t even given a chance to condemn. They did it for me, and they did this ventriloquism with some confidence. A point about how their talking for me is what the politics of inviting Muslims to condemn is all about. Muslims are but postal workers delivering Whiteness to itself. The outcome is already 139

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determined. These interviews have an unsaid script that shapes them; scripts we have been conditioned to know. They are a bit like those chess books that tell you what moves both players have to make to recreate a famous game. And when you break the expected routine, when you play your own game, when you break the rules, you face awkwardness at best, social erasure typically and violence at worst as a reaction. The result is given when we play the game of condemnation. It is but a performative act that works to normalise the brutality of a colonial system by making violence the result of evil Black and Brown others, rather than causes of a violent history. How the hosts themselves quickly filled in my unintended silence that day, with what they assumed was ‘my move’ taught me something. It taught me what my recent walk in the park taught me. I learned what is at stake when we get sucked into the language of the War on Terror. When we play the game of talking and condemning ­terrorism, we lose our future move.

WIND I was reading the works of the famous Swiss psychologist Carl Jung at the time I recently visited the park. So, when I stared at my shadow with some contempt, I was informed by a famous argument of his. Perhaps, then, what I was really staring at was the sight of what Jung calls the unwanted me, the shadow me. It is me within me made up of me, made by their gaze, me casting outwards my ugly, one made from ego and desires and anxieties. It is a side of me born by growing up wrong during the War on Terror. But it was the shape of the shadow that arrested my imagination and gave me a way to write now, a shadow that works as 140

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this chapter’s grounding metaphor about growing into our futures. For there, stretching out of me, was the shadow of myself and the tree’s branches, a thing together, which I shall for now name while bending my fingers into scare quotes, me as ‘Muslim’. Let me explain the scare quotes. The War on Terror’s central character is the Muslim. It is a stereotype that contrasts against the West as its Other. But it also contrasts against the everyday complexities, normality and realness of quoteless and imperfect Muslims born from traditions and who live and struggle in the real world. In this chapter, Muslims without quotes references those who typically strive (and sometimes fail) to be guided by the righteousness in the Qur’an and Sunnah. The real us. The ‘Muslim’ in quotes, however, is a figure of racial fantasy sadly familiar to us all. The ­stereotypical Other found in the War on Terror narrative, who foments conflict and violence into the world. A figure who inevitably moves towards death as a form of living.1 In its most violent portrayal, the ‘Muslim’ lusts for blood, is misogynistic, is dogmatic and unthinking, and you all know the rest because we have never been allowed to forget. I need not say much else about the ‘Muslim’ due to its familiarity and Orientalist fame. But noting its continued presence as our shadow and noting the social compulsion for us to condemn our own shadow (and what it leads to) is the point of my chapter. In expanding on this, I hope to articulate a fear of how this shadow grows into a tangle of mental and spiritual branches, how its growth colonises and darkens our internal landscapes and childhood parks. For, while amid my own quoteless everydayness, at that park, one shadowy thought led to another. And, I realised how intimate a relationship I have with the ‘Muslim’ through continually being asked to condemn it. 141

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I have come to long suspect the ‘Muslim’ is a projection of the West’s intimate knowledge of its own worst colonial violence. It is a name synonymous with Europe’s sense of what is destructive in itself. A name given to Europe by Europe to other its own historical memory of how it undoes all that is good with bombs and religious fever. The ‘Muslim’ embodies the radical Otherness and the purest face of difference. It is the misrecognised shadow of the coloniser that comes in the form of its own ghost. A shadowy and enlarged blackened (read: the absence of White) projection of White men then. I am not saying no violence or resistance comes from the Muslim world. It does. I am saying the ‘Muslim’ as a shadow is a misunderstanding about the causes of ­violence in the War on Terror.

WEB Through the fog of war, an ever-present lighthouse presents itself as a way forward, a chance for Muslims to illuminate our humanly qualities. The War on Terror demands we step out of the darkness, and into the spotlight of the White gaze, so they can see us from the shadow they cast. We are too often coerced this way, pressured through a social weight to condemn or to be condemned; to condemn the acts of the other violent Muslims or to be seen as that ‘Muslim’. In this social court, the assumption is our trained westernese2 responses will generously return us to safe categories of being good, Western and human, or whatever eases racial anxieties about Muslims. The Islamophobe or the observing good Western human accordingly waits for us to show them our staunch democratic performances on how we contain and erase our own malignant Otherness. I say ‘performance’ because it’s less about the real world and mostly an abstract 142

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moral preaching against the worst of oneself. It’s an act which works to confine Muslims onto expressing a simple political position of reproaching savagery and thus the pressure to condemn is regressive. For it demands our politics remain benign and clear, simple, child safe and consumable. In doing so the pressure works to erase so much about us and our worlds. We can only grow to be not ‘Muslim’. It’s ultimately a trap. Condemnation is built on a double bind with two false paths. We lose in both directions. It’s been said. And we all know, even they know. In the first instance, our hypothetical exit from the shadow of the ‘Muslim’ does not liberate us, for it is not our shadow. Instead, condemnation is that very act that marks us as strangers and when we condemn, we unwittingly accept the shadow is ours and around and around racism goes. To condemn is to accept we are rightfully under trial for our Otherness, to accept the status of a suspended sentence, to accept it’s Bin Laden behind our shoulder, to accept them as observer and we as observed. And, of course, in the second instance, if we do not condemn, we will self-verify our status as undecidable, as questionable, as not willing to be nice, an Other who hides. Too many of us feel caught in an Islamophobic net that tied me into endless knots with the ‘Muslim’, into what Edward Said calls the dehumanising ‘web of racism’. A web ‘very strong indeed’ in which the Othered has come to experience a ‘uniquely punishing destiny’, come to be caught in Orientalism’s ‘nexus of knowledge and power’ that creates ‘the Oriental’ and yet simultaneously obliterates its voice.3 Such is the strength of the knots around me even when I resist, even when I know I am a fly in its spiderweb, I am still there, caught, still in the shadow of the ‘Muslim’, when negating or affirming, when succumbing or highlighting the 143

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double bind. I feel always caught in the War on Terror’s discourse as my ‘punishing destiny’ and I wonder what all those sacrificed decades were for …

TREE Truth be told, lessons are everywhere and so much has come back to me while writing this chapter. Just then, when thinking about what subtitle to use, I recalled how before the park was taken away from me, as a wide-eyed undergrad seeking answers, I sat at the same tree and paused at a theologically rich passage I read from al-Ghazali. It was something about how a stone is neither a learned sage nor an infidel, for the question of possessing knowledge does not arise for the stone. While reading al-Ghazali, the story in the Qur’an about God teaching Adam the names of all things came to me, and I wondered then what I wonder now, whether the difference between myself and the tree is defined by my ability to know my name. My more studious readers should forgive me, for I do not wish to practise careless theology so brazenly or engage in part-time philosophy; I am more interested in what I can remember rather than the accuracy of things, more interested in submitting to the internal path of how things connect in my mind. So, if I remember correctly, and I doubt that I do, I was also reading the existentialist works of Jose Ortega for a philosophy class during that visit to the park. Ortega argues something similar; I think. Ortega also uses a metaphor about trees or rocks or stones, a metaphor to explain how they do not have to think about creating their futures.4 Humans are similar but with something else. Like a boat, one end of its keel in the water and the other in the sand, we are made of such strange stuff as 144

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to be partly akin to nature and partly not, we are natural and extra-natural. We are partly of the same stuff of trees, but we branch out metaphysically from the earth reaching towards the sky beyond the seas. We are a kind of centaur, half in nature, half transcending it. The part of us as humans that exists on ‘land’ presents no problem for me to conceptualise. I am Egyptian, British, Australian, I am a psychologist, I am academic. I am the sum of my lived experiences; my everydayness, my lineage and heritage. However, the second part of us, the half of the boat in the ‘water’, our extra-natural part, is ready to set sail, ready to grow upwards, to search and seek, ready to strive for the pleasure of God, ready to submit. Being Egyptian or Australian was the land bit for me. The Muslim, however, has always been a boat to travel towards a horizon, something that transcends my immediacy as an ethnicity or citizenry. It represents my future, and the unlived tomorrow beyond the existing horizon. It is an aspiration, an ought-to-be, a project of life. It is not what we are but what we wish to become. Condemnation is a regressive initiation act for Muslims to enter the symbolic space of the War on Terror that denies one half of our being. An act which works for us to tie our name into debates about what we are not. What is at stake when entering this space is the lived weight in the name Muslim. We end up reducing our narrative to the most banal of conversations about our shadows. The War on Terror’s pressure to condemn thus works to deny us, distract us, wipe away our Islamicate horizons or hide it within Bin Laden’s shadow. We are too busy looking behind our shoulders to look forward, for our focus becomes on who we are in the present, rather than what the Muslim must become. It becomes 145

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about our religion’s roots and past rather than where our branches will go.

LEAF Seeing my own shadow merge with branches gave me moment to pause that day, to reflect, to write, to think through how the War on Terror interpolates Muslims into a particular type of growth tied to the ‘Muslim’. While under a tree and carrying a heavy remorse I fear as a Muslim, as an author, as a writer, as a speaker, as a believer I remain a complex (im)possible (suspended) ‘Muslim’ in a post-9/11 world where (self-)knowledge remains tentative, contingent and situated within an internal discussion about how we must mitigate Islam’s threatening Otherness. Let me say it this way. When walking through the park as a child, I once wanted to travel the Muslim world to learn Arabic grammar and logic and other things, and … … after the ellipses comes four planes, two skyscrapers and an endless war within me, came a question. What am I stepping into when I step out of this shadow: is it the same Islam I explored as a child in my neighbourhood park? I miss my innocence, miss staring at a falling leaf and reciting how no leaf falls without His knowledge. I miss sitting under the same tree reading al-Ghazali explain in his commentary on God’s Beautiful Names how God arranges His creation with a perfect disposition of the universe, into the best possible arrangement.5 I was in love with the wonders of discovering religion, enamoured by the perplexing and inspiring path in seeking one’s God, seeking how He knew it all and knew of the knots in a spiderweb as intimately as what lay in my heart; knew how all things connected and occurred and taught me my 146

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name, Muslim. I was bewildered by how everything spoke to His Oneness. Reading al-Ghazali with wide eyes seems so long ago for me. And yet, as I write now, I recall again and feel his words’ weight, feel its beauty and recognise how an attraction still remains somewhere within me. If I felt remorse at the park, I feel calmness after writing about it. I have grown up since, yes, and in ways I did not intend, found myself in places I had not previously known. But God disposes things into their arrangement, and through writing this chapter, I realise again He is the planner and I am the planned. Things connect in ways that only make sense during writing, after writing, after walking to the park, while reading Jung now, and reading al-Ghazali then, while seeing my shadow, when stopping at the same tree; experiences expand into ideas and metaphors that come from beneath the surface and to find connection on a page. It is somewhat true. I cannot speak to the West without making visible the politics which render my speech that of a Muslim; cannot speak without making visible the pervasive context of a slow-burning, ever-penetrating and lessthan-visible epistemic side to Islamophobia. Namely, the discursive web that in concert both produces the ‘Muslim’ and destroys the voice of a Muslim. But, I hold on to a belief there is a way beyond this bind. My belief leads me to always actively mention the act of my writing in my writing. And allows me to say this, in part to conclude but also to introduce my reader to the way I write, to introduce my belief on what decoloniality is. Writing for me is a self-interrogation of a language internalised, an examination of one’s thrownness into the world. I have spoken about what I lost in the park, but I also gained that which I hope traverses the War on Terror’s bounded 147

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discourse when speaking about loss, about what constructs me to deconstruct our position from which we are compelled to speak as a Muslim against the ‘Muslim’. Some may call this self-interrogation an auto-­ethnographic approach – but that’s just what White institutions do, when stealing Black, Brown and other legacies with labels. I am doing what believers always do, I am bearing witness to God’s arrangements. So, when writing whatever comes next in my sentences, however loosely associated, I let go. I write and the leaves will fall, and the tree will grow again into names I am taught to give it; my reader will also knot the web together, for what lays within us as Muslims who write these stories in this book is but a collective consciousness and an experience where each of our pages is each of our stories, arranged in such a way by God that they are discovered when put on page. Decoloniality in part is telling our story, not theirs.

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11 THE RACIALISED ‘GO-TO MUSLIM’ Sadia Habib

Dear left-wing White liberal friend, Throughout life I’ve often found myself situated in social contexts where I’m the only Muslim and the only person of colour. In these spaces, I’ve been treated, at times, as a novelty, a foreigner, and an outsider. I’ve learned to exist as an objet de curiosité in spaces where Whiteness dominates. The secondary school I attended was overwhelmingly White in its demographics; students and teachers would turn to me in classroom discussions with seemingly harmless inquisitiveness, and at other times with more worrying racialised assumptions and Orientalist outlooks. In formal and informal school spaces, they would ask my opinions about global events that I was no more familiar with than they were. I was their ‘go-to Muslim’, their go-to Brown person, their go-to Other. As the go-to Muslim, I was both very visible and quite invisible. But I always felt there was a barrier between us. A border. Belonging to a diasporic community means navigating the threat of looming borders. Belonging is precarious. 149

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Belonging is conditional. Within the spaces you seek to belong, the border keeps coming at you, no matter how much you try to escape. As Brah explains, borders are ‘arbitrary dividing lines that are simultaneously social, cultural and psychic’.1 Thus, as the go-to Muslim I’ve been put in awkward and uncomfortable positions by left-wing white liberal friends who position me on the other side of the border. As the go-to Muslim, I’ve noted that I’m granted an opportunity to speak on behalf of the communities from which I hail; simultaneously, I’m denied power to initiate the conversation, nor permitted to refuse or reject the initiators of the conversation. I’ve often felt discomfort at being placed in this unwanted position: unwillingly sought as a representative, an authority, a defendant of all things considered to be Brown and foreign. I remember, as a young person, thinking how White peers and teachers were fortunate to not be positioned as different, foreign, and other; intertwined with this, they were ignorant of their privilege. Now, after many years, I wonder what would’ve happened if I’d been able to turn the tables and direct my own racialised queries about cultures and religions towards them. What if I’d asked them about the violence and oppression of colonialism and imperialism? And about severe – and often deliberately unacknowledged – White violence? Or about their complicity in validating this historic legacy through their everyday actions? At that time, though, as a teenager with scant knowledge of the counter-discourses necessary to challenge the Eurocentric schooling I detested and that pushed me to the other side of the border, I stayed silent. Now, though, I think about Morsi’s description (Chapter 10) of the Muslim as ‘a projection of the West’s intimate knowledge of its own worst colonial violence … the “Muslim” 150

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embodies the radical Otherness and the purest face of difference’. Throughout my school years, I began to understand that White privilege and entitlement pervades society. Whiteness, I saw, marked difference and Otherness. Whiteness, I witnessed, was always presented as the norm. And with entitlement and privilege a sense of power and authority reigned, leading to a penchant for turning to the Muslim Other and badgering her with the most bizarre assumptions and offensive questions. In the imagination of some teachers and peers, I was a female Pakistani Muslim to be rescued from a foreign culture and a strange religion. I could be saved from patriarchy and backwardness by learning White Western ways of being and doing. Perhaps some of my investigators and inquisitors felt that they could thus become my civilisers and saviours. In school, then, I came to learn that White ways of being and doing dominated the classroom, and that my White friends were not only privileged in this system, but also complicit. I observed how communities of colour were always discussed as an appendage or an afterthought, as not here, but as somewhere else – as intrusive, but also quite invisible. And it was me – as the go-to Muslim in the classroom or one of the few people of colour in the school playground – whom this prevailing Whiteness could turn to in expectation of an explanation, in demand of a defence, or simply to spurn my sense of self. At university, again I was the only Muslim on my course during my undergraduate years. As a trainee teacher and later qualified teacher, I was the only Muslim staff member in rural and suburban schools. Much later, I was the only Muslim in my postgraduate university seminars. In all education and employment contexts, I remained the go-to 151

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Muslim. I knew the investigation before it commenced. I became well versed in responding openly, politely, cheerfully, not offending inquisitors or would-be saviours, all the while maintaining collegiality and friendship. After all, they weren’t right-wing racists; often these quizzers were the liberal middle-class who genuinely wanted their go-to Muslim to educate them about her different (Muslim) ways of being and doing. I was always on call to help White people understand the world: 9/11, 7/7, Charlie Hebdo. They expected or demanded my input. When anything with media coverage that could be remotely related to a Muslim took place, I’d be beckoned to explain or defend my beliefs and communities. In this way, the go-to Muslim must account for and educate about Muslim identities, values, and cultures. If the go-to Muslim fails to fulfil this demand, which is often a key requirement of belonging and acceptance in White social spaces, then we are seen as somehow apologetic, complicit, or even responsible. Such is the exhausting burden on the go-to Muslim. When there’s a terror attack, the go-to Muslim asks herself, what does my silence mean? What happens if I don’t openly make a dramatic and performative gesture of condemning the act of horror? Where to draw the line? When does it stop? How many acts of terror must I openly condemn? Who must I ensure hears my condemnation? Do I announce my condemnation on social media or specifically call White friends to let them know how I feel sickened? Do I make a point of speaking to every colleague at work about how horrified I am about an act of terror resulting in loss of human lives? Such is the exhausting burden on the go-to Muslim. The label ‘terrorist-sympathiser’ is hurled at the go-to 152

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Muslim who refuses to comply with the requirement to be constantly explaining and condemning what is often very clearly the ramifications of hundreds of years of colonial violence and racism. In a global context of surveillance and securitisation,2 where Muslim communities are under suspicion, and prone to being marginalised, racialised, and criminalised in the blink of an eye,3 what does it mean for a Muslim to refuse to pander to the constant call to explain acts of atrocity committed by someone who might or might not be a Muslim? The go-to Muslim may come to ask herself: will I be reported under Prevent? Such is the exhausting burden on the go-to Muslim. If the go-to Muslim isn’t amenable or doesn’t concede to White entitlement and privilege, then she may worry about being racialised and criminalised for being a terrorist-­ sympathiser, for not condemning (loud enough), and for not performing (emphatically enough). A scenario unfolds where go-to Muslims are expected to perform sorrow and sadness, and to show shock; they must keep reminding every (White) person that their religion is one of peace. These performative gestures become hyperbolic and, at times, farcical. Do I ask you to do the same, my dear left-wing White liberal friend? To perform? To prove your humanity time and again? Should we insist on explanations and condemnations from White peers, colleagues, and friends after mass shootings by White men, such as at the mosque in Christchurch (New Zealand), or at the church in Charleston (USA)? Do we ask for explanations and condemnations from White communities when we hear of atrocities committed by White men like Anders Breivik, Thomas Mair, or Pavlo Lapshyn? Or when we hear about White political leaders wreaking havoc and causing senseless deaths around the world? The privilege of Whiteness is not benign. We can’t 153

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talk about White privilege without also interrogating White supremacy or White racial domination.4 School curriculums and textbooks too often represent ‘the innocence of Whiteness’, as though White people aren’t active agents in promoting White supremacy and dominance through structures and institutions. Focusing upon White privilege alone gives a skewed picture of how Islamophobia and racism operate; it ‘conjures up images of domination happening behind the backs of whites, rather than on the backs of people of color’.5 Thus, racism and Islamophobia doesn’t happen behind your back, dear White friend; hence, now as a professional, as a pedagogue, as a human, I’ve come to resist the Islamophobic expectation of explanations and demands for condemnation. How many times must I undertake the emotional labour of defending my Muslimness in the interests of conviviality or collegiality? To how many more people? As a Muslim and as a human, I shouldn’t have to keep repeating how much I detest and condemn any type of terrorism. We just aren’t heard. Instead, there exists the presumption that our humanity isn’t public enough, performative enough, or powerful enough to allay your Islamophobia. This dehumanisation of Muslims is itself a form of Islamophobia. Muslims aren’t afforded the humanity naturally assumed by us of our colleagues and friends. Media coverage escalates moral panics and perpetuates dangerous myths about Muslims. Furthermore, as society comes to fear Muslims, and turns to the nearest and closest Muslim for some sort of consolation or reassurance, then that Muslim in proximity is elevated to the position of ‘good’ Muslim whether they like it or not. And so, the cycles of Islamophobia ebb and flow. When 7/7 happened, a White friend6 who taught in a 154

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London school revealed the way the school handled the situation as it unfolded; the conduct of the leadership increased the nervousness of students. As news spread within the school, and concerns arose about whether there were more attacks ensuing and about the implications for travelling home, the head teacher contributed to the chaos and confusion by calling out in the corridor to one of the Black Muslim students, ‘It’s one of your lot again.’ What response did the head teacher require from the student he addressed that day? What are the consequences of such racialised othering to this day for those young Muslim students who had the accusation hurled at them by their head teacher? Putting aside the obvious questions regarding responsible leadership, young Muslim students were, of course, terrified about the repercussions of blame as they began their journeys home from school. In the aftermath of the bombing, as lessons were suspended, the head teacher and the senior management team’s responsibilities were to ensure a sense of calm prevailed in the school, to allay the fears of students and teachers, and implement strategies for the safety of students returning home. When racism and Islamophobia come directly from those with power, those in charge of organisations and institutions, those who can choose to be measured and wise about the messages they impart, then racism and Islamophobia become normalised and embedded in the practices and procedures of these places. So it comes to be that time and time again when powerful White men – leaders of schools or leaders of nations – repeat racialised discourses allegedly in the interests of school or state security – nobody even bats an eyelid! Dear White friend, when you ask why my community isn’t condemning acts of atrocity, do you think we’re to 155

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blame as a collective for all that is terrible in the (Muslim) world? Your subtle or overt demand for an explanation – though you might feel it is an innocent request – charts the territory of blaming the Muslim collective, narrows the conversation, and perpetuates Islamophobia. As you seek answers, you close down possibilities. Furthermore, your presumption that I can explain the minds of terrorists must mean that you think my Muslim identity, values, and beliefs are aligned with terrorism. Displaying your prejudice and racism, you’re also dehumanising me. While there are clearly blurred lines between White society’s demand for condemnation and the collective blame unjustly directed at Muslims for the acts of an individual criminal, we must ask ourselves, what is the endgame? Blaming Muslims as a collective for the actions of individuals reveals a whole host of other racist behaviours. In investigating Islamophobia, Bruneau et al. contend that those who collectively blame Muslims are also ‘more likely to feel prejudiced against Muslims, dehumanize them, support anti-Muslim policies, donate to surveillance over education in Muslim communities to prevent terrorism, and sign petitions targeting Muslims’.7 As the go-to Muslim, I sometimes ask myself if ignorance is merely not knowing any better. Can ignorance be resolved through an exchange of knowledge to promote a deeper understanding about diverse communities? And is it really an ‘exchange’ of knowledge, considering how privilege operates? Yet, ignorance isn’t an excuse for my White friend to expect explanations and demand condemnations; neither does the ignorance of privilege absolve my White friend from their Islamophobia. As Sullivan and Tuana remind us, ignorance isn’t simply ‘an accidental by-product of the limited time and resources that human beings have to 156

