Beyond Islamophobia

Khalili Lecture Theatre

SOAS, University of London
7-8 June 2014

Speaker Abstracts (in alphabetical order)

Chris Allen
Islamophobia in the British Policy Spaces: in retrospect and prospect

Abstract:
It is almost two decades since the publication of the report of the Commission on British
Muslims and Islamophobia by the Runnymede Trust. Entitled, “Islamophobia: a
challenge for us all”, the report remains significant not only for bringing Islamophobia
into the public and political spaces but so too for the impact it had on shaping and
influencing political and academic discourses about the phenomenon. Whilst its legacy is
undoubted, the report was originally conceived as a policy document. Setting out 60
recommendations , the report argued for wide-reaching change. The question is though,
was it successful? Since the report's publication, the British socio-political landscape has
undergone significant change.  Understandings of Islamophobia have changed as have
the politicians and policies that have been sought to tackle it. Nowadays, Islamophobia is
referred to in relation to such policy areas as equalities, security, counter-terror and
integration among others. But does this mean that Islamophobia has been tackled any
more effectively?
This paper takes a critical retrospective on the policy impact of the Runnymede
report as also a range of different policy developments and initiatives that have since
sought to address the rising spectre of Islamophobia in the British setting. Considering
developments under both the New Labour and Coalition governments, this paper will
seek to consider the approaches and policy interventions employed to better
understand respective successes and failures, as also where the gaps have occurred that
have - at times - either directly or indirectly created further problems. This paper will
conclude with a consideration of what lessons have been learned from the British policy
spaces and what those spaces might look like in the foreseeable future.

Biography:
Dr Chris Allen is a Lecturer in Social Policy. He is based in the Institute of Applied Social
Studies at the University of Birmingham. For the past decade and a half, Chris has been
undertaking research into the phenomenon of Islamophobia. Having completed his Arts
& Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded doctoral studies that explored the
discourse and theory of the phenomenon at Birmingham, he has since gone on to
develop research that has had social, political and public appeal. As well as appearing
regularly in the media, in recent years Chris has worked alongside Government in an
advisory capacity currently sitting as an independent expert on the Cross-Government
Anti-Muslim Hatred Working Group based in the Department for Communities & Local
Government and has regularly submitted written and oral evidence to the All-Party
Parliamentary group on Islamophobia. As well as Islamophobia his other research
interests include: the role of faith and religion in the public and political spaces; issues
around diversity, multiculturalism and super-diversity; equalities legislation, policy and
practice; inclusion, exclusion, integration and cohesion."

Houria Bouteldja
Islamophobia is a state racism

Abstract:
I don’t believe it makes sense to characterize Islamophobia as a “feeling.” The terms
“representation” and “imaginary” are often used, even as Islamophobia is
institutionalized. In fact, there are Islamophobic laws. The 2004 French law, for example,
is a law against young women who wear the headscarf, a law that transformed – I would
even say betrayed – the secular spirit of the 1905 law. Secularity means neutrality of the
state: the state is without religion, neutral, and therefore neither atheist nor agnostic.
With the 2004 law, the state’s duty of neutrality becomes the duty of the citizen. To
speak of Islamophobia as sentiment is a euphemism. Islamophobia is first and foremost
state racism. I say “racism” because the word “Islamophobia can seem vague. There is a
debate about whether it is more accurate to use “Islamophobia” or “Muslimophobia.”
For me, it is essential to define the term. Whether we use Muslimophobia or
Islamophobia, both must be understood as state racism. Such racism has no purpose
other than to maintain a population in a subaltern state. The term “Muslim” is itself
problematic. I am a Muslim, although 25 years ago – when I was already a Muslim – I
wasn’t considered one. At that time I was considered a “beurette” or a second-
generation immigrant. Self-identifying as a Muslim is not a problem; it’s even a source of
pride. However, the fact that I am automatically considered a Muslim bothers me. After
all, non-Muslims are not identified above all by their religion. It is a way of defining
citizens according to categories and classifications put in place by public policy and
debate. A whole population is automatically classified as Muslim without differentiating
the practicing, agnostic or atheists among them. We are placed in the Muslim category
regardless of our subjectivity.

Biography :
Houria Bouteldja  is, in her own words, an indigenous activist, subverting the often
derogatively used word and wearing it as an expression of her Algerian heritage within
the French colonial context. Born to immigrant working class parents, Houria grew up in
France, and has since achieved great success by being singled out by the French Right as
a bit of a rabble-rouser. She cuts a controversial figure, particularly in her role as
spokesperson for the Party of the Indigenous Republic. It is an anti-racist, anti-
imperialist political party, which encourages “a space of self-organization for all those
who want to engage in the fight against racial inequality that confines blacks, Arabs and
Muslims similar to that of native status in the former colonies”.
 