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investigate and understand their world’8; rather, it operates to perpetuate a world where ‘domination and exploitation’ actively and strategically work to oppress people of colour. Following DuBois, Fanon, Yancy, and other critical race theorists, Weiss argues that we need to critically interrogate the stronghold of White ignorance in spite of the obviousness and normativity of racism and privilege.9 A White religious education (RE) teacher once said to me, ‘You’re one of the good Muslims, a moderate Muslim.’ I wondered at what understanding of Islam and Muslims this RE teacher had. I didn’t challenge her words. I didn’t explain why this commonly accepted juxtaposition made me uncomfortable. Sometimes you just have enough of correcting, explaining, and educating. Yet, if a young student had said something similar, no doubt I would’ve found the patience to explain why such narratives are problematic. I guess I’m done with explaining to adults learned in subjects like religion, social sciences, and humanities, who read and research sociopolitical themes and topics, and yet lazily assume that the go-to Muslim will clarify their assumptions, or echo their (White) views on geopolitical acts and ramifications, all the while playing the ‘good’ Muslim. Ignorance – of both staff and students – is a major problem within the schools, colleges, and universities I’ve worked and studied within. The ‘exchange’ of knowledge in these institutions is tied up with complexities of power and privilege. I’m not alone in this experience. As an academic of colour, Osei-Kofi reflects upon the ways colleagues ‘respond to what I do and who I am with ignorance’.10 Both Sullivan and Tuana and Osei-Kofi refer to Frye’s ideas about ­ignorance as far from innocent, for it is

157

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The same applies in the UK, and throughout the world. Ignorance isn’t an excuse. As I reflect back on my experiences as the go-to Muslim in the UK, I increasingly see that ignorance is an active, often deliberately chosen state. My learned White friends are ignorant of my faith and my beliefs. This ignorance of theirs is disappointingly deliberate. I think about the time when one White ‘Je suis Charlie’ colleague contacted me after the horrific killings of Charlie Hebdo staff and police in Paris as she wanted to know about the Muslim take on satire and freedom of speech. Or the time after the Manchester Arena attack when Muslim women in my home city were heartbroken about the senseless murders but also naturally feared what might happen next, and a White friend (not from Manchester) couldn’t understand my concerns about the fear of Islamophobic attacks. Instead, she wanted an explanation for why a lone attacker had committed terror. Muslims in Manchester are seen as belonging to the other side of a border, as not belonging to Manchester. Dear White friend, do I need to permanently tattoo the Manchester worker bee on to my skin to show you I belong? During these times, performative gestures increase with Muslims changing social media profiles to the Manchester bee, or local mosques displaying gigantic banners stating ‘We love 158

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Mcr’ – is this what is needed to belong? All the while my White friend could muster up zero sympathy for Muslims who might be targeted as a result of what had taken place in their home city of Manchester. Therefore, dear White friend, even if you think you’ve put in your best effort to work against racism, there are still countless times that you need to take ownership of the racist stereotypes and assumptions that hide behind your ‘ignorance’. Political and media discourses exacerbate the increasing relentless vitriol faced by Muslims. But you’re not helping. Clearly, racism, White privilege, and White ignorance are a toxic combination that needs reflecting upon before approaching Muslims in the hope they will perform an identity you deem desirable, appropriate, and worth validation. Ignorance isn’t an excuse: it serves to legitimise racism and Islamophobia. Ignorance no longer stands as a ‘get-out clause’ for not knowing any better. The intersections between White privilege and ignorance, thus, require interrogation whenever you decide to approach Muslims. Are the assumptions you make barriers? Do the stereotypes you recycle create borders? What can you do, dear White friend? Reflect upon and rethink your position and your privilege before you approach those who are racialised with stereotypes, assumptions, and demands. McLaren highlights Wolfenstein’s suggestions that ‘black people need to look away from the white mirror; white people need to attempt to see black people as they see themselves and to see themselves as they are seen by other black people’.12 This is sound advice for me, for my Muslim friends, and for you, my dear White friend. We all need to move beyond the White mirror. As a critical pedagogue, I believe reflection, dialogue, and collaborative communication leads to a critical 159

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consciousness and social change. Nevertheless, counternarratives and counter-stories aren’t to be elicited from marginalised communities at the drop of a hat; rather, the power dynamics of knowledge exchange, reflective dialogue, and potential for social action need to be reflected upon in every encounter where Power prevails. To conclude, I would hope that my dear Muslim friends will also resist becoming the racialised go-to Muslims who must explain our values, beliefs, and identities on demand. While it may appear innocent, the very act of compliance serves to perpetuate White ignorance, prejudice, and racism. It perpetuates the very borders that real friendships should seek to dismantle and disrupt. Here’s to the possibility of real dialogue, genuine knowledge exchange, and a better world. Dr Sadia Habib Your former go-to Muslim (who will keep on resisting racism from friends and colleagues)

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12 WRITING FOR THE KIDS Nadya Ali

To those who have no choice but to prepare their children for the battlefield.1

In 1963, James Baldwin wrote a letter to his nephew on the 100th anniversary of emancipation. Baldwin implored him to face the reality of being rejected by the society into which he was born and to resist internalising the reasons for the viciousness White America visits upon its Black populations. ‘Writing for the kids’ takes inspiration from Baldwin’s letter. It was begun following an attack by a White supremacist on two mosques in New Zealand, who ended fiftyone Muslim lives as though he was playing a first-person shooter. It is written for the people who I think of first when violence is unleased against Muslims: my nieces and my nephews. It is a howl against the inheritance bestowed upon them and from which we, those who have come before, cannot seem to protect them. But more importantly it is a manifesto of resistance for how to live in and challenge a world which despises, domesticates, incarcerates, and kills 161

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Muslim life. ‘Writing for the kids’ is a practice of intergenerational justice and because solidarity is a doing word. Closer to home, it is an expression of love for nine lives I hold very dear to me. In Baldwin’s words, ‘I tell you this because I love you, and please don’t you ever forget it.’2

FIRST, A STORY, KIDS I was fifteen when the Twin Towers fell. The moment is still very clear in my mind. I was sitting in a science lesson in the middle of the afternoon when the teacher bought in his radio. We were a noisy class but he said, ‘It’s like something out of a movie,’ and we fell silent. What’s like a movie? The main thought I had that afternoon: things are about to change. I knew this sitting on the bus looking out at my classmates joking, jostling, pouring out of the corner shop, sweets and cigarettes in hand. Growing up in High Wycombe, we were told in words and deeds, our lives were only good for underachieving in schools, working at the local supermarket, and petty crime. We breathed in this White lore because it was like air, being both invisible and abundant. We weren’t meant to be anything else. So I knew, the Twin Towers turning to fiery rubble and this rich Saudi, son of a construction magnate, public enemy number one, was not going to be good news for us. Even though an entire ocean and many histories divided High Wycombe from New York and Washington, DC, my classmates, my family, my community were drafted in to shoulder the blame of this violence we did not perpetrate. We could not have foreseen the staggering military, cultural, social, and political resources that were about to be mobilised in the name of the War on Terror to domesticate or cull Muslim life in international ‘theatres of conflict’ 162

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and at the ‘home front’. Looking back, my generation didn’t know what was coming for us, and really, we didn’t stand a chance. Already encamped on the margins of British life, things were about to get a whole lot worse. Now I’m thirty-three and reading about the shooting of fifty-one Muslims in two New Zealand mosques. I can hear the jaws of innocents hitting the floor, their voices reverberating in my head, ‘How can this happen in New Zealand?’ The shooter, an ‘ordinary White man’, took inspiration from people like the Norwegian fascist and child killer Anders Behring Breivik and Candace Owens, member of racist group Turning Point, which has been accused of engaging in racist practices.3 His manifesto outlined the killer’s paranoia about ‘White replacement’ in which fears about ‘invading’ immigrant populations – especially Muslims – prevail. Sadly, these ideas are not limited to far-right extremists but are very much part of our everyday politics and are also being legitimated through ‘academic’ scholarship.4 But, in the middle of processing grief and rage, my thoughts, like an irresistible tide, turn towards the nine of you. I think of your dark hair, different textures, and your large eyes which are sometimes wide with surprise, or crinkled by laughter, or brimming with tears, or cast down in thought. I think of your hands and, strangely, of your fingernails, too. I think of your skin, brown of various shades, pink, sometimes pale, sometimes dark, but always vital. I think of the funny, sometimes strange, and occasionally unexpected, things you say. I marvel at how small you were and how big you are getting. Soon you won’t be children. One of you is even at university, already.

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BUT, KIDS, MORE THAN THIS AND ON DAYS LIKE THESE I feel a deep chest crushing in distress about the world we have bequeathed to you. What is your inheritance? Not the kind Middle England wheedles and whines about. You’ll learn about that as you get older: it can be taxed, won through a postcode lottery, or through the removal of undeserving bodies getting in the way of ever sharper elbows. No, I think of that other inheritance, the one borne by little Black and Brown bodies before they are even birthed that steals their innocence. The one that was borne by the children of Shamima Begum – now all deceased – herself a child when she left her home. The one that means the British children languishing in refugee camps in Syria can’t come home because they are a ‘security threat’. This inheritance that our grandparents gave to our parents and it is the one that was given to us in High Wycombe. We have unwittingly passed on this legacy to which you are inescapably bound. On days like this, truly, it is hard to breathe all the way in and all the way out.

HOW DID WE GET HERE? LET ME SHOW YOU This is what they said about us at first: We have got to get to the root of the problem, and we need to be absolutely clear on where the origins of where these terrorist attacks lie. That is the existence of an ideology, Islamist extremism. We should be equally clear what we mean by this term, and we must distinguish it from Islam. Islam is a religion observed peacefully and devoutly by over a billion people. Islamist extremism is a political ideology supported by a minority […] In the UK some young men find it hard to identify with the traditional Islam practised at home by their parents, whose customs can seem staid when transplanted to 164

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Writing for the kids modern Western countries. But these young men also find it hard to identify with Britain too, because we have allowed the weakening of our collective identity.5

A little while after, they also said: I have wrestled with what to put in and what to leave out, particularly because I know that putting some communities under the spotlight – particularly communities in which there are high concentrations of Muslims of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage – will add to the pressure that they already feel […] While there has been a range of polling that suggests British Muslims feel positive about Britishness and life in Britain, polls also highlight differences in attitudes, with some Muslims and some other minority faith groups or indeed other minority sections of society expressing less progressive views, for example towards women’s equality, sexuality and freedom of speech […] Polling in 2015 also showed that more than 55% of the general public agreed that there was a fundamental clash between Islam and the values of British society, while 46% of British Muslims felt that being a Muslim in Britain was difficult due to prejudice against Islam.6

What happens when a group of people are dehumanised and made to take the blame for everything that is wrong in society? Kids, the word for this is ‘racism’ and people have paid for their lives because of it. They will try to tell you it’s not about racism. They will use other words like ‘security’ and ‘integration’ to hide this truth. Don’t believe them. I started researching the UK’s counter-terrorism strategy Prevent for my PhD topic in 2010. I read about the different ways in which Muslims were invited to accept collective responsibility for violence committed by others and ‘weed’ out radical threats stalking in their midst. I analysed how acceptable, pacified, nationalised forms of Islam were being cultivated to be distributed among the faithful. Almost ten years later, the insidious nature of Prevent and 165

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its capacity to regulate Muslim life from schools to hospitals, Her Majesty’s prisons, universities, colleges, mosques, and airports is clear.7 Expressions of religiosity and politics are parsed for symptoms of extremism and radicalisation. Muslim children are referred to deradicalisation panels; they are removed from their families.8 However, these words are not here to persuade sceptical readers of the substantial body of peer-reviewed literature and activist literature, which details the deeply Islamophobic nature of Prevent. Those whose lives are disfigured by racist oppression, which is invisible to White populations, have already lost hours, days, weeks, years wasting their time and their breath on such a thankless task. As though it was not enough to live with the indignity of racism every day, you are somehow sentenced to a lifetime of ‘proving’ this to the unseeing. My words are not for the perpetually ignorant and innocent. No, kids, they are for you. Think of these words as a bridge that your aunt and her allies, past and present, have helped build towards you. This bridge will help you cross over to the places you want to go; it will protect you from the choppy waters below; it will hold you up to survey the landscape you inhabit; it will carry you when you would rather fall to your knees from the weight of standing up. This bridge is made with the deepest unshakeable love for you and hope for your futures. Here goes.

TAKING THE FIRST STEP Earlier this year I was hiking and I had to cross a bridge from high up to get to where I wanted to go. It looked like a solid bridge but I was afraid and it took some courage and quite a few coaxing words for me to walk across. Every time you do something that scares you, your life will expand. You will 166

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be able to imagine yourself doing something else that you never thought you could and, suddenly, even more things will become possible. But, there are reasons why the world scares you out of doing things. When that voice in your head says, You can’t do that, or, You can’t say that. Why does that happen? It’s because the world is made for some people to move around with ease, while for others there are only walls. These walls come in different shapes and sizes and they will tell you all kinds of lies about why you can’t go in this direction, or that. Those walls are made to be broken because they hold no truth or value about who you are or where you’re going. Keep putting one foot in front of the other, even when you are scared and especially when you are scared. There are people who would wish you to cower in fear and we will not let them prevail.

ALWAYS SPEAK YOUR TRUTH Grown-ups will teach you many important lessons. Some of those lessons will be about not saying or doing something which might cause others to feel embarrassment or anger or become upset. When you are throwing a tantrum in a supermarket or using bad words or being rude to others those lessons are entirely legitimate. But, there will be other times when you want to say or do something which is urgent to you but might cause dismay to someone else. This may stop you from saying or doing something that is important. The older we get, the more strongly we internalise and make a part of ourselves the thoughts of others and the values of the society we live in. This is necessary in that it allows us to live with others, which is important. But sometimes, this process also tells us we have to be something other than what we are. 167

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There will be times when being Brown and being Muslim will make life harder for you. It probably already does. Whenever something happens which causes you hurt, shame, or fear about who you are and where you’ve come from, you might want to hide or change yourself. Fitting in is so important to all of us. But … but, read these words from Audre Lorde, a Black lesbian poet: And that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength. Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak. We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and our selves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned; we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we will still be no less afraid.9

Do you see? Audre was dying of cancer when she wrote these words and she was thinking about the times she had been silent in her life. She knew that silence was not an option because bad things would keep happening anyway. Not just to her but to the people she loved because they were Black and they lived in America. Silence only ever works in favour of the ones with power. Whenever you feel that sharp edge of pain because something has cut you, has caused you to lower your gaze, or has soldered your mouth closed and to speak would be to endanger yourself further – use your words and speak your truth. Like Audre, you are not just a casualty of your inheritance: you are warriors, and kids, you have work to do.

YOU ARE MADE UP OF OTHER PEOPLE Think of a thick rope made up of lots of smaller strands pulled together and wrapped up for strength. That is you. 168

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You are made up of your mother and your father, your aunts and your uncles, your grandparents, your cousins, your friends and your classmates, your teachers. As you grow up new strands will be added, others will perish away, but many will remain for your whole life. What does it mean to be a rope? It means lots of things but the most important is this: we are bound to others and that’s what makes us who we are. In the Qur’an it says, ‘And hold firmly to the rope of Allah all together and do not become divided.’10 This means taking care of others is to take care of ourselves. This is as much a gift as it is an obligation. Gwendolyn Brooks was the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize in poetry. She certainly did not let walls stop her from writing poems and speaking her truth. Her poem Paul Robeson, about a musician and civil rights activist, shows the power of words and the power of taking care of others. She writes: that we are each other’s harvest: we are each other’s business we are each other’s magnitude and bond.11

And what does it mean to take care of others? It implies many things. Sometimes the work we do will be to nurture by supporting others to do things which are important to them. Sometimes it will be to provide support by listening and providing a shoulder to carry the weight someone cannot bear on their own. Sometimes it will be the work of repair when things have gone awry by design or by neglect where we have to make amends or allow others to make amends to us. However, these things, which we all do every day, bring with them responsibilities that are more demanding and 169

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onerous living in this country where our prime minister is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. This is the person who described Muslim women in burqas as ‘bank robbers’ and ‘letter boxes’.12 Did you know that the week after he did that hate crime against Muslims went up by 375 per cent?13 Did you also know that the group of people against whom most Islamophobic hate crimes are committed are women?14 I have thought about what it means to be a rope made up of others and to take care of others in this country where racism is normal and unassuming. What have I learnt? When you find something is unjust, whether or not it affects you, raise your voice against it. Our prime minister, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, has also called Black people ‘piccaninnies’ with ‘watermelon smiles’; he said that single mothers are ‘producing a generation of ill-raised, ignorant, aggressive, and illegitimate children’; he called gay men ‘tank-topped bum boys’.15 No less than 13,966,451 people in the UK voted for our prime minister, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, and his Conservative Party in the 2019 general election. Do you see? Find others who will also raise their voice and soon you will be many. The word ‘solidarity’ is when people join together – whoever they are and wherever they are from – to fight injustice.

THE BROWN HIJABI AND FRIENDS When I was growing up, we didn’t have the Brown Hijabi, which is the pen name of Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan. She describes herself as a ‘writer, poet, speaker and educator invested in unlearning and interrogating narratives around race, gender, Islamophobia, state violence, and colonialism’.16 What I could have done with her voice when I was 170

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fifteen! But, never mind, because she is here now, and you need to know who she is. You also need to know there is a whole generation of educated, visible, powerful, principled young people fighting racism and injustice and who have been blazing a trail just for you. Did you know that recent presidents of the National Union of Students, Malia Bouattia and Zamzam Ibrahim, are young Muslim women? There are many more who have been shouting from the picket lines, from university campuses and colleges, in Parliament and on the streets. You should know that this is also your inheritance and what a joyful thing it is. Back to the Brown Hijabi. I teach a module called ‘Governing Muslims: From Empire to the War on Terror’. In our first session, to sum up the purpose of the module, I play a video of Suhaiymah performing ‘This Is Not a Humanising Poem’ at the Roundhouse Poetry Slam in 2017.17 I show the students this performance because it’s a shortcut to understanding what we will be doing over the next eleven weeks of term. Namely, unlearning all the racist ways they have been taught to think about ‘Muslims’ through their education, media output, and politicians like our prime minister, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. Instead, the module allows them to understand the links between the historic and colonial context of how Muslim populations were treated in the British Empire or under the French occupation of Algeria, and how this history anticipates and is central to the current global War on Terror. Suhaiymah’s poem is about her refusal to make Muslims more ‘human’ and more ‘relatable’ to those who turned being Muslim into a racist caricature. Do you see? Why do you have to prove that you are ‘good’ because others have already judged the content of your character based on the colour of your skin and your faith? You don’t have to. You 171

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can refuse and there are others, like Suhaiymah, who stand next to you in your refusal.

LOVE I can picture your giggles and eye rolls and – ‘Khalo, you’re so cringey’. Love is not something we talk about often though it’s always there in the background like an unwatched TV someone forgot to switch off. ‘Love you’ is for goodbyes and goodnights and the phrase which sits so snugly next to ‘I miss you’. And yet, love is why I’m writing this for you. I was upset and angry when I started this chapter and I was talking to your mothers, my sisters. They were upset, too, and we spoke about the people we know who pray at the mosque and what it would be like now that it was almost Ramadan and everyone would go for Tarawih. But I’ll be honest and say that mostly what I thought about were the nine of you. I was so furious that this is the world you are growing up in and I felt we’d all let you down somehow because we couldn’t stop what was happening. After the general election in December 2019, I experienced the same feelings of raging despair about those 13,966,451 people who voted either because of, or in spite of, the words of this man who sits in Downing Street. The idea I keep circling back to is that things should have been better for you than they were for us and had been for our parents. There is a certain bitterness in accepting and understanding that in reality we, with our inheritance, would always have to fight. But, feelings of anger and despair soon abated not because this violence was suddenly resolved but because I knew that the practice of building a more just world cannot happen from a place of darkness. bell hooks, a cultural theorist, says that love is the act of caring and nurturing ourselves and 172

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others so that we, and those we are bound to, might grow.18 A love ethic, as she calls it, ‘transforms our lives by offering us a different set of values to live by’.19 Out of the heinous violence of Christchurch, the everyday Islamophobia of the UK, the Islamophobia which is manifest in the camps of East Turkestan, or in the lynchings in India, I am reminded that the feelings that drive me to resist, and even to take hope, are feelings of the deepest love I hold for each of you. That you might grow, study, worship, agitate, organise, work, and live in a place that is worthy of your lives. Kids, the difference between those who fight for what they love and those who fight to dominate and oppress is vast. Whatever comes next, remember, you are loved.

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13 IT IS ALLAH WHO CONDEMNS Cyrus McGoldrick

Our parents were always against violence. Our mother told us she was shot as a child, and that was that. We found out years later that it was just a BB gun, but we never had a toy that looked anything like one. Our neighbours went hunting every year, and their boys were in scouting troops. One in three high school graduates from my town would join the military – my father called the scouts a paramilitary organization and pulled me out after only a few weeks. But we learn to fight – it’s part of our culture. I love art but also combat. Good character and outlawry. Charity and championship.

A DECOLONIAL EDUCATION Thanks to my parents, I knew how little to trust the American government. We read, and I learned history that is not included in the school curriculum. I learned about the genocide and colonization of the Americas, about slavery 174

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and political repression. About resistance to the British occupation of Ireland, and about the Iranian Revolution. I knew that some people tried to oppress other people, and that the oppressed can fight back. In my first week of high school, a teacher rolled a television set into our classroom. On the screen were two towers, smoke billowing out. I thought it was a prank. I approached the television set and put my hand into the VCR, thinking that I would reveal the trick. There was none. My classmates didn’t know the difference between Iran and Iraq. One friend teased me: Taliban, sand nigger, towelhead, camel jockey. It was just for fun. Military recruiters were visiting our classrooms. Teachers talked about patriotism and unity. Senior students met in the car park before school, mounting their trucks with American and Confederate flags. I knew that the flags were a bad thing. I realize now that my mother was scared. Bush was re-elected. My classmates became soldiers. I marched on Washington and moved to New York.

FINDING A HIGHER LAW THROUGH MALCOLM X In 2005 the city was hot. The parties were wild, but our music felt urgent. We tasted the 1960s. Frustration, division, chaos, rebellion. I bartended private parties in New York penthouses and brownstones. At home, we smoked, sang, and studied revolution. I never knew much about Islam or any religion before high school. No one ever preached to me about religion, except one Bahai uncle. My mother’s family was mostly Muslim. I believed in God but didn’t think much about theological differences. I didn’t have many Muslim friends. I don’t remember ever seeing American Muslims in the media. 175

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I certainly never heard any of the many condemnations of violence and ‘terrorism’ that American Muslim organizations issued in the years after 9/11. I always respected Muslims for defending themselves and their lands – it never surprised me or seemed blameworthy. Most of us would hope to do the same. Islam for me then was Malcolm X and Imam Khomeini. But I was blessed with joy for life and appreciation of its beauty, and I came to feel overwhelmed by the remarkable design of our universe. I studied and reached the limits of other religious and political philosophies, but I kept finding clarity and strength in Islam. It was Malcolm, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, that cut through the fog of adolescence. I kept his speeches with me constantly, learning from how he modelled courage and discipline while articulating vision and strategy. He followed a higher law. I went to books for proof and began learning the foundations. On the first day of Ramadan, I stepped onto the path.

USING MY ART AS RESISTANCE I liked performing in a group but hated being the centre of attention. I had lyrics I wanted to share, but it was difficult for me to transition from horn section to centre stage. I dedicated my small platform to something beyond myself and tried to call attention to causes and protests. I wrote new material. The art of healing. The art of resistance. A mosque was being built in downtown Manhattan. Right-wing media lost it. Liberal media wanted Muslim stories. My friend Madeleine Dubus profiled me for a blog and within a few days, I was on CNN. For months, camera crews recorded concerts. Journalists walked me to work and 176

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photographed me with friends. I was a novelty. I didn’t give reporters easy answers, but they used what they wanted. No one asked me to condemn terrorism, but they cut my condemnations of American violence.

THE CONDEMNATION FACTORY AT CAIR The War on Terror was in its tenth year. Obama had not ended it – rather, American troops and planes were terrorizing more countries simultaneously than ever before. I met Faiza Ali at an Islamic Relief event. She was hiring interns for the New York Chapter of the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR). I had never heard of CAIR, but it seemed like the right thing to do. I worked for Aliya Latif in the Civil Rights Department, organizing hundreds of cases of discrimination along with rallies for Fahad Hashmi and Dr Aafia Siddiqui (may Allah free them). We didn’t see many wins, but I was happy to have a chance to try to help. The casework is the most important thing that CAIR does. CAIR was also a condemnation factory back then, and I never liked it. CAIR staffers spent a lot of time responding to acts of Muslim violence and distancing themselves from Muslim political groups. The website had a section for answering frequently asked questions. Why should we be ashamed of the Muslim Brothers? I realized there was a game being played, and we were losing. Right-wing blogs carried profiles of CAIR leaders with impressive resumes, calling them terrorists. After university I ran the office for a year and a half. We fought the NYPD for using anti-Muslim propaganda films in their training modules, and then for running a CIA-designed Muslim surveillance programme across the 177

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region, country, and entire world. We had press conferences at City Hall and jumu‘ah prayers in Occupy Wall Street. We won only nominal reforms, and I earned many hateful profiles of my own. I was able to avoid those condemnations myself. If it ever came up, I could force myself to say that I condemn the targeting of civilians and then avoid the specifics. Our enemies said that this was not specific enough, and it was our way of avoiding condemning Islamic resistance movements. In my case, they were correct. It is Allah who condemns.

ORGANIZING AROUND DIFFICULT CASES I was on a city bus one night when another story broke about the spy programme, and I got on the phone with Ibrahim Hooper to plan our press release. We realized that over the months of the campaign, we had already asked the mayor and governor, city and state legislatures, city comptroller, and every relevant office we could think of for help. I was already losing my patience. Brother Ibrahim was a voice of motivation and a voice of calm. He would wake me up with a phone call if a newspaper needed a statement, and he would wake me up with a phone call to tell me that I shouldn’t have called the mayor of New York City a liar in the newspaper. Now we were brainstorming about who to target. ‘Who is left?’ he asked me. I remember sadness in his voice. CAIR was founded on the belief in the American system’s checks and balances. ‘What do you do when there are none left?’ I could not continue recruiting my people to a strategy I did not believe in. I started asking the difficult questions, and publicly. What are our goals? Is America at war with 178

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Islam? When the government breaks the social contract, are we still held to it? Very few Muslim leaders wanted to deal with these questions. I reprioritized. We had to end the war and free its captives. Reforms could come later. Political prisoner work made us targets, every press release and tweet scrutinized and weaponized. Token Muslims close to the government attacked us as extremists. Some of our own organizations and leaders pushed back against our efforts or distanced themselves. When I moved to south Florida, a pro-NYPD imam called one of the local leaders to slander me, warning him that I supported al-Qaeda and might endanger their youth. I travelled for the Coalition for Civil Freedoms (then NCPCF) to spread awareness about these cases. Many laypeople wanted to talk about the prisoners and support them, but they were afraid to give money. Many mosque boards and imams were afraid to allow us in at all, so much of our work was with non-Muslim organizations. It was difficult for me to get on planes anymore and flying back in from overseas landed me in multi-hour interrogations. Agents tapped my phones and computers and started threatening family and friends of mine. One imam whom I considered a friend, whom I travelled with and trusted, started avoiding me because of government pressure. All this because I condemned the violence and oppression of the government that takes my taxes rather than condemning the people defending themselves from that government in their own lands. So many times in this last decade, I saw self-proclaimed leaders grovelling before American power, welcoming and even praising the American military and police and spy agencies in our conferences and mosques, encouraging people to vote for men with the blood of innocent people on 179

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their hands, watering Islam down to ‘the religion of peace’, fighting each other for the chance to shake the hands of people who literally hate us, and then rushing for a microphone to condemn the people who were fighting a murderous occupier. I am grateful that Allah hid this from me before my Islam. I don’t know what I would have done. Whoever would listen I reminded of the Prophetic command to stop oppression with your hand, if possible, or your tongue, if possible, or your heart, which is the weakest level of faith. I am always growing and learning, and I have far to go, but at least let us agree to hate evil in our hearts and not speak or act in favour of it. Some of us began making the case that condemning resistance for a Western audience was not only useless but also harmful in its own way. Even those that regularly condemned so-called terrorist groups would still be told that they didn’t do enough to root out ‘terrorism’ from Muslim communities. In the meantime, our youth see us as weak and capitulating, not confident in ourselves and cause. Our allies from other faith communities are confused as to why we still think that the American Dream will work for us. Dr Tarek Mehanna relates the following piece of advice from Dr Aafia Siddiqui, ‘Americans have no respect for people who are weak. Americans will respect us if we stand up and we are strong.’1 Increasingly alienated, I wondered if I was wrong. Things were changing so fast, and still are. Islam was becoming something strange, even among Muslims. Our divisions were wider. Our differences were not just on strategy but also our goals, our lived experience, and even our foundations of knowledge. I was looking for a Prophetic balance, but it was difficult to find.

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A CHANGE OF SCENERY AND BALANCE I never thought of my move to Istanbul as an escape. Hijrah, in my understanding, was more of a tactical retreat, a time and place to recentre and regroup, to build knowledge and strength. I needed time to learn. Despite the importance of the different war zones around the world, my home, my frontline, was in New York. I am a Muslim because I believe Muhammad is Allah’s Messenger and the Qur’an is the preserved revelation. I wanted to make sure I am honouring my responsibilities to the Creator and His other creations. I wanted to study society in order to improve it more effectively in light of our highest purpose. This work continues. Another part of Hijrah’s importance is in living with Muslims, where Islam has been lived for centuries. Turkey has had a difficult century, as we all have, but Islam is alive in Istanbul, especially in Eyup Sultan and Fatih. We arrived early on an August morning. That afternoon, we prayed in Yeni Camii – ‘the New Mosque’ – completed in AD 1665. I looked up into its domes and cried. We are not minorities, but members of the ummah of Muhammad. We are a body, wherever we go. Wherever we were born, wherever we die, even if we have no leader or state, we are a nation. Our ­allegiance to each other is a divine obligation. I came to understand history differently – not as an archive of events, but as an epic narrating the journeys of our human family across the world. The sons and daughters of Adam and Hawa, our ancestors and cousins, settling, competing, answering the call or ignoring it. I have always had radical empathy, but I started seeing people differently, seeing myself in their position. How could I not understand our brothers and sisters who saw oppression and wanted to 181

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end it? I know the verses and ahadith they read. I, too, spent nights wondering if I should go to help. Some answered the call, their hearts compelled more strongly than my own. Although I struggled to reconcile my beliefs with their methods and strategy, after such weary years spent engaged in my own efforts to little avail, I was left asking questions of the efficacy of my own actions. The scholars debate the finer points of the laws of war as the world rushes past. How should we organize? Who is the enemy and who is a civilian? What is to be done after a victory or loss? They have to answer urgent questions amidst changing conditions. The nature of warfare and the nature of social organization itself are changing rapidly. We hope every mujtahid is rewarded for their efforts. I will not condemn them, when I know so little and am so far away. It is Allah who condemns. Some have allowed righteous anger to lead them to unjust violence. Can we not empathize? I am reminded of the Companions of the Prophet that erred in battle, going too far: the Prophet, their leader, reprimanded them directly, paid blood money to the families of those unjustly killed, and sought forgiveness from God. I am happy to teach what I know, to clarify a ruling on an action if the ruling is clear, but humbly. I will not condemn. I am more concerned that I have fallen short in my obligations. That these men we condemn are closer to God than I. That these battles they have to fight are a result of our shortcomings. I won’t have to answer for the actions or mistakes of anyone else, nor will their good deeds speak for me. I will only answer for what I have done. If I erred, and I certainly will, I want to be able to say that I erred on the side of justice, on the side of the oppressed. In the end, it is Allah who condemns. 182

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CHANGE-MAKING IS A CONSTANT PROCESS I am in Istanbul, leaving a mosque after prayer. A woman, a small boy leaning on her, both arms around her legs. ‘Hajji. Sadaka. Allah rizasi icin. Suriye,’ she says, pressing a hand against her chest. ‘Babasi,’ she says, looking to her son, ‘shahid.’ A martyr. A witness to God’s promise. Her eyes smiled sadly, proudly. I give a little. She smiles gratefully. As I walk away, I try to tell myself I gave what I could. I should have given more. The bus rumbles away, carrying me to Eyup Sultan, to my wife and daughter. I imagine them without me, if I were taken from them or killed. I pray for them, and then I pray for the widow and orphan. I realize I am selfish even in my prayer. I hope that I can continue to try and do the right thing without compromising my values; that I can sacrifice and trust in God’s promise despite liberal demands for condemnation that conflict with my beliefs. That I can fulfil God’s promise. It is Allah who condemns. My wife calls. In the background, my daughter’s voice, ‘babbaaaa.’ Home. O Allah, I dedicate us to You.

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14 IS THIS RADICAL? AM I RADICAL? Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan

This will not be a ‘Muslims are like us’ poem I refuse to be respectable. Instead Love us when we’re lazy, Love us when we’re poor, Love us in our back-to-backs, council estates, depressed, unwashed and weeping, Love us high as kites, unemployed, joy-riding, time-wasting, failing at school, Love us filthy, without the right colour passports, without the right-sounding English, Love us silent, unapologizing, shopping in Poundland, skiving off school, homeless, unsure, sometimes violent, Love us when we aren’t athletes, when we don’t bake cakes when we don’t offer our homes, or free taxi rides after the event, When we’re wretched, suicidal, naked and contributing nothing. Love us then. Because if you need me to prove my humanity I’m not the one that’s not human. My mother texts me, too, after BBC news alerts

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Resisting the performance ‘are you safe? Let me know you’re home okay?’ She means safe from the incident, yes, but also from the after-effects. So sometimes I wonder, which days of the week might I count as ‘liberal’ and which moments of forehead to the ground I am ‘conservative’? I wonder, when you buy bombs is there a clear difference between the deadly ones that kill and the heroic ones that scatter ‘democracy’? Isn’t it really ‘guilty, until proven innocent’? how can we kill in the name of saving lives? how can we illegally detain in the name of maintaining the law? I can’t write it. I put my pen away. I can’t I won’t write it Is this radical? Am I radical? ‘cos there is nowhere else left to exist now.1

Where I exist outside the categories other people have made for me is a question I repeatedly come back to. As a visibly Muslim woman it can feel like I spend huge swathes of time fighting off other people’s attempts to define and confine me. Radical or moderate. Modern or traditional. Oppressed or ‘jihadi-bride’. Muslims – and Muslim women in particular – are so consistently looked at through narratives created by others that it takes effort for us to look at ourselves with our own eyes. By that I mean that we are so used to being observed – both now and historically by colonisers, anthropologists, the media, politicians, policymakers, civil servants told to watch us, ‘specialists’ and researchers, feminists, newscasters, ethnographers, etc. – that we have more knowledge of how our identities are 188

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understood by others than we have of who we are on our own terms. In other words, we know better how to fit categories that have no significance for our self-understanding, than we know how to resist such categorisation. We are more familiar with saying, ‘not all Muslims are terrorists,’ than we are with saying, ‘why is it useful to believe all Muslims are terrorists?’ Internalising colonial, racist, dehumanising narratives that keep us on the back foot limits not only the ways we are understood and read, but also the ways we express ourselves. For example, if I say I am a ‘conservative’ Muslim, not only does that tacitly accept a reductive binary of ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ Muslims which oversimplifies and stratifies Islam, it also forces me to impose an arbitrary secular notion onto my faith and expression of it. Afterall, how does one keep a ‘moderate’ fast as opposed to a ‘radicalised’ fast? How different does the prostration of a ‘liberal’ Muslim look as compared with an ‘extremist’? More importantly, what does concerning ourselves with such categorisations and narratives mean that we are distracted from discussing?

NOT RESPONDING TO LONDON BRIDGE The beginning lines of this chapter come from the second half of my poem ‘This Is Not a Humanising Poem’, which went viral in 2017.2 I wrote it one day after the London Bridge attack. Although I had not intended to write anything relating to the attack, I found myself faced with a strange feeling of responsibility that I should remark upon it. However, that remarking manifested as a desire to write an apology. Every iteration of the poem became a repentant 189

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response to the unspoken question that lingers after every attack of its kind, are you one of them? Deep down I knew that as a Muslim, I, too, was culpable for the London Bridge attack until I absolved myself by proving I was not that kind of Muslim. However, in the process of writing I realised that the more I tried to prove how funny, non-violent and good-natured I was, the more I was accepting the logic that my humanity is conditional upon such evidence. I was accepting that by default I was seen as subhuman, a terrorist, uncivilised and an unassimilable outsider until proven otherwise. And I was accepting that the onus lay on me to prove it. Moreover, even if I was personally able to prove my humanity within these parameters, I would still implicitly be conceding that there are some Muslims who don’t deserve such humanity. I would have selfishly extricated myself from denunciation but not deconstructed the underlying premise that every Muslim is subhuman and inherently predisposed to violence unless they prove otherwise – a logic that justifies mass surveillance, incarceration, deportation, citizenship removal, rendition, torture and government disguising its role in creating such conditions that give rise to violence in the first place. Writing ‘This Is Not a Humanising Poem’ helped me to resist the urge to fit other people’s definitions. Instead, I bypassed the burden of answering a question that aimed to confine me by asking a question of my own. This is a strategy I have subsequently adopted throughout my work and I often quote Toni Morrison when I do because she succinctly captured the futility and harm of acquiescing to questions that are fundamentally premised on racist dehumanisation. She said:

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Is this radical? Am I radical? the very serious function of racism, is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.3

As a Muslim woman I am extremely familiar with such disingenuity. Most questions I face are not questions at all but exercises of power and exertions of narratives. For example, when an acquaintance said, ‘but you’re not like that, you’re more liberal, aren’t you?’ intentionally or not, he deployed a narrative that exists to police Muslim behaviours by assuming there is a ‘good’ way for me to act as a Muslim, and a ‘bad’ way. ‘Liberal’ was laden with value. To answer, ‘no, I’m not,’ would be refusing the chance to neutralise myself as ‘non-threatening’. ‘You’re liberal, aren’t you?’ is not a question but a litmus test: prove you are palatable, join my condemnation of ‘bad Muslims’ and thus justify (and don’t question) the narratives about ‘them’ and how ‘they’ are treated. Similarly, when my friend’s mother asked, ‘you’re much more intelligent than me so I know you can answer this – why do you cover your hair?’ she wasn’t really asking for reasons – which I gave – she was (albeit unknowingly) exerting the colonial principle that my behaviours required her approval; without justification, to her they would remain illegitimate. And yet, when given my justification, her declaration, ‘it just doesn’t make sense to me,’ exposed the function of the question. She wasn’t looking for an ‘intelligent’ reason, but a confession of my oppression and thus confirmation of the prevailing narrative.

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QUESTIONING QUESTIONS AS RESISTANCE Knowingly or unknowingly, questions which reinforce constraining narratives about my identity rely on historically colonial ideas about what is human/logical/civilised/­ dangerous. Therefore, when faced with such questions now, rather than taking them at face value, I try to reveal the power dynamic they rely on. For example, I might ask, ‘what do you mean when you say “liberal”?’ or, ‘why does it matter that I cover my hair?’ These are questions that recalibrate conversations. They acknowledge that the question and questioner are not neutral, natural or outside of a historico-political context. That itself is resistance. By-passing questions that are exertions of hegemonic power and norms radically restructures power dynamics. Therefore, I now deliberately question questions as a strategy of resistance that disrupts efforts aimed to trap me in self-policing and distracting projects. I want to have the conversations that those questions obscure rather than make myself intelligible to people who have internalised narratives about me that will always trump my voice. It is no coincidence that making the world ‘intellig­ible’ was central to modern European colonial domination. Eighteenth-century ‘enlightenment’ thinkers were preoccupied with classification of the observable world – only that which could be ‘seen’ could be ‘known’. However, in the name of ‘rationality’ and ‘science’ they theorised not only categories, but hierarchies. In categorising bodies, for example, they justified their domination: ‘Black bodies’, once defined, necessitated ownership. One of the most famous thinkers of the period, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), wrote: ‘Humanity exists in its greatest perfection in the white race … The yellow Indians have a smaller amount of Talent. The 192

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Negroes are lower and the lowest are a part of the American peoples.’4 Clearly, the theoretical underpinnings of modern racism and colonial annihilation lie in the meanings imposed on the world by European voyeurs who did not acknowledge their perspectives as anything other than neutral and objective. Subsequently, by our today refusing to make ourselves intelligible in the eyes of similarly secular, colonising narratives roots us in resistance to this longer historic violence. When we say, ‘“moderate” and “extreme” are words used to classify and police us, they are not relevant to our religious practices,’ or, ‘if you’re concerned that I am oppressed, why can we only talk about my clothes but not the structural oppression I face?’ we follow the example of those who resisted before us. Enslaved people, anti-colonial revolutionaries, grassroots educators, disobedient indentured labourers, those labelled rebels, insurgents, mutineers, guerrillas and the most maligned in historic testimony who dared to stare back and ask: ‘What do you mean when you call us “inferior”? Who benefits from naming us “uncivilised”’?5 We do not accept your premises.

CONTRADICTORY CAGES Nonetheless, constantly resisting categorisation and trying to outmanoeuvre the premises of loaded questions is exhausting. I have also observed it is increasingly precarious as my public platform has grown in the years since ‘This Is Not a Humanising Poem’. I now face new and increasingly contradictory gazes upon me, some of which make me entirely voiceless to even question their function. Comments on one of my performances uploaded to a notorious far-right YouTuber’s channel demonstrate the 193

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paradoxical web of narratives used to dismiss me.6 People’s descriptions range from ‘oppressed female Arab Muslim’, ‘communist’, ‘lunatic’, ‘like Heinrich Himmler’, ‘middle class and privileged’ to ‘disabled’, ‘parasite’, ‘dressed like a grenade’, ‘creature’ and ‘skinny with a big hook nose’. From marking me as powerless to overly powerful and privileged to non-human, all that these comments have in common is justifying silencing and dismissing my words. This is a specifically gendered experience of silencing. Even Muslim men of colour participating in the same disruptive work are listened to more than women.7 This is likely the reason it is rare to find a critical Muslim woman or woman of colour invited onto mainstream platforms, for example. When such voices are sought, our male counterparts take the spotlight because we are sidelined earlier on by dismissive narratives. It is worth also stating that this discussion of the silencing gazes upon me is not merely a theoretical point. The range of slurs and categories thrown at me are overwhelming and it hurts to read comments such as the above even as much as I know they are not personal – I know I could be any hijab-wearing woman. However, it is in fact that very depersonalisation and use of me as symbolic which is so utterly dehumanising. It is hard to find the right words to write that feeling into this chapter. It is overwhelming to be made into nobody and everybody at the same time; a ­ civilisation-sized threat, on one hand, and a 240-character joke, on the other. My immediate response to such constraints and slurs being placed on me is to not want to ­interact – and thus do exactly as was their intention: to silence myself. I mention this to remind both myself and you that none of this is in the abstract.

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OUTMANOEUVRING TOKENISATION In 2018, I received an invitation from the Association of Muslim Police to perform at their annual Eid dinner for 200 guests, Muslims and others. It provides an excellent example of me being silenced and constrained even as I am being platformed. The invitation stated, ‘The theme is breaking barriers through understanding/Muslim contribution to society.’8 ‘Contribution’ is a deliberately depoliticising term. It insinuated that my presence at the event as a visible, speaking Muslim woman would itself be my contribution. This is obvious because the content of my work is vocally anti-policing and was clearly disregarded by virtue of the invitation itself. What ‘understanding’ did the invitation prioritise? My performance was clearly envisioned not as a platform for my political message, but as a way of ‘breaking’ the stereotypes of Muslim women as submissive, and in so doing, impressing and humanising us to the audience. My attendance itself would be the performance. I have received many invitations which similarly reduce me to the performance of ‘speaking Muslim woman’ devoid of my politics and I decline them all, but they do, nonetheless, gall me. Most recently I was bemused to receive an email from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a counter-extremism, policy-advising and advocacy think tank9 – a sector I have repeatedly (and vocally) critiqued because of its dependence on the hugely flawed notion of ‘extremism’ as a ‘system of belief’,10 a premise which leads to violence being essentialised into groups of people who are then criminalised. The email came on behalf of ISD’s Youth Civil Activism Network – ‘young positive voices against extremism’11 – inviting me to the launch of their report, The Many States 195

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of Activism: A Global Survey of Youth P/CVE Activists. This was a stark reminder that even as vocal as I can be about opposing global criminalising strategies like ‘counterextremism’, my words and work can simply be ignored as I am once again co-opted (a Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) activist!) and turned from a Muslim woman who performs poetry into merely the performance of a Muslim woman to be positioned in the right place at the right time. Nevertheless, even amidst the mesh of constraining categories I and other Muslim women face, unlikely acts of resistance are always possible. In fact, it is the contradictions between the gazes upon us that provide unexpected opportunities for dodging and feinting. Lazy cages are thrown over us with no anticipation of our dexterity or accumulation of knowledge about them. This is most obvious when I have worked with big institutions. In 2018, the BBC commissioned me to write and deliver a short video for their digital section, ‘In My Humble Opinion’. I was approached as a poet. This signalled that they were viewing me through a lens that made me relatively palatable and non-threatening, as opposed to being approached as an ‘activist’, or ‘educator on race and state violence’. Indeed, poetry (especially the poetry of young women of colour in white middle-class institutional contexts) is frequently deemed separate from sociopolitical concerns. However, it was this depoliticised caging of me that I manipulated to my advantage. I used it to present what may otherwise have been too controversial an argument. I contended that violence is deliberately misunderstood as ‘inherent’ to people rather than created by contexts: for example, ‘terrorism’ is made into a Muslim problem, not a social problem and ‘knife crime’ an issue of Black boys, not an issue of governmental failings. 196

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My script prompted a protracted exchange between myself and the editor, who initially deleted my entire line of argument regarding terrorism, ‘your argument is strong but it’s nuanced, and I don’t want people to just say, “Oh she’s being an apologist for violent criminals or terrorists.” Now I (obviously) know that you’re not, but if you very clearly state that you’re not, then nobody can accuse you of that.’12 My desire to analyse terrorism without condemning or apologising for it was clearly alarming (too nuanced). In another email she admitted, ‘I was a bit nervous about it because it is a really sensitive topic and I was worried that although I understood what you were getting at, our audience may misinterpret or misconstrue it.’13 The policing of my argument was presented as being in my interest. Nonetheless, I persevered, and the piece was eventually published in its original form,14 even featuring on the front page of the BBC website for a day. Paradoxically, being a Brown female Muslim poet had enabled me to bring a narrative onto the BBC homepage that, at other times and from other people, has been written off as ‘extreme’ and ‘apologist’. Therefore, navigating multiple constraining narratives unexpectedly leaves gaps through which we can resist if we are strategic. Nonetheless, it must be acknowledged that those gaps are often minute and whilst my position as a poet, a woman and a performer amongst other things enabled me to voice this opinion in this case, it was also, in my view, the reason it could feature on the BBC homepage without backlash – those categorisations also leave me open to being ignored as insignificant.

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BRADFORD LITERATURE FESTIVAL The work of countering narratives and disrupting definitions must be done, however tirelessly, because it is not merely theoretical work. In 2019, I publicly withdrew from the Bradford Literature Festival when I learnt they had received counter-extremism funding. Boycotting the festival publicly to draw attention to the funding was my logical response and a way to disrupt the narrative of counter-extremism. (Who defines extremism? Why would you assume attendees of this festival were ‘extreme’?) However, many who had lazily boxed me as ‘a Muslim woman who speaks’ and dismissed my content thus far were thrown. Seemingly, acting on my principle of challenging violent narratives was a step too far. One journalist who had previously responded to my poems with, ‘I love this. You’ve summed me up. Salaam to you x,’15 wrote a Guardian comment piece, stating, ‘having principles is a privilege not everyone can afford … Making a public declaration of withdrawal helps no one but one’s ego.’16 Her construction of principles as a privilege (as if resistance has not always been rooted in the struggles of the underprivileged) was an attempt to silence me through a new caging: ‘egotistical privileged activist’. She was in essence saying, ‘stay in the box of “speaking Muslim woman”, but how dare you demand we address the content of your work?’ Yet my making that demand through taking direct action consistent with my writing is exactly the way I resisted the parameters she wanted me to exist within. By co-organising an alternative festival in Bradford for artists who had similarly withdrawn to discuss the harms of counter-extremism, we did as Morrison suggested – ignored the distractions and got to work. 198

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REFUSING THE CONFINES AS SURVIVAL Women of colour and Muslim women have long resisted and outmanoeuvred the clashing gazes that fall upon us in ways history has not recorded. From migrant women pretending they could not understand English in order to avoid extra work from their bosses on factory floors; to women who have played on their being constructed as passive in order to find covert ways of adhering to faith practices. Refusing to obey the confines of others despite overwhelming and coercive demands is not new work, but it is always liberating work. As a visibly Muslim woman I have found that it is ironically the result of existing at the intersection of so many dehumanising narratives, which clash and contradict each other, that resistance is made not only possible, but the only remaining action I can take if I want to exist on my own terms. I refuse to prove, condemn or apologise according to narratives which rest on the premise that I am not human. My survival depends upon such refusal and whilst that can sometimes lead me into further confines – written off as extreme, apologist, hysterical, irrelevant, ignorant, over-complicated or unrepresentative – it is this very over­ production of confines used to silence me that throws up the unlikely paradoxes which become means of my escape and resistance. In the process of being made into everything and nothing we can also become impossible to pin down. All that remains for us to do in the face of narratives that necessitate violence against us is to keep asking questions, naming the categories being used to confine us and revealing their functions and contradictions. By the grace of Allah, I have found this disrupting existence a way to remain just outside the grasp of the confines thrown over me (for now, 199

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and insha’Allah for longer). While the cages may therefore shapeshift or their bars mutate and transform, we resist by remaining confusing, undefinable and uncontainable. We will never accept premises that concede oppression.

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15 GRAPPLING WITH SHADOWS Lowkey

You may take the last strip of my land Feed my youth to prison cells You may plunder my heritage Burn my books and poems … You may put out the light in my eyes … I may, if you wish, lose my livelihood I may sell shirt and bed I may work as a stone cutter A street sweeper, a porter I may clean your stores Or rummage garbage for food You enemy of the sun But I will not compromise And to the last pulse in my veins I shall resist.1

A ‘COUNTER-TERROR’ STOP IN KENT ‘Oh I see one of you has been to Cuba,’ he says excitedly. It draws little reaction from any of us. ‘I have always wanted to go to Cuba,’ he enthusiastically continues, ‘I really 201

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admire the way they have stood up to the US government! You know if you look at US policy in Latin America and the Caribbean it really is almost identical to what they have done in the Middle East, don’t you think?’ He looks towards us with an intensely fixed expression on his face, listening intently to hear our responses … Under normal circumstances this may not be a controversial conversation. While it is true that the US has acted to overthrow governments in Latin America over forty times, at least, in the last hundred years, none of us felt this was a safe space to discuss the similarities between that and US policy in the Middle East. It was February 2016 and the frosty Kent air bludgeoned our senses, seeping into the car through the window that we had opened to speak to this person. His manner portrayed a joviality too accentuated to be genuine. Besides, he and his team were stationed at a checkpoint approaching the Euro Tunnel on a Friday night. We were pretty sure he wasn’t a fan of Cuban health care really, so was he actually this cheerful? If none of that was true, then what was true about him? Three friends and I were about to be detained under the Schedule 7 Terrorism Act 2000 and the person extolling the virtues of the Cuban revolution was an officer attempting to extract data from us as racialised subjects in order to algorithmise our likelihood to commit acts of political violence. We were frank about the reason for our journey. I had spent the last few months translating on cases for lawyers from London working pro bono to bring minors struggling through squalid conditions in the Calais camp known as ‘the Jungle’ to reunite with their relatives in the UK. All of the cases I worked on involved teenage boys who had fled areas like Aleppo and Deraa, survived the seas and braved the gauntlet of Fortress Europe to make it to Calais, where 202

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they were confined by architectural violence at almost every turn. While the cases were working their way through the courts in the UK, the boys were freezing and struggling for sustenance in the camp. Having heard about the situation, my friends wanted to come with me taking coats, gloves and supplies. We also intended to film some interviews with them. Taken into a dark room with one lamp facing the table and several barely visible men, I was asked about all of this. It is illegal to refuse to answer any questions when detained under Schedule 7 and you are required to give full access to any electronic device you may be holding on your person. When asked why I cared about people in a camp in Calais, I replied that as someone who considers themselves part of the Iraqi diaspora it was a duty. When bearing in mind the vast human cost and collateral damage of the war in 2003, I had to play some role in ameliorating that pain. They asked invasive and unnecessary questions which could only make sense if there was a tick box prototype committer of political violence they were angling to match me up against. It was a deeply uncomfortable situation, leaving all of us feeling unsafe. We were keenly aware that we were the subject of a cynical gaze fixed upon on us, when we were merely seeking to help people who had suffered in war. Taking into account that, according to Major Chris Hunter, expert on terrorism for the British government, you have a one-in-sixteen-million chance of being near an act of terrorism in this country, the chances any of us were involved in political violence were literally infinitesimal. In fact, as the study found that austerity had led to 130,000 preventable deaths, you are far more likely to die from austerity than to die from terrorism. The major political actors of our time use Islamophobia to forge (meant in both senses 203

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of the word) an atavistic connection with a population they are harming because they understand that with otherhood comes brotherhood. The arrangement of mass surveillance of Muslims is reliant entirely on what Paul Holden terms ‘threat inflation’.2 In order to uphold this system, which employs thousands of people, there must be mechanisms that can depict onein-sixteen-million chances as more like one in sixteen. The ‘architecture of enmity’, as Derek Gregory calls it,3 has been built up by attrition over the past two decades to push Muslims into the state of exception, a space of rightlessness, where the ideals this society professes to hold do not apply. We joined the estimated half a million people to have been stopped under Schedule 7. It has been found that minority groups make up 78 per cent of those stopped under the legislation since its inception in 2000. Like the SUS laws in the past and Section 60 in the present, Schedule 7 does not require any reasonable suspicion of unlawful activity for the detention to take place. Hence, it opens up space for statesanctioned racial discrimination. In order to justify the lack of reasonable suspicion in stops like this, there must be an implicit attribution of irrationality and collective guilt to those who occupy a state of exception. Otherwise, how would the stops ever take place? If reasonable suspicion were not necessary there must be some other criteria which needed to be met. When we later questioned this professed defender of the Cuban revolution about the reason for our detention, he retorted: When we look at your passports and see Lebanon or Iraq we would be stupid if we didn’t ask, well what were you doing in Lebanon, what were you doing in Iraq?

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It seems the way we were racialised, combined with stamps in our passport, forces the invisible hand of the state into further character assessments of us in order to algorithmically measure our likelihood of being involved in political violence. Lizzie O’Shea in her book Future Histories puts it in the following way: By generating technical solutions to the problem of crime, the myth of the state as the indispensable provider of safety becomes a logical, indisputable truth. It creates a category of people it classifies as criminals, which it then polices and trains us to fear.4

One of the ways in which people are trained to fear those who are racialised a certain way is through the bureaucratic violence of Prevent …

PREVENT USING MY MUSIC VIDEOS? Three times in my life I have been approached and informed that Prevent is using the music video for my song Terrorist?,5 released in 2010, as part of its training sessions. The first time was in 2015 and the last was in 2019. The main aim of the video is to juxtapose the violence of small, nonstate-based actors with that of the US military, which by itself has a bigger budget than the seven next most powerful armies combined. The song questions the pious hypocrisy of professed US foreign policy as democracy promotion when placed alongside CIA coups against democratically elected leaders in Chile, Congo and Iran, to name but a few. It is unclear how exactly the video is being used in Prevent training sessions given to educators. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that this video is being used to demonstrate the qualities to look out for in people showing vulnerability to radicalisation. As of February 2020, the music 205

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video has reached 5.3 million views on YouTube without any radio play whatsoever; I do wonder how many of those views were from Prevent employees? It wasn’t until the summer of 2019 that YouTube saw fit to introduce a warning before my video, first requiring the user to sign into their Google account and secondly, informing them, ‘The following content has been identified by the YouTube community as inappropriate or offensive to some audiences, viewer discretion is advised.’ The prospective viewer is then required to click an icon indicating they ‘understand and wish to proceed’. When told my video was being used in Prevent training sessions immediately my body reacted. I felt in danger and deeply unsafe. That cynical gaze was piercing into my skin without my even knowing. Were they stigmatising me to public sector workers because of my art? Were children or young people who chose to watch my videos being criminalised? Social justice, as defined by Nancy Fraser, requires ‘arrangements which permit all to participate as peers in social life’.6 Was my attempt to apply that principle and participate in politics through art endangering others and myself? Are Muslims in Britain today allowed to be political actors in this society, outside of parroting the views of the establishment? Especially on foreign policy? Are we allowed to think and speak critically about the government? Is Prevent limiting my freedom of expression and harming my livelihood by pointing me out to educators in this way? The enduring question at the bottom of these experiences is, am I safe?

TIM WESTWOOD, PLAYING FOR THE ARMY It was September 2011 and one month before my album Soundtrack to the Struggle would be released. It would go 206

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on to hit number thirty-three in the mid-week charts. For an independent album, only released digitally and full of explicitly political content, this was quite significant at the time. The buzz leading up to it was strong and was surely part of the reason Tim Westwood, a DJ who had ignored me for the previous seven years of my career, was compelled to get me on his weekly radio show on BBC Radio 1. I was surprised by the invitation but was looking forward to the exposure this would give my ideas. The fixer from Radio 1 was very friendly on the phone and seemed to be very excited for me to come in. The appointment had been set and I was readying myself to leave for the BBC studios. Just before I was about to depart, I received an odd phone call from the fixer. She seemed uncomfortable in her own voice, as if she really would rather not be there. Her tone was abrupt and communication terse, ‘We just won’t have time for your slot today, so sorry.’ I was startled but took the reason at face value, and wanting to perhaps ameliorate their situation I replied, ‘Okay, I don’t mind doing a quick spot for a few minutes, no need to do a full quarter hour.’ ‘No,’ she replied, ‘We just won’t have time.’ Hmmm … I didn’t think too much of this situation and left it there. A few days later I had a conversation with a prominent BBC DJ who had always supported my music, he chuckled to me, ‘Don’t you know they cancelled that slot with you? Because the date was September 11! They thought you were going to say something dodgy live on air.’ He shook his head in disbelief, ‘Crazy, right?’ I was taken aback but by that time not surprised. This was, of course, the same year Mic Righteous attempted to utter the words, ‘I can say, Free Palestine,’7 on his BBC Fire in the Booth, only for the specific words ‘Free 207

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Palestine’ to be edited out for broadcast by the powers that be. It was later brought to my attention that in May and June of that year, Westwood had actually broadcast his show from the British military base Camp Bastion in Afghanistan. A trip which had been carefully coordinated by the BBC and the Ministry of Defence.8 Quite what BBC 1Xtra – the home of Black Music – has to do with the fourth British occupation of Afghanistan in the last 200 years is, I am not sure. Considering his apparent commitment to beautifying a necropolitical British foreign policy and proselytising for the British Army, it makes sense that I would have no place on his show. I also remembered his perhaps jokingly accusing Akala of being a communist on his BBC show in 2010. While Westwood is often portrayed as Britain’s embarrassing but tolerated uncle, when taken together his choices seem at best subconsciously ideological. Later, on the basis of these issues, I publicly refused to appear on TimWestwoodTV, but I cannot help but wonder if Preventstyle intervention may have had some role in this situation? As personally culpable and actually repellent as I find Westwood to be, he is the product of a machine and one cog in a juggernaut, of a magnitude of which we are nowhere near fully aware.

DOES PREVENT ALSO WORK TO LIMIT THE VISIBILITY OF CRITICAL VOICES IN THE ARTS? As Roaa Ali points out, ostensibly the arts are protected from state censorship as established by the Theatres Act of 1968; however, that did not stop government interference blocking the performance of the play Homeland by Omar El-Khairy and Nadia Latif, about the Trojan Horse 208

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affair, on the basis that it had ‘an extremist agenda’.9 The key to Prevent’s ubiquity is its invisibility and recently there is concerted effort by government lawyers to prevent the making public of documentation detailing the Research, Information and Communications Unit’s activities vis-à-vis Prevent. What we do know is this unit within the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism has been producing radio shows for Prevent. The leaking of documents revealed ­previously that these forays into the arts were ­tailor-made to cultivate ‘attitudinal and behavioural change’ among what they termed ‘Prevent audiences’, demarcated as British Muslim men between the ages of fifteen and thirty-nine.10 As David Miller has pointed out, Prevent seems to require public sector employees to violate the 2010 Equality Act, which stipulates that one should not discriminate against someone on the basis of their religion. Supposedly Prevent is not about Muslims, but how then could one explain the allocating of Prevent funding to boroughs proportionate to their Muslim populations between 2008 and 2011, as pointed out by Damien Breen in his important book Muslim Schools, Communities and Critical Race Theory?11 Interestingly, over that same period from 2006 to 2014, only 0.7 per cent of terrorist attacks in all EU countries were carried out by Muslims.12 It seems threat inflation is essential to this machinery. Israeli writer Yuval David once made the following carefree pronouncement from an Intelligence Squared stage, that when considering the amount of people who die annually from obesity, ‘McDonalds and Coca-Cola are a greater threat to your life than al-Qaeda or ISIS.’13 To some that will seem a crass and tasteless statement, but I am certain no one among the organisers or attendees of his sold-out talk even thought of referring him to Prevent. 209

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The eminent writer and lecturer Will Self, at a debate titled ‘Who Created Jihadi John’ in 2015, said: I’m afraid to say and this may be shocking to you that I see no moral distinction between people who pick up guns and fight for armies in conflicts that are not questions of existential defence of their family and their homeland, but on the contrary aggressive, I see no distinction between them and violent jihadists at all.14

Tony Benn once said, ‘I see no moral difference between a stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. They both kill innocent people for political reasons.’15 None of these men were referred to Prevent for these statements – and rightly so – because of the way they are racialised within the present societal context. Far tamer statements made in public by Muslims have led to reputational, material, emotional and psychological ruin.

THE VIOLENCE OF BORDER STOPS As I flash back to the conclusion of our Schedule 7 detention in 2016, I remember the feeling as each of us returned from separate questioning to sit in the car and wait for our passports. We felt unsafe, and unsure about what kind of bureaucratic violence was being aimed at us. What was going on here? Eventually our friendly, manipulative, psychological warrior sauntered back to the car carrying our passports. It seemed we were free to go, but ever concerned for our well-being, he hadn’t quite finished yet. As the committed anti-racist he wanted us to think he was, he sought to see how we felt about Islamophobia but the direction in which he nudged us was telling: I just wanted to know, lads, if you have felt any backlash from all the crap in the press? You know they are our worst 210

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Grappling with shadows enemy because they make our jobs so much harder. You know, people like Polly Toynbee saying, ‘it’s Islam, you know,’ I just wanted to see if you lads have faced any backlash? If you have, I can just feed it back into the system and say, well, there is this perception whether rightly or wrongly.

We knew what he was trying extract from us. More information to algorithmise our behaviour. My friend in the driver’s seat in a valiant but not very convincing effort tried to brandish the shield of conviviality as some sort of defence from this physiological manipulation, ‘I don’t know, officer, I’m from London; it is very multicultural and diverse, everyone loves each other, you know.’ Our friendly manipulator wasn’t buying it. He now directed his comments to the two in the back of the car, ‘You know it is a terrible law and we hate doing it but if there was any way you have felt backlash from all the rubbish in the media I can just feed it back into the system.’ At which point my other friend, perhaps unable to bear the disingenuous pretence of safeguarding any longer, in as non-threatening a voice as possible, burst forth, ‘You know, officer, the only backlash I have faced is these times when we have come to Calais and we get stopped and the others … don’t.’ The manipulator shot back instantaneously, ‘and why do you think that is?’ My friend not wanting to escalate the situation but propelled by a small flame of righteous indignation said, ‘I think it’s because of our race … but that’s just my opinion,’ as if to leave open the possibility that he was wrong and this institutional discrimination was all just a simple ­misunderstanding between friends. In retrospect I found it fascinating that this tricky character was trying to direct our attention towards the media 211

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as the most important spectre of racism in our society. He was trying to guide our understanding of racism and how it functions away from the state and towards individuals. According to Gary Younge, based on figures he procured from the Office for National Statistics, on average there are three attacks against Muslims daily in this country.16 Data from the police records has shown that between 2017 and 2018 there were on average twenty-nine hate crimes a day, with babies included among the victims. These are very worrying figures. Rather than understanding racism as something which requires state intervention – as a benign neutral arbiter – our analysis must understand the relationship between the state, the media and what happens on the street as symbiotic. What starts at the macro level manifests on a micro level. The way individuals behave is often a manifestation of the system, not the other way around.

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16 THAT’S BECAUSE I’VE READ Hoda Katebi

On 31 January 2018 I woke up at 5.30 a.m., prayed fajr, ate a quick breakfast of noon paneer na’na o khiyar, and decided that, although my black shirt that reads thawra in white, bold Arabic letters would not be legible on TV for my live interview in an hour, I put it on anyway. It’s the thought that counts, I told myself. I decided to pair the shirt with a jacket on top to balance what I assumed would be seen as a threatening shirt; after all, as a visibly Muslim woman, I know that oftentimes what we wear can subliminally – or actively – be used to pre-emptively dismiss our voices before even having the chance to use them. All clothing is inherently political, and especially when we dress in ways that sit outside what is White, secular, and of a particular socioeconomic class, it is at times the only thing that is ever heard, read, and listened to about us. Anyway, it was cold outside. This is a Chicago January morning, after all. Well, that’s at least the short version of what I told myself to justify wearing a jacket over a shirt that partially expresses my politics on my (literal) sleeves. 213

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I deliberated between a smart blazer or a ‘bomber jacket’, as they’re called; a deliberation less of sartorial taste or functionality (let’s be honest, the weather never really did affect my understanding of what is appropriate to step outside the house in) but a deliberation of the battle I wanted to fight today. A decision between taking advantage of, but also therefore playing into, societal notions of class and masculinity and their associations with intelligence by wearing a broad-shouldered blazer, or giving myself the additionally difficult task of also simultaneously fighting visual assumptions of class, academic background, and ageism of someone dressed more ‘casually’ for a TV interview – especially paired with a hijab, which carries its own set of racist and classist assumptions. I downed what was left of my cup of black Persian chai and went with the latter. Well, now I better not mess this up – a mental catchphrase that is repeated, I’m sure, always on cue for anyone who is placed in often tokenizing spaces and asked to ­represent – oftentimes against our will – our communities. If I say the ‘wrong things’, my whole community could suffer as a result; an indescribable pressure many of us have normalized as part of life’s everyday stressors. To compromise with my more inciting side, I picked a hijab that had poetry in Persian letters on it. Of course, the viewers would not know the difference between centuriesold poetry in Persian and suggesting a revolution in Arabic, but, my body was adorned with a layered visual combination of Persian, Arabic, unassuming colours and prints, and unforgiving black that felt as delicately and intentionally balanced as I knew the line of questioning towed by any interviewer asking me questions on live TV in the US would be. Well, or so I thought.

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THE INTERVIEW Ahead of the interview, they asked for photos of my book Tehran Streetstyle, which I sent. I was invited to speak about my work in the fashion industry: specifically, photography from my book celebrating illegal fashion in Iran (and challenging Western Orientalist narratives but that part was clearly lost on them), and development of Blue Tin Production, an all-women, immigrant, and refugee-run apparel manufacturing workers co-operative. Historically, my work in the fashion industry has been both focused on working towards structural change within one of the most destructive and powerful industries on earth, while simultaneously taking advantage of fashion’s universal, ubiquitous relevance as a reference point to render complex, global social justice issues more accessible to a broader audience. Essentially, both a means to an end and an end in and of itself. But, a cursory Google search won’t tell you that, only helping my case further and getting me and my politics into more doors through a facade of ‘apolitical’ fashion. After arriving on set, waiting for the weatherperson to finish detailing yet another upcoming blizzard heading towards Chicago, and mentoring the two co-presenters Robin Baumgarten and Larry Potash on how to pronounce my name and website, we were live. An Orientalist introduction and an ‘oh boy’ pause and ‘say it for me’ (referring to the pronunciation of my website, JooJoo Azad, we had rehearsed only moments before) and then the questions began. After a few questions regarding what seemed to be their attempt at understanding the bizarrerie of someone who looked like me being born and raised in Oklahoma, USA, the questions seemed to slowly take a new turn. 215

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They showed images from Iran on the screen – not the ones I took in contemporary Iran that they had asked for and I had emailed them in advance, but of colourful images of young, trendy women in miniskirts walking the streets of Tehran prior to the revolution, juxtaposed with black-andwhite photographs of older women in black chadors with fists raised. They proceeded to ask if I would like to see Iran go back to that, before women were wearing hijabs. My eyes rolled to the back of my head. It’s going to be another one of ‘these’ interviews. Fine. If you say so. The question itself carried layers of Orientalist and sexist tropes. In one question the presenters were able to equate women’s liberation and oppression to simply the ways in which they dress, and simultaneously strip a particular moment from its historical context in a way that supports Orientalist narratives. Hijabs would always only be oppressive, and miniskirts the visualization of freedom: the epitome of reductive and patriarchal policing of women’s bodies as a marker of morality and modernity, and its marriage to foreign policy. Not to mention that the selective images of women in Iran before and after the revolution parallel any Google search today: most of the images of women before the revolution are in bright colours, feature typically young women, and women laughing, smiling, and having a great time. Google ‘women in Iran after the revolution’, and the entire image search is black and white, older women in all black, angrily yelling in the streets. Orientalism’s dichotomies at its finest, replicated through racist algorithms. And they were at play again now. To answer the question, I critiqued the premise and pushed them further, ‘If we want to talk about women’s rights, we should be talking about their socioeconomic status and not what they’re wearing.’ 216

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Apparently, they weren’t too happy with that answer. So things escalated. ‘Let’s talk about nuclear weapons,’ Larry blurts. I laugh, and agree. Though I could have also challenged the very premise of this question – why a conversation about fashion has suddenly jumped into an interrogation of nuclear weapons and foreign policy – I decided to humour him, knowing they don’t realize I would be able to respond. Of course, the reason why I am asked this question is blatantly clear: my identity is continuously tokenized, politicized, and only acts as an object of study rather than a site of knowledge production in and of itself. I am somehow simultaneously an expert on all things related to Iranian politics and a voice that is hyper-subjective, biased, and ‘too close to my subject’. I am given the ability to speak, but only insofar as it does not act as a site of knowledge itself, but a basis for White commentators to analyse and transform into ‘legitimate’ knowledge. My voice is only valid when it is confirming White commentators’ agendas and is framed in a way that upholds the status quo (as Spivak describes the role of the ‘native informant’1), or can be used by White commentators to produce knowledge from. In this particular example, this tokenization becomes hyper-evident when compared to a parallel scenario: bringing on a White chef to discuss his latest recipes, and suddenly asking him about his thoughts on the rise of White supremacy and why he hasn’t condemned its violence. This line of questioning would be impossible to imagine in this example, and yet that is the exact trajectory this interview took on live TV given my identity as a visible Muslim, Iranian woman. ‘We cannot trust Iran. What are your thoughts on this?’ Larry continues. 217

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I begin, with a bit of hesitation, knowing very well this is going to only escalate further, and not quite sure how to answer such an open-ended question, ‘Well, I don’t think we can trust this country. I mean what has this country done to the majority of the countries in the Middle East? I don’t believe Iran has nuclear weapons … but when we look at the legacy of this country and the violence that it has not only created but created the capacity for, I mean, the majority of the weapons in the Middle East were even brought in by the US—’ ‘You’re American,’ Robin interrupts. ‘Yes,’ I try to continue. ‘You don’t sound like an American.’ I laugh again. ‘That’s because I’ve read.’ I finally ended my sentence, the presenters quickly switched back to a final question about my fashion work (I was cut off halfway through my answer), and the cameras cut. Robin shakes my hand, Larry refuses to extend his, and I leave. Yep, just another interview.

RACISM AND SURVEILLANCE And yet, despite how regular the whole experience felt, this interview and experience was important to share online and with the world beyond the regular morning-news watchers in Chicago: it was a moment in which the latent racism, tokenization, and Orientalism of Muslims and people of colour that is most often well camouflaged behind strategic word choices and more delicately balanced transitions was made blatantly evident and irrefutable. The facade was disrupted. I was told on live television that I ‘do not sound American’ 218

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only minutes after discussing my experiences of being born and raised in Oklahoma. This statement is incredibly hyperpoliticized and would only ever be said to someone who fits the typecast of ‘foreign’, immigrant, and outside of the borders of White, secular, liberalism. Our White chef from the last example would never be given such an accusation if he responded to the question proposed to him about rising White supremacy with an answer that implicated the US in its history of White supremacist violence. At worst, the presenters would just roll their eyes and move on, and at best he would be paraded as a ‘woke’ civil rights hero by viewers. And yet, despite the fact that our White chef could even be an Italian immigrant and the fact that I am a US-bornand-raised citizen, I will only and always be seen foreign, incompatible with societal norms, and even potentially threatening according to state surveillance programmes. Muslims, and particularly visible Muslims, in the US find themselves feeling forced to ‘prove’ patriotism time after time without ever becoming ‘American enough’. Despite the fact that a large percentage of Black slaves forcibly brought to this colonized land were Muslim, and Muslims have existed in the ‘Americas’ prior to even the creation of the first English colony in 1607,2 they have been racialized in the US either as ‘Black Muslims’ portrayed as a militant political group hiding behind a facade of religion3 or as ‘immigrant Muslims’ who are always foreign, suspicious, and an invasive species. Here, Shepard Fairey’s rendering of a woman wearing an American flag hijab in an Obama campaign-style portrait comes to mind as a reference point of this sentiment’s popularity in mainstream ‘progressive’ or ‘liberal’ spaces. An attempt at inclusion becomes one of exclusion and violence. Patriotism ultimately is inherently violent and 219

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oppressive; and especially so within ideas of the nationstate and Whiteness that were constructed only in opposition to a racist and Orientalist caricature of what it is not.4 Patriotism in stolen land, forced labour, and institutions and borders erected to maintain White supremacy is nothing more than patriotism towards White supremacy. Assimilation into these structures is only assimilation into White supremacy and the associated classism. An image of a visibly Muslim woman dressed in an black abaya or a bearded man in salwar-kameez could never be the trending image of Muslims in progressive spaces that is being uplifted and pasted on protest signs: unless there is some rejection of identity in order to ‘prove’ Americanness – like draping an American flag as a hijab – there is a basic understood level of foreignness and incompatibility. Parallel to this is another binary: America should not be questioned, yet your ancestral homeland – the other half of your hyphenated identity – must be ferociously denounced and deemed untrustworthy. I was told that I ‘do not sound like an American’ after being told that they ‘do not trust Iran’ and I replied, ‘I do not trust America.’ In this three-second interaction alone, the deep contradictions and ­doublethink of what it would actually then mean to ‘sound American’ come to light: mistrust of governments ends with the US. While of course both the Iranian and US governments are deeply corrupt, Americans – or at least those who ‘sound American’ – are only ever permitted to critique the former. Of course, it only becomes exceptionally important to ‘prove’ this level of loyalty for those who are not White, and especially for those who are Muslim. Telling a visibly Muslim woman on live TV that she does ‘not sound American’ is incredibly dangerous and has lasting consequences. My refusing to play into these 220

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aforementioned binary categorizations of the world can not only incite violent harassment and verbal accosting, but even provoke a consistent stream of harassment and threats of violence online, and (additional) state surveillance. Surveillance programmes in the US specifically use ­everyday Muslim behaviours as well as expressions of political dissent to create a rubric of criminality. Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) is a state-funded surveillance programme in the US, inspired by the devastatingly violent and infamous Prevent ‘counter-terrorism’ surveillance programme in the UK, and coupled with existing failed racist surveillance programmes in the US that target gang violence.5 Wearing a hijab, growing a beard, or critiques of US policies on Facebook, among other normal, everyday activities, are listed under CVE as behaviours of radicalization. So a simple accusation that I ‘do not sound American’ because, as a Muslim woman, I find this country’s colonial history, indigenous erasure, and unending global violence problematic is akin to being flagged by the Department of Homeland Security as a radicalized threat, which, for a Muslim woman engaged in community organizing, is no small accusation with lasting consequences. This criminalization of ‘Muslimness’ feeds directly into the ways I get interpreted, read, and engaged with on live TV, in that interview, and countless others before and after. It’s inescapable and predictable, yet continually reductive and delegitimizing. And yet, despite this, there is a partial way out of such representation projects and delegitimization: to denounce; to weaponize experiences and identities in a way that works to uphold the status quo on the backs of the wider community.

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THE GOOD MUSLIM/BAD MUSLIM For a vivid example, we can look to ‘ex-Muslims’ or ‘Muslim reformers’ such as Asra Nomani and the ways in which she positions herself with respect to hijab-wearing Muslim women in order to create power and validation for herself while simultaneously recreating and reconfirming pre-existing biases and racism at others’ expense. In May 2016, I sat on a panel with Asra Nomani at the Chicago Humanities Festival. I was twenty and this was one of my first major speaking engagements, and Asra a veteran journalist, author, speaker, and professor. Interestingly enough, I had also intentionally chosen to wear the same Persian poetry hijab and same Black shirt with Arabic lettering suggesting revolution as I did two years later for the WGN interview in what turned out to be a similar conversation in many ways. Asra was a self-proclaimed ‘Muslim feminist reformer’, and a conversation that was supposed to be focused on ‘hijab and fashion’ in the US quickly spiralled into a hostile debate about global international politics, and a game of ‘how many things should Hoda condemn before she is allowed to speak’. The irony of this game – in which the audience was more than an eager participant, yelling things like ‘how about Saudi Arabia?!’ when I was discussing American corporate exploitation of hijab-wearing garment workers – was unfortunately lost on the audience. Again, to begin breaking apart this panel, we must start with questioning the very premise of the panel’s set-up: the Chicago Humanities Festival, eager to show ‘both sides’ of ideas about the hijab, decided to place on a panel someone who wears the hijab, and someone who labels it oppressive and on the conveyor belt to radicalization. This set-up is a 222

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hallmark of liberal understandings of creating ‘open dialogue’ and bringing together ‘two sides’. We see it in spaces across the Western world routinely: on college campuses forcing Students for Justice in Palestine groups to ‘break falafel’ with Zionist students, university administration responding to student protests of Steve Bannon speaking on campus with instructions to just ‘bring the other side to campus’, and media outlets comparing the #BlackLivesMatter movement to the #BlueLivesMatter campaign or Klu Klux Klan. These set-ups are deeply problematic and dangerous for many reasons: first and foremost, they create an illusion of an ‘equal playing field’; simply by putting two people at a table, they are somehow equal in merit, power, and perspective. One group advocating for human rights for all people is not the ‘other side’ of a genocidal White supremacist group. There is no ‘conflict’ or ‘two sides’ between Israel and Palestine; it is an illegal apartheid state militarily occupying an indigenous people. Placing these two perspectives in conversation works to validate the arguments in favour of the violence against a people, and delegitimize the integrity of those advocating for human rights. These sorts of equivocations, moreover, always create an imbalance of power, as one party will always be in the defensive, having to justify their very humanity while the other side inherently takes an offensive; the oppressed must fight for survival while oppressor simply advocates for an advancement of their power. The other side of Steve Bannon is not Bernie Sanders; the opposite of calling for the genocide of Muslims is not someone saying that Muslims are not, in fact, a cancer that needs to be eradicated, but someone who advocates for the genocide of White people while being in a position of power in a land where White people are a disenfranchised minority 223

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facing systemic violence. While, of course, I am not in the slightest suggesting that university campuses should invite such people, if they even exist, but showing rather what a true ‘balance of perspectives’ would look like. In the case of this panel, if the Chicago Humanities Festival was looking for two sides of the hijab question, the two sides would consist of a Muslim religious scholar who believes that hijab is mandatory and another Muslim religious scholar would argue that it is not mandatory. But this would also then be a theological conversation for a Muslim community, and not for an audience of White, nonMuslim, older, and primarily upper-class women and men. Instead, the panel comprised someone who wears the hijab and advocates for garment worker rights (the majority of whom are Muslim women) and someone who formerly testified before the House Committee on Homeland Security that the hijab is on ‘the conveyor belt to radicalization’,6 and that ‘poor women come to believe that to be pious … you must look at the world through this netting’, while holding up a burqa. The panel’s inevitable doom was a challenge I was willing to take on, despite truthfully not being ready for it or the onslaught of harassment I received during and after the panel from audience members, online viewers, and later, Asra’s Twitter followers. Asra’s positions and our incredibly friendly panel act as a more easily identifiable example of what it looks like to take up the politics of performativity and denunciation. Yet, while many of us thankfully do not sell out ourselves and communities for an ability to step up the social ladder of White supremacy, it is important to acknowledge that most, if not all, of us make similar negotiations of identity, principle, and faith every day. 224

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THE POLITICS OF PERFORMATIVITY After all, it is important to note that we are currently experiencing both a heightened level of anti-Muslim racism and xenophobic policies and simultaneously heightened levels of Muslim visibility in media, fashion, and cultural spaces in the US and UK. While it may seem as if there is something quizzical about this happening simultaneously, placing these two moments in conversation with each other can produce a rather illuminating answer: having a ‘seat at the table’ does not necessarily mean that you are no longer on the menu. This is a historical lesson we can learn by understanding the rise and fall of the Black civil rights movement in the US in the 1960s, anyone who thought that Obama’s tenure as the first Black president of the US would inherently bring value to the African American community (rather than a presidency under which more Black people were shot and killed by the police force than ever before), or that now, in our contemporary moment, Nike Pro Hijabs and fastfashion brands’ ‘Ramadan Collections’ are an important step for producing Muslim representation that supports the Muslim community at large: representation does not replace liberation. While Nike continues to win awards for its ‘ingenuity’ in developing a sportswear hijab, Muslim garment workers experiencing mass gender-based violence and exploitation in Nike sweatshops in Indonesia continue to call on Muslims in the Western world for their solidarity. While more visible Muslims rising in the ranks of police departments and military forces are celebrated by our community, our larger ummah in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Guantanamo, and across the world continues to be subject to the terror of the state we pay taxes to. 225

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As we see in the interplay between the WGN interview and panel conversation with Asra, it is possible to step outside of the violence of the White gaze and the systems that are rooted in it: to either question the premise and resist the world-view they are suggesting entirely, or gain the favour of the White audience by playing the part and assuming roles within and enabling violent institutions. ‘Playing the part’ is always only ever a rigged game played out on a White supremacist gameboard. Rather, we must reject the notions of ‘inclusivity’ within structures of violence, and build power and agency within our own communities in ways that are globalized, intersectional, and truly liberating. It is vital that we, as Muslims, do not compromise our identities or lend them to violent institutions to justify the oppression of our own or other communities. The politics of performativity is alluring and all-surrounding. While complicity seems mainstream and almost inevitable, living our most unapologetic and authentic lives is the most basic and fundamental form of resistance in and of itself.

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17 MY ART IS FOR MY PEOPLE Aamer Rahman

At a rooftop cafe in Üsküdar Istanbul in late 2019, Aamer Rahman and I sat down for breakfast overlooking the Bosphorus. As we were discussing this volume, I decided to record the conversation as an interview in order to capture Aamer’s thoughts on a range of subjects. The conversation touched on his career as a comedian and activist in Australia, but more reflectively on how he managed to carve out a space for himself in an industry and environment where it is difficult to remain true to yourself while being an entertainer.1

Asim Qureshi (AQ): I find it difficult to place you at times. Clearly, you are a comedian with a strong political message, but it seems to me that your art is somewhat counterintuitive in that it would probably turn off the vast majority of Australian society. How do you see your own comedy in light of these very strong political opinions you hold? Aamer Rahman (AR): I think I can exist a bit outside of the world of comedy because I cultivated my own audience. I was only ever going to perform for people who understood what I was saying. It isn’t about converting people 227

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politically. Like my ‘Reverse Racism’ or ‘Punching Nazi’ bits – they were never going to convince someone that reverse racism wasn’t real. These bits were much more about giving a voice to people like me who are exhausted by the world they live in. So much of my comedy comes from a place where it’s a foregone conclusion that we’re not going to stop racism soon – so let’s laugh about it because we have to endure it day in day out. AQ: When did you realise you’d become a comedian? AR: I think the minute you are on stage with a microphone and people are laughing then that’s it – that’s the moment you are a comedian. The start for me came from a random incident when my friend Nazeem, whom I would go on to form ‘Fear of a Brown Planet’ with, entered an open-mic competition and I entered the same one two weeks later. Seeing him doing it, and having been a comedy fan myself for years, made me think that I could do it, too. AQ: Your range of references within your comedy seem very diverse. Can you tell us something about the influences that shaped you growing up, but particularly those that helped to shape your political outlook? AR: I guess the art I grew up on, music and comedy, was just about feeling understood. Being able to listen to something and say to myself that I’m not just losing my mind when I get upset about racism. Here were people saying things that I could understand. Chris Rock, Dave Chapelle, Rage Against the Machine, Public Enemy, KRS-One – political comedy and political hip hop. The fact that the existence of racism was never debated – that it was a given – made me feel like I was understood. There is value in just that. I was politically active before I ever thought of becoming 228

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a comedian. For me comedy was always going to be a way of relaying ideas, that it was always going to be a tool. I was involved in organising around issues to do with asylum, racism, social justice and was heavily involved in the student movement – well really, at the dying end of the Australian student movement. And the music and comedy I loved was political, and so I think my comedy was always going to be like that. I’ve never been into comedy just for the sake of comedy, which a lot of people are – some people just love the art form, they love and need the constant interaction with an audience, and that’s cool. But if I don’t have a solid bunch of ideas and political concepts to put together and put out there, then sometimes I’ll just disappear for years. Don’t get me wrong, I love this art, and I realise it has a way of reaching a lot of people. It was able to have an impact in a way that was well beyond anything else I had done. But the problem with a lot of political art, especially now, is that it becomes the focus of everything. We love to hear a celebrity endorse a particular campaign, or to see a particular celebrity retweet a campaign slogan, but for me political art can never replace actual organising. I think we are infatuated with celebrity and social media clout, and more and more I’ve seen a branch of activism evolve into this constant seeking of validation – creating brands around individuals, which I think is to the detriment of any movement. AQ: In your mind, then, is representation by people of colour potentially disenfranchising, in that it stops any meaningful movement towards change? AR: Representation does matter, at least in some small ways. But it isn’t a coincidence that the Trump era has 229

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been met with this push for more diversity, visibility and representation – so much talk about seeing Black and Brown people on screen – because it’s an easy way to push back. Surely Barack Obama’s election taught us what representation can quickly become – which is occupying the positions of power with little or no structural change. But now, the public rhetoric from elected officials is so openly vicious, the face of the machine is so ugly and the options to resist are so limited, I guess these minor things give us comfort when people feel powerless. The conversation needs to be as much about values as representation. If someone makes a TV show about a Muslim cop, then everyone loses their mind because ‘this is so different’, and the character hasn’t been written as a terrorist. But it’s using a person of colour to legitimise – and let’s be honest, glorify – a repressive institution. These stories are so insidious, these shows and movies that glorify secret agents and police – the same institutions that have been incarcerating Black and Brown people domestically and internationally for as long as we can remember. It’s a reversal of reality that forces us to pretend that one of us playing a role like this must be a victory. It’s difficult for me to say, because I want the industry to diversify, otherwise I won’t have any work! But at the same time, I often find myself holding my tongue when people celebrate representation because I find it hollow. AQ: Black Panther? AR: I can’t say anything even mildly critical of Black Panther because of how much I enjoyed it … but if only there was a way that movie could be remade without including the CIA as heroes – that would be great!

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AQ: How has your art managed to exist outside of the power structures that are inherent within the comedy world? AR: In terms of my own art, wider society has done an excellent job of mostly ignoring me! I’m not that well known. When we first started performing as ‘Fear of a Brown Planet’ we were writing and performing for our own community. We would do festivals and shows that would be sold out immediately by Muslims and other people of colour. The festivals would be in awe, scratching their heads, wondering where all these Black and Brown people were coming from – because these were just not the kinds of audiences that traditionally attended or felt welcome at arts/comedy/ fringe festivals. So we were very lucky from the beginning that we had this giant cushion under us. We didn’t have to fight through open-mic nights in front of White crowds. We just went directly to people like us and they supported us. There was never any intention when we started for it to be some kind of outreach exercise – I can’t see how it could have been. People say that art has the power to ‘build bridges’, but I honestly believe that if a racist person saw my comedy … they would actually become more racist! I genuinely think it would really provoke them to hating Brown people more – but it was never for them. I’ve had Brown people come up to me and say that before watching my stuff they thought it was the right thing to do – to debate fascists – but now don’t any more. That’s who I want to reach. For the White mainstream, there is no way of swaying ideas through a comedy show; that would be completely naive. AQ: What would it take for you to go mainstream? AR: I actually don’t know what it would take to go mainstream. I wonder if it would require the endorsement of one or more very famous White people. If I imagined how my art 231

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could possibly penetrate the mainstream, I think it would literally require a White person with authority to grant permission for it to be acceptable – that these ideas are okay, that this is ‘cool’. It’s just the reality of the industry. AQ: You’ve spoken about how you’ve managed to be yourself in this world, but in what ways does your industry structurally inhibit you from exercising your art? AR: I think it’s just so easy for them to ignore me. Just by ignoring me. As an artist, you are basically the bottom of the food chain. Artists don’t control venues, festivals or events; they don’t control management agencies. Artists are traded like pieces on a chessboard. The easiest thing the entertainment industry can do is just to ignore you; they don’t have to give you opportunities. When we are talking about institutions, we are talking about maintaining and recycling values: media, law enforcement, art and entertainment. These are structures that perpetuate sets of ideas. If you come along and attempt to disrupt that, the entertainment industry can just say, ‘Sorry, but we just don’t have the space! We already have a Brown person who’s willing to say what the White people are saying. We’re happy to have that person on our inclusive line-up.’ No executive or producer has ever been dumb enough to directly ask me to turn my jokes on my own community, but I definitely know that if I had done that, I would be much more successful. Sometimes I feel caged by this. Not in the sense that I want to do it, but more in the sense that I have to reckon with the fact that I’m definitely not where I would like to be, or where White people I started out with are now. It also depends on how political someone is to begin with. For some people, there is no sacrifice – they don’t feel 232

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compromised to begin with. There is a club, and if you fit the dress code, you come in, and if not, then you stay outside. It’s just this invisible screen. I should also say that this isn’t necessarily imposed in a malicious way. I don’t think executives and producers sit around a table and say to themselves, ‘That person tweeted about Palestine so we can’t have them.’ People just slowly develop a picture of you, and when a script or opportunity comes up, subconsciously they just don’t associate you with being the person they want. It just becomes this automated process. AQ: Is this how you refuse to condemn? AR: I think my art really starts from the premise that I don’t think that I can turn the system around. But there still has to be a group of people who point to the absurdity of our situation, who say that these circumstances are just ridiculous and unacceptable, even if it’s through a joke. A joke is the mildest form of criticism, but at least it’s something. So I refuse to change my politics to meet their expectations. AQ: We’ve been talking about ethics, but does being a practising Muslim add another layer to existing in these spaces? AR: Definitely. There are a lot of things politically that an otherwise left-wing artist would do for reasons that I would never do. There’s actually a whole bunch of stuff as a Muslim that I would and could never do. Those things – for example, a sex or kissing scene – it’s not hard to say no, but it is hard to explain to someone in show business why I wouldn’t do that, and so it becomes easier just to turn it down without explaining. We’ll never have a conversation as to why, religiously, this is difficult ground for me. Particularly, Western comedy is pushing back against conservative Christianity, that any notion of religion, or 233

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what is seen as sexual conservatism or prudishness, is really a red flag for people. People genuinely have no concept of Islam beyond it being just a more brutal and scary version of their scariest idea of Christianity, and so practising Muslims are never written into their scripts – because we exist outside of their imagination. AQ: What impact has this had on you? What is the cost for you and your family? AR: If I honestly weigh the costs of taking this decision, I’ve still done okay. Because I know what the real scale of the costs of speaking out can actually be for people – I’m not being arbitrarily detained or tortured, for instance. It’s also because I realised very early on (probably the desi in me) that throwing myself full time into comedy was not going to work, that I would not be able to make a living off comedy while being this political. So I worked in car washes, did youth work, worked for NGOs, a patchwork of things that meant I was never truly reliant on that one world, which albeit was incredibly frustrating but also cushioned me from being completely broke. If I had deluded myself into thinking that comedy was viable as a full-time career, then I think it would have been far more difficult. AQ: How much hate did you receive for the ‘Punch a Nazi’ video? AR: Most of the hate I received online was from so-called well-meaning liberals, not from Nazis. I fully expected to be swarmed by fascists online. Thinking it through though – given that the far right want to kill us – they probably figured: ‘well yeah, of course they want to punch us.’ With liberals, it’s actually hilarious, because they actually 234

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respond with every single thing that I predict in the clip. Nazis are not going to change, but liberals have the ability to normalise the ideas of the Nazis. They have the ability to determine whether or not Nazi ideas are given a platform. They are the ones who decided to give people like Richard Spencer a platform. That was the liberal media. It’s the reason why a lot of my comedy is actually absurd, imaginary conversations with liberals – they are based on real conversations that I’ve actually had. If I never do comedy again, I can look back at ‘Reverse Racism’ and ‘Punch a Nazi’ and be happy. For me, it’s about what the art is good for. I literally don’t care what the impact is beyond what it does for my community, because it was only ever for them. Hate from outsiders doesn’t matter, but if my own people told me that I had sold out, or that I had betrayed them, then that would hurt a lot. AQ: As a final question, in terms of how you resist in all the small and large ways, how have you sought to reclaim yourself? AR: I remember being asked to audition for this reality TV documentary with a Muslim lead character who ‘investigates’ the Muslim community. I went in to meet the production company and literally one of their first questions was, ‘What kind of Muslim are you?’ I was floored. I had no frame of reference for what they were asking. They asked if I prayed once a day or five times a day – so not what kind of Muslim I was, but how Muslim I was. It turned out that what they were looking for was someone who was not secure in their Muslim identity, because they needed that character to go through some kind of development. They wanted someone insecure in their Islam to go through staged interactions with people either considered extreme 235

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or liberal. They wanted to chart that journey. I laugh now – because imagine if I’d done the show, gone through the ‘journey’ and just come out at the end saying, ‘There’s no hope for the West.’ Growing up in 1990s Australia, there was just nothing, there was no art or discourse that was relatable to me. For sixteen-year-old Aamer in high school – when Pauline Hanson first emerged on the political scene – that public racism became a reason why I took refuge in music and comedy to validate my anger. If my comedy helps other people to validate their experiences, their frustrations and their anger, then what more can art do than that?

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glossary

GLOSSARY

abaya ahadith (sing. hadith) fajr Hijrah ihsanic insha’Allah jumu‘ah

A long, loose-fitting overgarment Traditions of the Prophet Muhammad

Pre-dawn Islamic prayer Emigration to Muslim lands A spiritual state of being aware of God ‘By the will of God’ The Islamic congregational prayer on Friday afternoon khalo Maternal aunt maghrib Sunset Islamic prayer mujtahid An authority on the interpretation of Islamic law noon paneer na’na Persian cheese-and-walnut wrap o khiyar Ramadan Month of the Islamic calendar in which Muslims abstain from food, drink and sexual relations between dawn and sunset 237

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glossary

salwar-kameez shahid Tarawih thawra

Loose clothing worn by men and women in South Asia Martyr Night-time prayers during the Islamic month of Ramadan Revolution

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acknowledgements

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

All praise is due to Allah alone. My thankfulness to Him could never even cover an atom of what is due to Him, for everything He has given me in my life and work. Those who don’t thank the creation, don’t thank Allah, and so I would like to acknowledge just some of those who have been on this journey. There came a moment in late February 2015 when the realisation dawned on me that the only person in the world who was willing to go on the record publicly, that they had met the infamous ISIS executioner Jihadi John before he became the killer, was me. This wasn’t something I wanted or asked for, but I also knew that it would mean a degree of media harassment that I did not want to subject my family to. A day before The Washington Post would reveal its story, quoting me, I had been busy contacting my brothers-in-law asking them to come to London to pick up my family and keep them safe. My wife, Samira, and our three boys, Haytham, Aadam and Sulayman, really have been the rock on which I’ve built 239

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my life. It’s impossible to quantify how much of their lives have been dictated by the decisions I’ve chosen to make, and the way they are forced to sacrifice their lives and time whenever I have to leave for another event, or research trip or any hundred other matters that continually separate us. They tell me they understand, but how can I ever repay them, other than to thank them for their kindness, and pray that the prayers of the oppressed that are at times extended to me in support also, in turn, extend to them – because I would never be able to do this without first Allah, and then them. I knew the media could be hostile and very aggressive in their door-stepping, but I wasn’t prepared for how vile they could be. My home and those of my parents and even my in-laws were being surrounded by the Daily Mail. I recall having to send emails to the tabloid through my lawyers confirming they would not publish the location of my home after death threats I had received at the CAGE office. My mother, Ammi, was in Pakistan at the time when the story broke, and was distraught over the coverage especially due to the hostility. Fortunately, she was around loving family, but I could not bear her anxiety, being so far removed. My mother has saved me from myself more times than I care to recount, and so to see her distressed was extremely difficult. My father, Abu, was already home from that trip, and we had advised him for his own sanity not to answer the door to any journalists. Abu, being the person he is, couldn’t stand back and I was told how he opened the door to the Daily Mail journalist who immediately started to pepper him with questions about me and the work that I did. Abu replied: I support my son in everything he does.

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Acknowledgements

And unceremoniously closed the door. Abu, I love you for that and so much more. I also know the journalist was fortunate that Ammi wasn’t around. I have another Ammi, though, the one who became my mother through my marriage to Samira. It wasn’t just that the media went after me, their jealously and hostility made them write about my in-laws, perhaps to drive a wedge between us. I remember at the time that the deepest period of anxiety I went through was worrying about how they would take all this – after all, this didn’t come with the package of marrying their daughter to me. And yet, despite this attempt at public humiliation, Ammi told me to carry on when I called to apologise, that they were behind me. It’s so hard to describe how unbelievably uplifting it is to have such a support network in these moments. It’s why I want to extend my sincere thanks to all the contributors in this volume. They were mostly chosen because they are people who have inspired me greatly in their lives and their ethics. They have taught me more than I could ever hope to repay. I hope that those who benefit from this book will seek to write to them and thank them for all they have put into defending our future – they take hits that are impossible to compensate. At times people only see the platform; they don’t see what it took to be visible in the public eye – often despite not wanting to be seen there. As always, I want to thank my CAGE family: Rabbani, Moazzam, Layla, Naila, Azad, Anwar, Anas, Shezana, Tahira, Alim, Ibrahim, Azfar, Halima, Zein and many others who have come and gone over the years, but never once failed in their commitment to trying to help those in most need. You all inspire me every single day. Also, to a little family who have been improving my thinking day by day, and who get the challenges we face, the #MuslimAcademics 241

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– you know who you are – jazakum Allah khayran (may God reward you all). Finally, to Jon de Peyer, Humairaa Dudhwala, Thomas Dark, Chris Hart and the whole team at Manchester University Press – thank you all, for your hard work and for supporting this project.

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notes

NOTES

INTRODUCTION 1 Jon Snow, Jihadi John Unmasked: Asim Qureshi on Mohammed Emwazi (Channel 4 News, 2015). 2 CAGE is an independent grassroots organisation striving for a world free of injustice and oppression. CAGE campaigns against discriminatory state policies and advocates for due process and the rule of law. CAGE works closely with survivors of abuse and mistreatment across the globe, documenting their abuse and enabling them to take action and access due process. 3 George R. R. Martin, A Storm of Swords 1: Steel and Snow (Harper Voyager, 2003), p. 601. 4 Paul Bracchi and Dominic Lemanski, ‘A very privileged apologist for evil: An heiress wife. A £700k Surrey home. How the public school educated “human rights” champion who praised Jihadi John lives the good life in the country he’s trying to destroy’, Daily Mail, 6 March 2015, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article​-​29​834​27/A​-pri vileged-apologist-evil-heiress-wife-700k-Su​rey-​home-pub​lic-scho​ol​ -educated-human-rights-champion-pra​is​ed​-​Jihadi-Jo​hn-l​ives-goodlife-country-s-trying-destroy.html (accessed 9 June 2020). 5 Charlotte Krol, ‘Mohammed Emwazi is “extremely gentle”, says British advocacy group Cage director’, The Telegraph, 26 February 2015, www.telegraph.co.​uk/​news/world​news/islam​ic-sta​te/114​3​ 7579/Moham​med-Emwazi-is-ext​remely-gen​tle-says-Brit​ish-adv​o​c​ acy-group-Cage-director.html (accessed 9 June 2020).

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notes 6 Peter Dominiczak, ‘David Cameron condemns Cage for blaming MI5 over radicalisation of Jihadi John’, The Telegraph, 27 February 2015, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cam​ e​ ron/11439605/David-Cameron-condemns-Cage-for-blam​ing-MI5​-​ over-radicalisation-of-Jihadi-John.html (accessed 9 June 2020). 7 Nicolas Watt, ‘Boris Johnson tells Cage research director to defend victims of Isis’, The Guardian, 2 March 2015, www.theguardian. com/politics/2015/mar/03/boris-johnson-cage-isis-london-mayorasim-qureshi-mohammed-emwazi (accessed 9 June 2020). 8 David Miller, Tom Mills and Narzanina Massoumi, ‘Apologists for terror or defenders of human rights? The Cage controversy in context’, Open Democracy, 31 July 2015, www.opendemocracy. net/en/opendemocracyuk/apologists-for-terror-or-defenders-of-hu​ man-righ/ (accessed 9 June 2020). 9 Asim Qureshi, ‘CAGE’s Asim Qureshi reviews explosive new book on “Jihadi John”’, Middle East Eye, 11 March 2016, www. middl​eeasteye.net/news/exclusive-cages-asim-qureshi-reviewsexplo​s​i​ve-new-book-jihadi-john (accessed 10 June 2020). 10 J. Mohammad, ‘External Review Report into CAGE’s handling of the Mohammed Emwazi Affair report’, CAGE, 19 October 2015, www.cage.ngo/external-review-report-cages-handling-mohamme​d ​-​e​m​w​a​zi-affair (accessed 9 June 2020). 11 Todd H. Green, Presumed Guilty: Why We Shouldn’t Ask Muslims to Condemn Terrorism (Fortress Press, 2018). 12 Sayeeda Warsi, The Enemy Within: A Tale of Muslim Britain (Allen Lane, 2017), p. 67. 13 Sara C. Nelson, ‘James O’Brien slams Daily Mail for putting terrorist murder verdict on page 30 amid backlash over tabloid’s Jo Cox coverage’, The Huffington Post, 24 November 2016, https:// guce.huffingtonpost.co.uk/copyConsent?sessionId=3_cc-ses​sion​_​7​ 55f7d57-ae3f-477d-b90a-709d7b4a54c9&inline=false&lang=en-gb (accessed 9 June 2016). 14 Chris Greenwood and Emine Sinmaz, ‘Did Neo-Nazi murder Jo over fear he’d lose council house he grew up in? Terrorist thought property could end up being occupied by an immigrant family – and the MP wouldn’t help him’, Daily Mail, 23 November 2016, www. dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3966766/Did-Neo-Nazi-murder-Jo-​f​ e​ar-d-lose-council-house-grew-Terrorist-thought-property-end-​oc​ cupied-immigrant-family-MP-wouldn-t-help-him.html (accessed 9 June 2016). 15 Asim Qureshi, A Virtue of Disobedience (Unbound and Byline Books, 2019), p. 36. 16 Harry Brent, ‘“The British Empire did more damage than the

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Notes Nazis” – claims Professor of black studies during GMB debate’, The Irish Post, 4 February 2020, www.irishpost.com/news/brit​ ish-empire-damage-nazis-claims-professor-black-studies-gmb-de​b​ ate-178762 (accessed 9 June 2020). 17 Talal Asad, Secular Translations (Columbia University Press, 2018), p. 34. 18 Frank B. Wilderson III, Red, White & Black: Cinema and the Structure of US Antagonisms (Duke University Press, 2010), p. 23. 19 Adam Zamoyski, The Phantom Terror: The Threat of Revolution and the Repression of Liberty 1789–1848 (William Collins, 2015). 20 Joseph Maggs, Fighting Sus! Then and Now (The Institute for Race Relations, 2019). 21 Areeb Ullah, ‘Schedule 7: Realities of the “digital strip search”’, Middle East Eye, 17 May 2017, www.middleeasteye.net/news/ schedule-7-realities-digital-strip-search (accessed 9 June 2020). 22 Safiya Umoja Noble, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (New York University Press, 2018). 23 Cade Metz and Adam Satariano, ‘An Algorithm That Grants Freedom, or Takes It Away’, New York Times, 6 February 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/technology/predictive-algorithms-crime.html (accessed 9 June 2020). 24 Anthony France, ‘YouTube star Humza Arshad teams up with Met to fight gang crime’, Evening Standard, 29 January 2020, www.standard.co.uk/news/london/youtube-star-humza-arshad-te​ ams-up-with-met-to-fight-gang-crime-a4347916.html (accessed 9 June 2020). 25 Boris Johnson, ‘Denmark has got it wrong. Yes, the burka is oppressive and ridiculous – but that’s still no reason to ban it’, The Telegraph, 5 August 2018, www.telegraph.co.uk/news​/2018​ /08/05/denmark-has-got-wrong-yes-burka-oppressive-ridic​ulous-s​ t​ill/ (accessed 9 June 2020). 26 Boris Johnson, ‘If Blair’s so good at running the Congo, let him stay there’, The Telegraph, 10 January 2002, www.telegraph.co.uk/co​ m​ment/personal-view/3571742/If-Blairs-so-good-at-running-th​e​-​ C​ongo-let-him-stay-there.html (accessed 9 June 2020). 27 Sahar Ghumkhor, The Political Psychology of the Veil: The Impossible Body (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), p. 174. 28 Ibid., p. 216. 29 Article, The Guardian, 24 June 2019 [the author has requested that the name of the journalist not be included]. 30 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Penguin Classics, 2017).

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1 REMAKING RULE #1 1 The research was conducted by Britain Thinks in 2017 for the Aziz Foundation. 2 Sample size 2,073. Survey data was weighted by age, gender and socioeconomic status to make it representative of the UK population. 3 For economy of space, and to remain relevant to the subject matter of this volume, I have not included expansive analysis of the full statement, which is several paragraphs long. Instead, I have focused on the opening paragraph, which is directly relevant to the scope of the present study. For clarity, I summarise the rest of the statement as iterating thoughts for the families of those affected, the responsibility on UK citizens to help prevent such attacks from happening, the work of Muslims supporting victims, neighbours and the police following terrorist attacks and the need to rise above the divisive tactics employed by terrorists and as a country to remain united. 4 New Horizons on British Islam contributed to the development of  the arguments tested by Britain Thinks in the exploratory stage. 5 Average score of narrative testing from Sample A and Sample B in the survey. 6 Verbatims, positivity rating 6–10. 7 Verbatims, positivity rating 0–4.

2 THEY NEEDED US, AND NOW THEY ARE TERRIFIED 1 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (Penguin Books, 2003). 2 David Killingray and David E. Omissi (eds), Guardians of Empire: The Armed Forces of the Colonial Powers c. 1700–1964 (Manchester University Press, 1999). 3 Jason Hickel, ‘How Britain stole $45 trillion from India and lied about it’, Al Jazeera, 19 December 2018, www.aljazeera.com/ indepth/opinion/britain-stole-45-trillion-india-181206124830851. html (accessed 9 June 2020). 4 Nick Robins, ‘The Corporation That Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational’, Asian Affairs, 43:1 (2012), pp. 12–26, https://doi.org/10.1080/03068374.2 012.642512. 5 Caroline Adams, Across Seven Seas and Thirteen Rivers: Life

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Notes Stories of Pioneer Sylheti Settlers in Britain (Eastside Books, 1994). 6 bell hooks, ‘Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance’, in Meenakshi Durham and Douglas Kellner (eds), Media and Cultural Studies: KeyWorks (Blackwell Publishing, 2006), pp. 366–380. 7 Clair Alexander, ‘Contested Memories: The Shahid Minar and the Struggle for Diasporic Space’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36:4 (2013), pp. 590–610, https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2012.67454 2. 8 Kenneth Leech, Brick Lane, 1978: The Events and Their Significance (Stepney Bks, 1994). 9 Ibid., p. 7. 10 Anandi Ramamurthy, ‘The Politics of Britain’s Asian Youth Movements’, Race Class, 48:2 (2006), pp. 38–60, https://doi. org/10.1177/0306396806069522. 11 Gary Love, ‘“What’s the Big Idea?”: Oswald Mosley, the British Union of Fascists and Generic Fascism’, Journal of Contemporary History, 42:3 (2007), pp. 447–468, https://doi.org/10.1​ 177/002​ 2009407078334.

3 THE FOUR STAGES OF MORAL PANIC 1 Conversation with Sky News producer at Sky News Studios prior to interview on 13 February 2020. 2 For instance, see Milo Boyd, ‘Notting Hill Carnival: 11 officers injured and 97 arrested on the first day’, The Mirror, 25 August 2019, www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/notting-hill-carnival-11-​ off​i​cers-19006491 (accessed 9 June 2020). 3 Vikram Dodd, ‘Facial recognition out, knife arches in at Notting Hill carnival’, The Guardian, 24 August 2018, www.theguardian. com/culture/2018/aug/24/knife-arches-to-be-set-up-at-nottinghill-carnival (accessed 9 June 2020). 4 Lambros Fatsis, ‘Policing the Beats: The Criminalisation of UK Drill and Grime Music by the London Metropolitan Police’, The Sociological Review, 67:6 (2019), https://doi.org/10.​ 1177​ /0038026119842480. 5 Owen Hatherley, The Ministry of Nostalgia (Verso, 2017). 6 Rebecca Evans, ‘Online violence that fuels murder: Young British gang members boast on Twitter and YouTube of stabbing and beating rivals – which provokes further bloodshed on the street’, Daily Mail, 6 April 2018, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5587735/

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notes Young-British-gang-members-boast-Twitter-YouTube-stabbing-b​e​ ating-rivals.html (accessed 9 June 2020). 7 Stuart Hall et al., Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order (Macmillan, 1978). 8 Geoffrey Pearson, Hooligan: A History of Respectable Fears (Palgrave, 1983). 9 ‘Sky News interview Adam Elliott-Cooper on Drill, policing and the case of Skengdo X AM’, Sky News, YouTube, 1 February 2019, www. youtube.com/watch?v=vVvaDZV-oeg (accessed 1 April 2020). 10 Monish Bhatia, Scott Poynting and Waqas Tufail (eds), Media, Crime and Racism (Palgrave, 2018). 11 William Turvill, ‘UK police forces spend more than £36m a year on PR and communications’, The Press Gazette, 1 May 2015, www. pressgazette.co.uk/uk-police-forces-spend-more-than-36m-a-yearon-pr-and-communications/ (accessed 9 June 2020). 12 BBC Newsbeat, ‘Rappers Skengdo and AM breached injunction by performing drill music’, 19 January 2019, www.bbc.co.uk/news/ newsbeat-46932655 (accessed 9 June 2020). 13 Stuart Hall, ‘Explanation and Ideologies of Crime’, in Stuart Hall et al., Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order (Macmillan, 1978), pp. 139–165. 14 BBC News, ‘John Cleese criticised for saying London is “no longer an English city”’, 29 May 2019, www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertain​ ment-arts-48451384 (accessed 9 June 2020). 15 Martin Wainwright, ‘Meet the historical hoodies’, The Guardian, 22 October 2008, www.theguardian.com/education/2008/oct/22/ hoodies-victorian-manchester-gangs (accessed 9 June 2020). 16 Alex S. Vitale, The End of Policing (Verso, 2017).

4 THE DUTY TO SEE, THE YEARNING TO BE SEEN 1 Amnesty International, ‘Israel and the Occupied Territories: Broken lives – a year of intifada’, 13 November 2001, www. amnesty.org/en/documents/MDE15/083/2001/en/ (accessed 9 June 2020). 2 Todd Green, Presumed Guilty: Why We Shouldn’t Ask Muslims to Condemn Terrorism (Fortress Press, 2018). 3 Narzanin Massoumi, Tom Mills and David Miller (eds), What Is Islamophobia? Racism, Social Movements and the State (Pluto Press, 2017). See also Sivamohan Valluvan, The Clamour of Nationalism: Race and Nation in Twenty-First-Century Britain (Manchester University Press, 2019).

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Notes 4 Faisal Kutty, ‘Terrorism charges are only reserved for Muslims’, The Star, 16 October 2017, www.thestar.com/opinion/commen​ tary/2017/10/16/terrorism-charges-are-only-reserved-for-musli​ms​ .html (accessed 9 June 2020).

5 REFUSING TO CONDEMN AS A POLITICAL ACT 1 Miri Song, ‘Challenging a Culture of Racial Equivalence’, British Journal of Sociology, 65:1 (2014), pp. 107–129, https://doi. org/10.1111/1468-4446.12054. 2 Cornel West and Christa Buschendorf, Black Prophetic Fire (Beacon Press, 2014). 3 See Northern Police Monitoring Project, http://npmp.co.uk/ (accessed 9 June 2020). 4 For a discussion of the genesis of NPMP, see Tanzil Chowdhury, ‘Policing the “Black Party”: Racialized Drugs Policing at Festivals in the UK’, in Kojo Koram (ed.), The War on Drugs and the Global Colour Line (Pluto Press, 2019), pp. 48–65. 5 See ibid. 6 Press Association, ‘Stormzy hits out at Met police for pre-Notting Hill drug bust tweets’, The Guardian, 22 August 2017, www.the​ guardian.com/culture/2017/aug/22/police-arrest-pre-notting-hillcarnival-raids (accessed 9 June 2020). 7 Kehinde Andrews, ‘Theresa May is right that more police isn’t the answer to knife crime – what we need is a better safety net’, The Independent, 5 March 2019, www.independent.co.uk/voices/k ni​fe-crime-london-stabbings-police-bame-violence-a8808551.html (accessed 9 June 2020); Ian Sinclair, ‘Top 3 knife crime myths busted’, Morning Star, 6 May 2016, https://morningstaron​line.co.u k​/article/f/top-3-knife-crime-myths-busted (accessed 9 June 2020). 8 For a searing critique of this concept, see James Forman Jr., Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017). 9 Victoria M. Massie, ‘Why asking black people about “blackon-black crime” misses the point’, Vox, 25 September 2016, www.vox.​com/2016/4/28/11510274/black-on-black-crime-poverty (accessed 9 June 2020). 10 Andrews, ‘Theresa May is right’; Akala, cited in Benjamin Butterworth, ‘Rapper Akala says knife crime can’t be explained by race – it’s about poverty and education’, I News, 5 March 2019, https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/akala-ch​annel​-4-news-gang-knife-cr​ i​me-video-265948 (accessed 9 June 2020).

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notes 11 Sayeeda Warsi, ‘Trevor Philips doesn’t understand Islamophobia’, The Guardian, 9 March 2020, www.theguardian.com/com​ mentis​free/2020/mar/09/trevor-phillips-islamophobia-muslims (accessed 9 June 2020). See also Poppy Noor, ‘Yes, Trevor Philips: you can be black and a racist too’, The Guardian, 27 February 2017, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/27/trevor-phill​i​ ps-political-correctness-racism-prejudice (accessed 9 June 2020); and Ahmed Sule, ‘An open letter to Trevor Philips: Why your documentary is logically and morally flawed’, Media Diversified, 22 March 2015, https://mediadiversified.org/2015/03/22/an-open-let​ ter-to-trevor-philips-why-your-documentary-is-logically-and​-m​or​ ally-flawed/ (accessed 9 June 2020). 12 Organisation of Black Unity, ‘Beware the modern day Uncle Tom’, www.blackunity.org.uk/make-it-plain/beware-the-uncletom/ (accessed 9 June 2020). 13 Malcolm X (1963), cited in ibid. 14 Damien Gayle, ‘Nigel Farage says image of “half-black” spokesman shows manifesto’s diversity’, The Guardian, 21 April 2015, www. theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/21/nigel-farage-says-im​a​ge-of​ -​​ha​lf-black-spokesman-shows-manifestos-diversity (accessed 9 June 2020). 15 Neil Tweedie, ‘The English Defence League: Will the flames of hatred spread?’, The Telegraph, 10 October 2009, www.telegraph. co.uk/news/6284184/The-English-Defence-League-will-the-flam​e​ s-of-hatred-spread.html (accessed 9 June 2020). 16 George Yancy, Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race in America (Rowman and Littlefield, 2008).

6 NAVIGATING REFUSAL WITHIN THE ACADEMY 1 Following the publication of our article, Shamima Begum’s third child died shortly after birth in a refugee camp. 2 Azeezat Johnson and Shereen Fernandez, ‘Where does Shamima Begum exist?’, Ceasefire Magazine, 23 February 2019, https:// ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/shamima-begum-exist/ (accessed 9 June 2020). 3 Shamim Miah, Muslims, Schooling and Security: Trojan Horse, Prevent and Racial Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). 4 Sara Ahmed, @SaraNAhmed, Twitter, 27 January 2020. 5 Sara Ahmed, ‘The problem of perception’, feministkilljoys, 17 February 2014, https://feministkilljoys.com/2014/02/17/the-pro​ bl​em-of-perception/ (accessed 9 June 2020).

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Notes 6 See Azeezat Johnson, Remi Joseph-Salisbury and Beth Kamunge, The Fire Now: Anti-racist Scholarship in Times of Explicit Racial Violence (Zed Books, 2018).

7 RANDOMLY SELECTED 1 Jason Tashea, ‘Courts are using AI to sentence criminals. That must stop now’, Wired, 17 April 2017, www.wired.com/2017/04/ courts-using-ai-sentence-criminals-must-stop-now/ (accessed 9 June 2020). 2 Safiya Umoja Noble, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (New York University Press, 2018). 3 Ben Leo, ‘Motorists fork out £1,000 more to insure their cars if their name is Mohammed’, The Sun, 22 January 2018, www.the​ sun​.co.uk/motors/5393978/insurance-race-row-john-moh​a​m​m​ed /#:~:text=Motorists%20fork%20out%20%C2%A3​1%​2C​00​0%20 more%20to%20insure,if%20their%20name​%2​0i​s%​20Moh​am​m ed&text=MOTORISTS%20are%20being​%20​stu​ng%2​0for,if%20 their%20name%20is%20Moham​med.&t​ext​=W​hen%20​it%20was %20%E2%80%9CJohn%20Smith,the​%2​0qu​ote​%20​was%20%C​ 2%A31%2C333 (accessed 9 June 2020). 4 Ben Wagner, ‘Ethics as an Escape from Regulation: From Ethicswashing to Ethics-shopping?’, in Mireille Hildebrandt (ed.), Being Profiled: Cogitas Ergo Sum (Amsterdam University Press, 2018). 5 Nick Statt, ‘Mark Zuckerberg apologizes for Facebook’s data privacy scandal in full-page newspaper ads’, The Verge, 25 March 2018, www.theverge.com/2018/3/25/17161398/facebook-markzu​ckerberg-apology-cambridge-analytica-full-page-newspapers-ads (accessed 9 June 2020). 6 Surveillance capitalism is defined by Shoshana Zoboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (Penguin, 2019). In an interview with The Guardian, Zoboff describes how ‘surveillance capitalism … unilaterally claims human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioural data. Although some of these data are applied to service improvement, the rest are declared as a proprietary behavioural surplus, fed into advanced manufacturing processes known as “machine intelligence”, and fabricated into prediction products that anticipate what you will do now, soon, and later. Finally, these prediction products are traded in a new kind of marketplace that I call behavioural futures markets. Surveillance capitalists have grown immensely wealthy from

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notes these trading operations, for many companies are willing to lay bets on our future behaviour.’

8 GUILTY WITHOUT A CRIME 1 This was the group made up of those who are of a lower academic ability than their peers. 2 James Kirkup and Robert Winnett, ‘Theresa May interview: “We’re going to give illegal migrants a really hostile reception”’, The Telegraph, 25 May 2012, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/im​m​ ig​r​ation/9291483/Theresa-May-interview-Were-going-to-gi​ve​-​il​l​e​g al-migrants-a-really-hostile-reception.html (accessed 9 June 2020). 3 BBC News, ‘Eleven immigrants left UK after seeing “go home” van adverts’, 31 October 2013, www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politic​ s-24755547 (accessed 9 June 2020). 4 Home Office, ‘Counter-terrorism strategy (CONTEST) 2018’, UK Parliament, 4 June 2018, www.gov.uk/government/publications/ counter-terrorism-strategy-contest-2018 (accessed 9 June 2020). 5 Counter-Terrorism and Security Act, 2015, UK Parliament. 6 Section 26, Counter-Terrorism and Security Act, 2015, UK Parliament. 7 EduCare, ‘What are the signs of radicalisation?’, 1 November 2018, www.educare.co.uk/news/what-are-the-signs-to-look-outfor-radicalisation (accessed 9 June 2020). 8 Patrick Wintour, ‘Jails and councils obliged to prevent radi­ calisation as new act becomes law’, The Guardian, 29 June 2015,  www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jun/29/jails-and-uni​ versities-obliged-to-prevent-radicalisation-as-new-act-becomes-law (accessed 9 June 2020). 9 Siobhan Morgan, ‘Muslim students campaign to stop Theresa May’s Counter Terrorism Bill’, The Huffington Post, 28 January 2015, www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/01/27/why-islamic-stud​ ent-socie_n_6553878.html (accessed 9 June 2020). 10 Shelly Asquith, ‘Why I won’t be working with Prevent (and how you can avoid it, too)’, NUS Connect, 13 August 2015, www.nus​ connect.org.uk/articles/why-i-won-t-be-working-with-prevent-an​ d-how-you-can-avoid-it-too (accessed 9 June 2020). 11 Charlotte Dobson, ‘University lecturers warn Government antiterror strategy could criminalise Muslim students’, Manchester Evening News, 27 February 2016, www.manchestereveningnews. co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/university-lecturers-warngovernment-anti-10959056 (accessed 9 June 2020).

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Notes 12 Nadine El-Enany, ‘Prevent is stopping free speech on campus and demonising Muslims’, The Guardian, 1 July 2019, www. the​guardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/01/prevent-stoppingfree-speech-campus-demonising-muslims (accessed 9 June 2020). 13 Josh Halliday, ‘Prevent scheme “fosters fear and censorship at universities”’, The Guardian, 28 August 2017, www.theguardi​ an.com/uk-news/2017/aug/29/prevent-scheme-fosters-fear-and-ce​ nsorship-at-universities-just-yorkshire (accessed 9 June 2020). 14 Prevent Watch, ‘The college student case’, 19 February 2018, www.preventwatch.org/college-student-case/ (accessed 9 June 2020). 15 Damien Gayle, ‘UK’s Prevent guidance to universities unlawful, court rules’, The Guardian, 8 March 2019, www.theguardian.com/ ​uk-news/2019/mar/08/uks-prevent-guidance-to-universitie​s-​u​nl​a​ wful-court-rules (accessed 9 June 2020). 16 Rosemary Bennett, ‘Crackdown on students silencing free speech’, The Times, 2 May 2018, www.thetimes.co.uk/article/samgyimah-crackdown-on-students-silencing-free-speech-x28jx85fc (accessed 9 June 2020). 17 Eleanor Busby, ‘Government’s counterterrorism is limiting texts and topics students can access, experts say’, The Independent, 2 December 2018, www.independent.co.uk/news/education /ed​ucation-news/prevent-programme-counterterrorism-extremi sm-ra​dicalism-muslim-students-uk-universities-a8650111.html (accessed 9 June 2020). 18 Mark Easton, ‘Muslim women most disadvantaged, say MPs’, BBC News, 11 August 2016, www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37041301 (accessed 9 June 2020). 19 Kate Proctor, ‘Boris Johnson urged to apologise for “derogatory and racist” letterboxes article’, The Guardian, 4 September 2019, www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/04/boris-johnson​-urg​edto-apologise-for-muslim-women-letterboxes-article (accessed 9 June 2020); Boris Johnson, ‘Denmark has got it wrong. Yes, the burka is oppressive and ridiculous – but that’s still no reason to ban it’, The Telegraph, 5 August 2018, www.telegraph.co.uk/ news/2018/08/05/denmark-has-got-wrong-yes-burka-oppressiveridiculous-still/ (accessed 9 June 2020); Boris Johnson, ‘If Blair’s so good at running the Congo, let him stay there’, The Telegraph, 10 January 2002, www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/​ 3​571742/If-Blairs-so-good-at-running-the-Congo-let-him-stay-th​e​ r​e.html (accessed 9 June 2020). 20 Adam Bienkov, ‘Boris Johnson said that Islamophobia is a

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notes “natural reaction” to Islam and that “Islam is the problem”’, Business Insider, 27 November 2019, www.businessinsider.com/ boris-johnson-islam-is-the-problem-and-islamophobia-is-a-natur​alreaction-2018-8?r=US&IR=T (accessed 9 June 2020); Boris Johnson, ‘Just don’t call it war’, The Spectator, www.spectator.co.uk/arti​ cle/just-don-t-call-it-war (accessed 9 June 2020). 21 Kevin Rawlinson, ‘Windrush: 11 people wrongly deported from  UK have died – Javid’, The Guardian, 12 November 2018, www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/12/windrush-11-peopl​ e-wrongly-deported-from-uk-have-died-sajid-javid (accessed 9 June 2020). 22 Imam al-Nawawi, The Complete Forty Hadith (Ta-Ha Publishers, 2009), Hadith 34.

9 THE STRUGGLE OF A MUSLIM TERROR ‘SUSPECT LAWYER’ 1 David Cameron, ‘Prime Minister David Cameron statement on Patrick Finucane’, Speech, Gov.uk, 12 December 2012, www.gov. uk/government/speeches/prime-minister-david-cameron-statem​e nt-on-patrick-finucane--2 (accessed 9 June 2020). 2 Orla Ryan, ‘Pat Finucane murder: Minister’s comments about solicitors being “sympathetic to IRA” were backed by No 10’, The Journal, 28 December 2019, www.thejournal.ie/pat-finucanedouglas-hogg-state-papers-4942170-Dec2019/ (accessed 9 June 2020). 3 Harry Cole, @MrHarryCole, Twitter, 30 November 2019, https: //twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1200749614317658114?s=20 (accessed 30 November 2019). 4 Jeremy Armstrong, ‘Al-Qaeda lawyer’s £1.6m in legal aid’, The Mirror, 24 November 2008, www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/alqaeda-lawyers-16m-in-legal-aid-361178 (accessed 9 June 2020). 5 Philip Hoult, ‘How intimidation turned a lawyer’s life into a nightmare’, Law Gazette, 26 May 2004, www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/ how-intimidation-turned-a-lawyers-life-into-a-nightmare/42129. article (accessed 9 June 2020). Press Complaints Commission, Adjudicated Complaint 6 Mudassar Arani v. the Daily Express, The Sun, the Daily Mail, and the Daily Telegraph, 2008 (emphasis added). 7 Ibid. 8 Cyril Dixon, ‘Hamza’s lawyer is paid £506,466’, Daily Express, 6 February 2007, www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1891/Hamza-apos-slawyer-is-paid-506–466 (accessed 9 June 2020).

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Notes 9 Hansard, Written Answers to Questions, House of Commons, Column 461WA, 2007. 10 Neil Rose, ‘#WeAreRichardEgan – lawyers stand with death threat solicitor’, Legal Futures, 31 January 2019, www.legalfutures. co.uk/latest-news/wearerichardegan-lawyers-stand-with-deaththreat-solicitor (accessed 9 June 2020). 11 Clive Coleman, ‘Speedboat killer: Jack Shephard’s lawyer receives Nazi death threat’, BBC News, 28 January 2019, www.bbc.co.uk/ news/uk-47029302 (accessed 9 June 2020). 12 Dominic Casciani, ‘Terror lawyer bribe probe dropped’, BBC News, 16 September 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7619625.stm (accessed 9 June 2020). 13 Adrian Shaw, ‘Furious blast at late lawyer’, Daily Mirror, 12 July 2007, www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/furious-blast-at-late-law​ yer-490263.amp (accessed 9 June 2020). 14 PA Media, ‘Lawyers complain about lack of access to Julian Assange in jail’, The Guardian, 13 December 2019, www.the​ guardian.com/media/2019/dec/13/lawyers-complain-about-lackof-access-to-julian-assange-in-jail (accessed 9 June 2020). 15 Severin Carrell, ‘Judge calls for trial of terror case lawyer’, The Guardian, 6 November 2007, www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/ nov/07/terrorism.scotland (accessed 9 June 2020). 16 The Herald, ‘Judgment in the Aamer Anwar contempt case’, 30 June 2008, www.heraldscotland.com/news/12468885.judgmentin-the-aamer-anwar-contempt-case/ (accessed 9 June 2020). 17 Fahad Ansari, ‘Falling standards’, Law Society Gazette, 8 March 2012, www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/falling-standards/64587.article (accessed 9 June 2020). 18 Craig McDonald, ‘Aamer Anwar: It is shocking that an inquiry tasked with investigating the death of Sheku Bayoh chose to divert attention by focusing on myself’, The Sunday Post, 25 August 2019, www.sundaypost.com/fp/aamer-anwar-it-is-shocking-th​at​​an-inquiry-tasked-with-investigating-the-death-of-sheku-bay​oh​ch​ose-to-divert-attention-by-focusing-on-myself/ (accessed 9 June 2020). 19 Greg Russell, ‘Aamer Anwar says Spanish diplomat’s claims rooted in “racism and bigotry”’, The National, 19 November 2019, www.thenational.scot/news/18046943.aamer-anwar-saysspanish-diplomats-claims-rooted-racism-bigotry/ (accessed 9 June 2020).

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notes

10 THE (IM)POSSIBLE MUSLIM 1 Both the ‘Muslim’ in scare quotes and its description as a racial stereotype was taken from Brian Klug, ‘The Limits of Analogy: Comparing Islamophobia and Antisemitism’, Patterns of Prejudice, 48:5 (2014), pp. 442–459, https://doi.org/10.1080/0031 322X.2014.964498. 2 For more on this term, see Salman Sayyid, Decoloniality and the Islamicate (ReOrient, 2017). 3 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (Penguin Books, 2003), p. 29. 4 Jose Ortega y Gasset, History as a System and Other Essays toward a Philosophy of History, trans. Helene Weyl (W. W. Norton & Company, 1962), p. 111. 5 Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali, Al-Ghazali on the NinetyNine Beautiful Names of God, trans. David Burrell and Nazih Daher (The Islamic Texts Society, 1992).

11 THE RACIALISED ‘GO-TO MUSLIM’ 1 Avtar Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities (Routledge, 1996), p. 198. 2 Arun Kundnani, The Muslims Are Coming! Islamophobia, Extremism and the Domestic War on Terror (Verso, 2014); Nathan Lean, The Islamophobia Industry: How the Right Manufactures Hatred of Muslims (Pluto Press, 2017). 3 Asim Qureshi, ‘PREVENT: Creating “Radicals” to Strengthen Anti-Muslim Narratives’, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 8:1 (2015), pp. 181–191, https://doi.org/10.1080/17539153.2015.10059 38; Asim Qureshi, A Virtue of Disobedience (Unbound and Byline Books, 2019). 4 Zeus Leonardo, ‘The Color of Supremacy’, in Edward Taylor, David Gillborn and Gloria Ladson-Billings (eds), Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education (Routledge, 2016), pp. 265–277. 5 Ibid., p. 266. 6 A rare White friend who has never treated me as the go-to Muslim, never expected explanations, nor demanded condemnations. 7 Emile Bruneau, Nour Kteily and Emily Falk, ‘Interventions Highlighting Hypocrisy Reduce Collective Blame of Muslims for Individual Acts of Violence and Assuage Anti-Muslim Hostility’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44:3 (2018), p. 433, https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167217744197.

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Notes 8 Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana, Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance (State University of New York Press, 2007). 9 Gail Weiss, ‘Sedimented Attitudes and Existential Responsibilities’, in Luna Dolezal and Danielle Petherbridge (eds), Body/Self/Other: The Phenomenology of Social Encounters (State University of New York Press, 2017). 10 Nana Osei-Kofi, ‘Race in (Out)side the Classroom: On Pedagogy and the Politics of Collegiality’, in George Yancy and Maria del Guadalupe Davidson (eds), Exploring Race in Predominantly White Classrooms: Scholars of Color Reflect (Routledge, 2014), p. 165. 11 Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (Crossing Press, 1983), p. 118. 12 Peter McLaren, ‘Unthinking Whiteness: Rearticulating Diasporic Practice’, in Peter Pericles Trifonas (ed.), Revolutionary Pedagogies: Cultural Politics, Instituting Education, and the Discourse of Theory (Routledge, 2000), p. 152.

12 WRITING FOR THE KIDS 1 N. K. Jemisin, The Obelisk Gate (Broken Earth) (Orbit, 2016), dedication. 2 James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (Penguin Classics, 2017). 3 Taylor Lorenz, ‘The shooter’s manifesto was designed to troll’, The Atlantic, 15 March 2019, www.theatlantic.com/technol​o​gy/ archive/2019/03/the-shooters-manifesto-was-designed-to-tro​ll​/58​ 5058/ (accessed 9 June 2020). 4 For a critique of how White replacement theories are legitimated through academic scholarship, see John Holmwood, ‘Claiming Whiteness’, Ethnicities, 20:1 (2019), https://doi.org/10.1​ 177/​ 1468796819838710. 5 David Cameron, ‘PM’s speech at Munich Security Conference’, Speech, Gov.uk, 5 February 2011, www.gov.uk/government/ speeches/pms-speech-at-munich-security-conference (accessed 9 June 2020). 6 Louise Casey, ‘The Casey Review: A review into opportunity and integration’, Gov.uk, 5 December 2016, www.gov.uk/governme​ nt/publications/the-casey-review-a-review-into-opportunity-andintegration (accessed 9 June 2020). 7 For anti-racist critiques of Prevent, see Barbara Cohen and Waqas Tufail, ‘Prevent and the Normalisation of Islamophobia’, in Farah

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notes Elahi and Omar Khan (eds), Islamophobia: Still a Challenge for Us All (Runnymede Trust, 2017), pp. 41–45; Rob Faure Walker, ‘Teachers as Informants: Countering Violent Extremism and Promoting Violence’, Journal of Beliefs and Values, 40:3 (2019), pp. 368–380, https://doi.org/10.1080/13617672.2019.1600321; Shereen Fernandez, Rob Faure Walker and Tarek Younis, ‘The “where” of Prevent’, Discover Society, 5 June 2018, https:// discoversociety.org/2018/06/05/focus-the-where-of-prevent/ (accessed 9 June 2020); and Arun Kundnani, The Muslims Are Coming! Islamophobia, Extremism and the Domestic War on Terror (Verso, 2014). 8 Asim Qureshi, Separating Families: How PREVENT Seeks the Removal of Children (CAGE, 2019). 9 Audre Lorde, Your Silence Will Not Protect You (Silver Press, 2017). 10 Qur’an 3:103. 11 Gwendolyn Brooks, The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks (Library of America, 2014). 12 Press Association, ‘Boris Johnson cleared over burqa comments’, The Guardian, 20 December 2018, www.theguardian.com/­ pol​itics/2018/dec/20/boris-johnson-cleared-over-burqa-comm​ents (accessed 9 June 2020). 13 Nazia Parveen, ‘Boris Johnson’s burqa comments “led to surge in anti-Muslim attacks”’, The Guardian, 2 September 2019, www. theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/02/boris-johnsons-burqa-com​ ments-led-to-surge-in-anti-muslim-attacks (accessed 9 June 2020). 14 Areeb Ullah, ‘Muslim women “more likely” to be victims of Islamophobia: Report’, Middle East Eye, 12 October 2016, www. middleeasteye.net/fr/news/muslim-women-more-likely-be-victim-islamophobia-report-452800693 (accessed 9 June 2020). 15 Adam Bienkov, ‘Boris Johnson called gay men “tank-topped bumboys” and black people “piccaninnies” with “watermelon smiles”’, Business Insider, www.businessinsider.com/boris-john​ son-record-sexist-homophobic-and-racist-comments-bumboys-pi​c ​caninnies-2019-6?r=US&IR=T (accessed 10 June 2020). 16 Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, ‘About and Contact, Chronicles of the Brown Hijabi’, The Brown Hijabi, https://thebrownhijabi.com (accessed 1 April 2020). 17 Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, ‘This Is Not a Humanising Poem’, performed at Roundhouse Poetry Slam, 2017. 18 bell hooks, All about Love: New Visions (Harper Perennial, 2001). 19 Ibid., p. 88.

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Notes

13 IT IS ALLAH WHO CONDEMNS 1 El-Hajj Mauri’ Saalakhan, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui: Other Voices (The Peace Thru Justice Foundation, 2012), p. 20.

14 IS THIS RADICAL? AM I RADICAL? 1 Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, Postcolonial Banter (Verve Poetry Press, 2019), pp. 140–141. 2 Jessica Brown, ‘Muslim slam poet wows crowd with inspirational message’, Indy100, 6 July 2017, www.indy100.com/article/mus​l​i​ m-slam-poet-roundhouse-humanity-suhaiymah-manzoor-khan-i​s​ lamaphobia-7827336 (accessed 10 June 2020). 3 Toni Morrison, A Humanist View (Portland State University, 1975). 4 Andrew Valls, Race and Racism in Modern Philosophy (Cornell University Press, 2005), pp. 169–193. 5 Muslims have long been described as ‘uncivilised’ and ‘barbaric’ with notable examples in recent decades being traceable to Samuel Huntington, ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’, Foreign Affairs, 72:3 (1993), pp. 22–49; Niall Ferguson’s pseudo-journalism; and Melanie Phillips’s repeated descriptions of Muslims as ‘barbaric’. 6 ‘20-Point manifesto for women living in genocidal times’, The Thinkery, YouTube, 13 July 2018, www.youtube.com/wat​ ch?v=9o2GgTqbcaU (accessed 10 June 2020). 7 Decades of scholarship on gender accounts for the way power in Western contexts is coded masculine, meaning that men are given more platforms, media coverage and taken more seriously than women in most cases – add to this the racist, Islamophobic barriers Muslim women of colour face in the same contexts and it is clear that even whilst Muslim men face similar structural violence, their gender becomes a point of privilege when it comes to being listened to and given platforms to speak. 8 Email from City of London police officer and Chair of the Association of Muslim Police, 26 April 2018, 9.42 a.m. 9 Email from the Young Cities co-ordinator, 3 January 2020, 3.54 p.m. 10 Institute for Strategic Dialogue, ‘About ISD’, www.isdglobal.org/ isdapproach (accessed 1 April 2020). 11 Youth Can, www.youthcan.net (accessed 1 April 2020). 12 Email from executive editor of BBC Ideas, 30 May 2018, 5.21 p.m. 13 Ibid., 13 June 2018, 3.32 p.m.

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notes 14 Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, ‘Opinion: We need to stop oversimplifying violence’, BBC Ideas, 30 January 2019, www.bbc.co.uk/ ideas/videos/opinion-we-need-to-stop-oversimplifying-violence/p​ 0​6zhs4x (accessed 10 June 2020). 15 Twitter [author of tweet will not be disclosed], 10 August 2018, 7.04 a.m. 16 Article, The Guardian, 24 June 2019 [the author has requested that the name of the journalist not be included].

15 GRAPPLING WITH SHADOWS 1 Samih al-Qasim, ‘Enemy of the Sun’, in Aruri Naseer and Edmund Ghareeb (eds), Enemy of the Sun: Poetry of Palestinian Resistance (Drum and Spear Press, 1970). 2 Paul Holden, ‘Shock tactics: How the arms industry trades on our fear of terrorism’, The Guardian, 20 March 2017, www.theguard​ ian.com/global-development/2017/mar/20/how-the-arms-indust​ r​y​-trades-on-our-fear-of-terrorism-book-paul-holden-indefensible (accessed 9 June 2020). 3 Derek Gregory, The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq (Wiley-Blackwell, 2004). 4 Lizzie O’Shea, Future Histories: What Ada Lovelace, Tom Paine, and the Paris Commune Can Teach Us about Digital Technology (Verso, 2019). 5 ‘Lowkey – Terrorist? (Official Music Video)’, Global Faction, YouTube, 11 September 2010, www.youtube.com/watch​ ?v=km​ B​n​v​ajSf​WU​&has_verified=1&bpctr=1594794432 (accessed 24 February 2020). 6 Nancy Fraser, ‘Reframing justice in a globalizing world’, New Left Review, https://newleftreview.org/issues/II36/articles/nancy-fras​ er-reframing-justice-in-a-globalizing-world (accessed 9 June 2020). 7 Juliette Garside, ‘BBC under fire for “censoring” Palestine lyric’, The Guardian, 13 May 2011, www.theguardian.com/media/2011/ may/13/bbc-palestine-lyric-mic-righteous (accessed 9 June 2020). 8 Nick Hopkins, ‘Radio DJ Tim Westwood becomes the forces’ favourite in Afghanistan’, The Guardian, 26 September 2011, www.theguardian.com/media/2011/sep/26/tim-westwood-forcesfavourite-afghanistan (accessed 9 June 2020). 9 Roaa Ali, ‘Prevent in the arts: A threat to creative freedom and expression’, Discover Society, 4 September 2019, https://discoversociety.org/2019/09/04/prevent-in-the-arts-a-threat-to-creativefreedom-and-expression/ (accessed 9 June 2020).

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Notes 10 Ian Cobain et al., ‘Revealed: UK’s covert propaganda bid to stop Muslims joining Isis’, The Guardian, 2 May 2016, www.theguardian.​ com/uk-news/2016/may/02/uk-government-covert-propaganda​-st op-muslims-joining-isis (accessed 9 June 2020). 11 Damian Breen, Muslim Schools, Communities and Critical Race Theory: Faith Schooling in Islamophobic Britain (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). 12 Adrian Cousins, ‘Graphic: Islamist terror accounts for only 0.7% of attacks in Europe’, CounterFire, 9 January 2015, www.coun​ terfire.org/news/17599-graphic-islamist-terror-accounts-for-only-0​ –7-of-attacks-in-europe (accessed 9 June 2020). 13 ‘Yuval Noah Harari: “McD’s and Coca-Cola are a greater threat to your life than al-Qaeda and ISIS”’, Intelligence Squared, YouTube, 19 September 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-f8-rODv50 (accessed 23 February 2020). 14 ‘Will Self: Who created Jihadi John?’, Middle East Eye, YouTube, 2 May 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZLtUWJhM0s (accessed 24 February 2020). 15 Philip Weiss, ‘Tony Benn, who said there is no moral difference between a stealth bomber and a suicide bomber’, Mondoweiss, 17 March 2014, https://mondoweiss.net/2014/03/difference-stealthsuicide/ (accessed 1 April 2020). 16 Younge Gary, ‘It comes as no shock that the powerful hate “identity politics”’, The Guardian, 5 October 2018, www.theguardian.com/ c​ommentisfree/2018/oct/05/no-shock-powerful-hate-identity-po​l i​t​ics(accessed 30 July 2020)

16 THAT’S BECAUSE I’VE READ 1 Gayatri Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Macmillan, 1988), pp. 24–28. 2 Sam Haselby, ‘Muslims of early America’, Psyche, 20 May 2019, https://aeon.co/essays/muslims-lived-in-america-before-protesta​n​ tism-even-existed (accessed 1 April 2020). 3 Garrett Felber, Those Who Know Don’t Say (The University of North Carolina Press, 2010). 4 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (Penguin Books, 2003). 5 Arun Kundnani, The Muslims Are Coming! Islamophobia, Extremism and the Domestic War on Terror (Verso, 2014). 6 Homeland Security Committee, ‘Women and terrorism round­ table’, 15 March 2016, USA.

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notes

17 MY ART IS FOR MY PEOPLE 1 Asim Qureshi (editor).

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further reading

FURTHER READING

Akala. Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire. Two Roads, 2018. Asad, Talal. Secular Translations. Columbia University Press, 2018. Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. Penguin Classics, 2017. Bhatia, Monish, Scott Poynting and Waqas Tufail (eds). Media, Crime and Racism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Penguin Classics, 2017. Green, Todd H. Presumed Guilty: Why We Shouldn’t Ask Muslims to Condemn Terrorism. Fortress Press, 2018. Ghumkhor, Sahar. The Political Psychology of the Veil: The Impossible Body. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Hall, Stuart, et al. Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order. Macmillan, 1978. Hatherley, Owen. The Ministry of Nostalgia. London: Verso, 2017. hooks, bell. All about Love: New Visions. Harper Perennial, 2001. Johnson, Azeezat, Remi Joseph-Salisbury and Beth Kamunge (eds). The Fire Now: Anti-Racist Scholarship in Times of Explicit Racial Violence. Zed Books, 2018. Kundnani, Arun. The Muslims Are Coming! Islamophobia, Extremism and the Domestic War on Terror. Verso, 2015. Lorde, Audre. Your Silence Will Not Protect You. Silver Press, 2017. Massoumi, Narzanin, Tom Mills and David Miller (eds). What Is Islamophobia? Racism, Social Movements and the State. Pluto Press, 2017.

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further reading Miah, Shamim. Muslims, Schooling and Security: Trojan Horse, Prevent and Racial Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Noble, Safiya Umoja. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. New York University Press, 2018. Qureshi, Asim. A Virtue of Disobedience. Unbound and Byline Books, 2019. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Penguin Books, 2003. Sullivan, Shannon and Nancy Tuana (eds). Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance. State University of New York Press, 2007. Valls, Andrew. Race and Racism in Modern Philosophy. Cornell University Press, 2005. Valluvan, Sivamohan. The Clamour of Nationalism: Race and Nation in Twenty-First-Century Britain. Manchester University Press, 2019. Warsi, Sayeeda. The Enemy Within: A Tale of Muslim Britain. Allen Lane, 2017. West, Cornel and Chris Buschendorf. Black Prophetic Fire. Beacon Press, 2014. Yancy, George. Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race in America. Rowman and Littlefield, 2017.

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INDEX

academia 90–100, 114–118 Action Committee against Racial Attacks (Hackney) 49 Adams, John 59 Afghanistan 23, 138, 208, 225 Ahmed, Sara 95, 97 airports, digital technology 13, 101–108 Akala 23 al-Ghazali, Abu Hamid Muhammad 144, 146, 147 Al-Muhajiroun 131 al-Qaeda 36, 37, 38, 126, 179, 209 al-Qasim, Samih 201(260n1) Alexa 109 Algeria, French colonialism 171 algorithms 13, 103–107, 109–110, 205, 211 Ali, Altab 25, 49–50, 51, 53 Ali, Faiza 177 Ali, Nadya 7, 10, 11, 16, 27, 161–173 Ali, Roaa 208 Amazon 108, 110 Andrews, Kehinde 8 Ansari, Fahad 9, 25–26, 122–133

Anti-Nazi League 49 anti-Prevent campaign 120–121 Anwar, Aamer 128, 132 apartheid 223 Apple 108, 110 Arani, Mudassar 126–129 art 176–177, 208–210, 227–236 artificial intelligence 109 Assange, Julian 128 Association of Muslim Police 195 austerity 86, 203 Baldwin, James 161 Bangladesh Youth Movement 49 Bangladeshi Muslims 43–53 Banon, Steve 223 Baraitser, District Judge 128 Baumgarten, Robin 215, 218 Bayoh, Sheku 132 BBC 21–24, 52–53, 196–197, 207–208 Begum, Shamima 51, 90–91 Benn, Tony 210 Bennathan, Joel 126 Bin Laden, Osama 143, 162

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index Bindman, Geoffrey 131 Black Lives Matter 86, 223 Black Panther (film) 230 Blue Lives Matter 223 Blue Tin Production 215 Bond movies 59, 60 Bouattia, Malia 171 Bradford Literature Festival 24, 198 Brah, Avtar 150 Breen, Damien 209 Breivik, Anders 153, 163 Brick Lane 49 Britain Thinks 17 British Crime Survey 62 broadcasting see media Brooks, Gwendolyn 169 Brown Hijabi (Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan) 9, 21–22, 170–172, 187–200 Bruneau, Emile 155 Building Strong Britain Together 24 Bunglawala, Shenaz 17, 31–42 burqas 170, 224 Bush, George W. 175 CAGE 2, 3, 4, 130–131 Cambridge Analytica 109 Cameron, David 3–4, 124, 164–165 (257n5) Canada 20, 73–76 capitalism 71, 76, 77, 83, 109 Carloway, Lord 128 Casey, Louise 165 (257n6) categorisation 104, 189, 192, 193–194, 196, 197 Chapelle, Dave 228 Chile 205 Choudry, Shafiuddean 13, 101–111 Chowdhury, Tanzil 84 CIA 177–178, 205, 230 citizenship conditionality 25, 48 revocation 51, 125, 132, 190 Shamima Begum 51

Cleese, John 63 clothing see dress Coalition for Civil Freedoms 179 Coca-Cola 209 colonialism 8–10, 44–48, 96, 142, 153, 171, 174–175, 191, 193 comedy 227–236 condemnation academia and 90–100 British research data 34–37 CAIR and 177–178 expectation 1–3, 16–21, 33, 36, 37–42, 82–83, 138–140, 141 go-to Muslims 149–160 good Muslims 222 harm 180 interpretation of refusal 152–153 landscape 4–8 London Bridge attack 189–191 meaning 76–77 performance of betrayal 21–25, 142–144, 224, 225–226, 233 refusal as political act 81–89 Rushdie affair 124 War on Terror 145 Congo 205 CONTEST 115 Council on American–Islamic Relations 21, 31–32, 177–178 cowardice 68, 69–70, 77 Cox, Joanne 5 crime black-on-black crime 83–86 criminalisation of black culture 54–66 criminalisation of Muslimness 153, 156, 221 digital technology and 205 hate crime 117, 170, 212 perceptions 62 pre-crime policies 14 representation 16 critical race theory 157, 209

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index Daily Mail 3, 5, 6, 57, 240 data fishing 13 David, Yuval 209 Davies, Andrew 63 Deedat, Ahmed 133 defence lawyers 9, 124–133 Derbyshire, Victoria 52–53 digital technology airports 101–108 biases 106 criminalisation and 205 footprint 108–111 profiling 13 dress 22–23, 170, 213–214, 216, 220, 221, 222, 224, 225 drill music 15, 16, 55–56, 58–59, 61 Du Bois, W.E.B. 157 Dubus, Madeleine 176 Duggan, Mark 55 dystopia 109

Fairey, Shepard 219 Fanon, Frantz 83, 89, 157 Farage, Nigel 87–88 fashion 215, 222, 225 Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) 115, 116–117 Fernandez, Shereen 14, 26–27, 90–100 Finucane, Pat 9, 122, 124–125, 127, 132 France Calais camp 202–203 Charlie Hebdo attack 152, 158 occupation of Algeria 171 Fraser, Nancy 206 freedom of expression 58, 118–119, 158, 165, 206 Freire, Paulo 25 Frye, Marilyn 157–158 Fulford, Justice 128

East India Company 47 East Turkestan 10, 14, 27, 173 EduCare 115 Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) 65 Egan, Richard 127, 129 El-Khairy, Omar 208–209 Elliott-Cooper, Adam 7, 8–9, 15, 54–66 Ellison, Ralph 75 empire see colonialism employment 119, 120 Emwazi, Muhammad (Jihadi John) 1–2, 4, 5, 210 Enlightenment 9, 12, 192–193 ethical committees 94 Eurocentricism 150 European Union, Turkish membership 69 exclusion, existing outside the nation 50–52

Game of Thrones 3 gangs 15, 16, 54, 56, 63–64, 81, 221 Gaza 137 GCHQ 108 genocide 9, 10, 174, 223 Germany 67–69 Ghumkhor, Sahar 19 go-to Muslims 11, 149–160 Google 13, 107, 108, 110, 206 Gottlieb, David 131 Green, Todd 5 Gregory, Derek 204 Guantanamo 225 Guardian 24, 198

Facebook 16, 82–83, 108, 110, 221 facial recognition 55, 105, 110

Habib, Sadia 10–11, 14–15, 149–160 Hall, Stuart 56 Hammerbacher, Jeremy 111 Hamza, Abu 126, 127 Hanson, Pauline 236 hate crime 117, 170, 212 Henning, Alan 2 HHUGS 130–131

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index hijabs 22–23, 214, 216, 219, 220, 221, 222, 224, 225 Hijrah 181 history American schools 174–175 colonialism 44–48 erasures 44 fantasy 55, 57, 62–64 nostalgia 63 HMP Belmarsh 128 Hogg, Douglas 124–125 Holden, Paul 204 hooks, bell 172–173 Hooper, Ibrahim 178 Hunter, Chris 203 Ibrahim, Zamzam 171 ignorance 156–160, 166 imperialism see colonialism India 10, 27, 47 Indonesia 225 Instagram 109, 110 Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) 195–196 IRA 9, 124 Iran 175, 205, 216–218, 220 Iraq 138, 175, 204, 225 Ireland 123, 175 ISIS 1–2, 5, 36, 37, 38, 51, 90, 138, 209 Israel 223 Jacobins 12 Javid, Sajid 51 Jihadi John (Muhammad Emwazi) 1–2, 4, 5, 210 Johnson, Azeezat 11, 90–100 Johnson, Boris 3–4, 16, 120, 170, 171, 172 Joseph-Salisbury, Remi 15–16, 18, 19–20, 21, 23, 81–89 Jung, Carl 140 Kant, Immanuel 9, 192–193 Katebi, Hoda 22–23, 213–226 Khan, Usman 126 Khomeini, Ayatollah 124, 176

KRS-One 228 Ku Klux Klan 223 Lapshyn, Pavlo 153 Latif, Aliya 177 Latif, Nadia 208–209 lawyers 9, 124–133 Lebanon 204 Leech, Kenneth 49 LGBTQ+ people 65, 170 liberalism 9, 10–11, 149, 150, 152, 153, 191, 192, 219, 223, 233–234 Lorde, Audre 168 Lowkey 13, 22, 23–24, 201–212 McGoldrick, Cyrus 9, 15, 21, 174–183 McLaren, Peter 159 Mair, Thomas 5, 153 Malcolm X 23, 87, 114, 176 Manchester Carnival 16, 19, 84–85 Manzoor-Khan, Suhaiymah (Brown Hijabi) 9, 21–22, 24, 170–172, 187–200 Massie, Victoria 86 May, Theresa 14, 108, 114, 119 media acceptance stage 64–66 anger stage 59–62 defence lawyers and 126 moral panics 54–66, 154 narratives 196–197 political pressures 207–208 sadness stage 62–64 shock stage 58–59 United States 176–177 Mehanna, Tarek 180 Mercer, Patrick 127 Mic Righteous 207–208 Miller, David 209 Mir, Saffa 14, 112–121 moral panics 56–66, 86, 154 Morrison, Toni 190–191, 198

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index Morsi, Yassir 19, 26, 137–148, 150–151 mugging 56 Muslims British Bengalis 43–53 British public opinion 34–42 criminalisation 153, 156, 221 go-to Muslims 11, 149–60 good Muslims 71–76, 88–89, 157, 191, 222–224 marginality 50–52, 93, 153 see also specific subjects Nagdee, Ilyas 115–116 names 106–107 national security airports 101–111 racialisation 10, 12–16, 35–36, 71, 204–205, 211 threat inflation 204, 209 see also Prevent strategy; War on Terror National Union of Students (NUS) 115–117, 171 nationalism 5, 6, 10, 20, 71, 76, 77 Nazism 8, 234–235 Neo-Nazism 5 Nevis 63 New Zealand, Christchurch terrorism 27, 96–97, 138, 153, 161, 163, 173 Nike Pro Hijabs 225 niqabs 16, 120 Noble, Safiya 13 Nomani, Asra 23, 222, 224, 226 Northern Police Monitoring Project (NPMP) 15–16, 19–20, 21, 83–84, 85 Notting Hill Carnival 55, 85 nuclear weapons 217–218 Obama, Barack 177, 219, 225, 229 obesity 209 Occupy Wall Street 178

Organisation of Black Unity 23, 87 Orientalism 141, 143, 149, 215, 216, 218, 220 Ortega, Jose 144 Osei-Kofi, Nana 157 O’Shea, Lizzie 205 Owens, Candace 163 Pakistan 13, 25, 103 Palestine 67–68, 72, 207–208, 223, 233 past see history patriotism 8, 64, 175, 219–220 Peirce, Gareth 128, 131 performativity 21–25, 142–144, 224, 225–226, 233 Phillips, Trevor 23, 87 police discrimination 25, 50, 56 killings 55, 132, 225 powers 55, 65 PR practices 61 racism 12, 83–86 Police Federation 61 political prisoners 179 Potash, Larry 215, 217, 218 power exercise 191 fighting 83 gaze 75, 77 good Muslims and 71–73, 74, 75 rules 22 truth to power 52–53 United States 179–180 white power 10–12 Press Complaint Commission 126 Prevent strategy 14–15, 24, 92–96, 115–116, 120–121, 153, 165–166, 205–206, 221 profiling 12, 13, 14, 94 Proms 59 Public Enemy 228 public safety see national security

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index Qatada, Abu 129–130 Qureshi, Asim 1–27, 227–236 Qutb, Muhammad 133 radicalism 187–200 Rage Against the Machine 228 Rahman, Aamer 11–12, 22, 227–236 Rajina, Fatima 8, 11, 25, 43–53 rap music 55, 61, 62 refuges 65 religious discrimination 209 resistance art and 176–177 Bangladeshi community 44–53 condemning 180 digital technology and 109–110 forms 121 manifesto for children 161–173 poetry 201 praxis 25–27 questioning questions 192–193 radicalism 187–200 survival and 199–200 workplace 120 riots 55, 63 Robeson, Paul 169 Robinson, Tommy 88 Rock, Chris 228 rock ‘n’ roll 57 rule of law 125, 127 Rushdie, Salman 122, 123–124 Said, Edward 143 Saudi Arabia 222 schools 8, 14, 44, 93–94, 112–113, 149, 151, 154, 155, 157 scouts 174 seeing 67–77 Self, Will 210 Shepherd, Jack 127 Siddiqui, Aafia 177, 180

silence 46, 51, 68, 69–70, 73, 76, 140, 168, 194, 195 slavery 9, 174–175, 193, 219 Smith, Graham 116 Snow, Jon 1–3, 4, 17–18 social justice 206 social media 18, 44, 53, 55, 108, 127, 158–159, 229 Somalia 138 Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) 131–132 Spellar, John 127 Spencer, Richard 235 Spivak, Gayatri 217 Starkey, David 64 Stormzy 85 Sullivan, Shannon 156–157 surveillance 12, 13–14, 93, 109, 153, 156, 177–178, 190, 204, 219, 221 Taliban 175 tax havens 63 technology see digital technology Telegraph 3 television see media tokenisation 195–197 torture 25, 125, 190 Tower Hamlets Defence Committee 49 Toynbee, Polly 211 trauma 3, 8, 90, 97 Trump, Donald 23, 31, 228–229 Tuana, Nancy 156–157 Turkey, EU membership 69 Turning Point 163 Twitter 52, 95, 126, 224 Uncle Toms 23, 86–88, 89 United Kingdom 7/7 attacks 152, 154–155 2011 riots 55, 63 border control 210–212 British Bengalis 43–53

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index counter-terrorism 12–13, 115 empire 8–9, 44–48 Equality Act 209 ‘Hostile Environment’ 14, 114 Investigatory Powers Act 108 London Bridge attack 189–191 Manchester Arena attack 158 policing minorities 12 Prevent strategy see Prevent strategy public opinion of Muslims 34–42 Terrorism Act (2000) 202–203, 204 United States Americanness 218, 219, 220, 221 border control 73–74 burning crosses 11, 98 Charleston massacre 153 civil rights movement 225 Council on American-Islamic Relations 21, 31–32, 177–178 counter-terrorism see War on Terror foreign policy 202, 205 genocide 9, 48, 174–175 hijab 22–23 media 176–177 Muslim ban 31 political repression 9 profiling 13 refusing to condemn 31–32, 42 slavery 9, 174–175, 219 surveillance 221 television 215–218 terrorism 152, 162, 175 white ignorance 158 white supremacy 219 universities 114–118, 151–152, 157 University of Manchester 114–118

War on Terror border control 73–74, 210–212 colonialism and 171 defence lawyers and 126–133 discourse 12, 19, 25, 71, 140, 144, 147–148 endless war 177 Islamic stereotypes 141–142 Kent 201–205 pressure to condemn 145 racial attacks 137 resources 162–163 strategies 74 surveillance 177–178 torture and 125 see also Prevent strategy Warsi, Sayeeda 5 Weiss, Gail 157 West, Cornel 83 Westwood, Tim 23–24, 206–208 White innocence 11, 96, 154, 166 White lore 10, 11, 162 White nationalism 5, 6, 20 ‘White replacement’ 163 White supremacy academia 96–99 history and 45 media and 66 ubiquity 10–12, 44, 47 violence 96–97, 153–154, 161, 217, 219, 220, 226 Wilderson, Frank 10 world wars 44 Yancy, George 88–89, 157 Yell 13 Yemen 225 Younge, Gary 212 Younis, Tarek 10, 15, 20–21, 22, 25, 26, 67–77 YouTube 193–194, 206 Zionism 223

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