*
Shenaz Bunglawala
Engaging Communities in Challenging Islamophobia?

Biography:
Shenaz Bunglawala is Head of Research at ENGAGE.  She has taught undergraduate
courses in political science at the LSE and King’s College, London.
Shenaz sits on the Research Excellence Framework 2014 expert sub-panel for Theology
and Religious Studies and advises on various AHRC/ESRC research projects. She is a
Non-Resident Executive to the Razak School of Government in Malaysia and sits on the
executive committee of Faith in Europe.

Madeline Clements
Seeing Beyond? Engagements with Islamophobia in Pakistani art exhibited in
Britain in the post-9/11 decade

Abstract:
This paper will focus on how works of contemporary Pakistani visual art exhibited in
diasporic, British contexts in the wake of 9/11, 7/7 and the on-going “war-on-terror”,
engage, challenge, and register the impact of, (Western) Islamophobia. The questions it
proceeds to ask will include: what pictures of Muslims and Islam do such artworks paint,
what is their political/aesthetic/social function, who do they serve, where do they sit
within a particular curatorial vision, and how do their different treatments of Muslim
stereotypes and subjects hinder or help viewers as we attempt to move beyond fear of
Islam and toward a deeper understanding of what it is that instils it?
It will have a two-part focus. First, it will consider continuities and discontinuities
of approach among artworks displayed in exhibitions including ‘Beyond the Page’ (Asia
House/Manchester Art Gallery, 2006-7), ‘The Brit Pak’ (MICA Gallery/South Bank
Centre, 2011), and ‘Different Faces of Pakistan’ (Asia House, 2012). Second, it will turn
to the works included in the exhibition, ‘Second Glance/Double Take’, aiming to
integrate them into the discussions taking place around Muslims and trust within the
body of the ‘Beyond Islamophobia’ conference.

Biography:
Madeline Clements has a BA in English from Oxford (2001) and an MA in National and
International Literatures in English (2009) from London University’s Institute of English
Studies. In April 2014 she was awarded her PhD. Her AHRC-funded doctoral thesis was
entitled Orienting Muslims: Mapping Global Spheres of Affiliation and Affinity in
Contemporary South Asian Fiction. The book version is forthcoming with Oxford
University Press Pakistan. In 2012, while studying for her PhD, Madeline undertook a
two-month Residency at the National College of Arts in Lahore. Her encounters with
artists there are central to her new research, which asks how art and literature from
Pakistan represent and re-imagine what the rights of citizenship mean for embattled
minority communities within the formal equalities promised by the postcolonial nation-
state. In August 2014 she will return to Pakistan as Assistant Professor of English at
Forman Christian College, Lahore. She has spoken at festivals, seminars and conferences
in the UK and Pakistan, and her articles and reviews have appeared in a range of
publications.

*
John L Esposito
Islam, Islamophobia & the Role of the Media in America

Abstract:
Negative images and discourse, anti-Muslim sentiments, discrimination and violence are
often ascribed to fallout from 9/11. In fact, the modern roots of Islamophobia are to be
found in the last decades of the 20th century, which provided the backdrop for an
exponential increase in anti-Muslim discourse and behavior. This presentation will look
at the rise and exponential growth of Islamophobia in America, the role of media,
especially the “Organized Islamophobia Network” in social media, and its impact on
American politics and the image vs. the reality of American Muslims in popular culture.

Biography:
John L. Esposito is University Professor,
Professor of Religion and International Affairs
and of Islamic Studies and Founding Director of
the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for
Muslim-Christian Understanding at
Georgetown University. His more than forty-
five books include: Islamophobia and the
Challenge of Pluralism in the 21st Century, The
Future of Islam, Who Speaks for Islam? What a
Billion Muslims Really Think (with Dalia
Mogahed), Unholy War: Terror in the Name of
Islam, Islam and Democracy (with J. Voll).
Editor-in-Chief of Oxford Islamic Studies
Online and The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, his writings have been
translated into more than 35 languages.
A former President of the American Academy of Religion, the Middle East Studies
Association and of the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies, Esposito has
served as a consultant to the U.S. government and governments, corporations,
universities, and the media worldwide.

Peter Gottschalk
Islamophobia: An Imperial Inheritance    

Abstract:
 Forms of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment vary as dramatically as they are
disparate historically and geographically. However, unsettlingly similar sets of
prejudices have become evident in Britain, India, and the United States. While current
scholarship has scrutinized biases resulting from post-colonial conditions, transnational
threats, and recent nativism, the common heritage of antipathies exported through
British colonial and imperial endeavors demand more attention. Britons developed at
home and transported abroad tropes of Islamic invasion, Muslim tyranny, masculine
fanaticism, and feminine oppression. Whether consciously encountering Muslims in
their new foreign homes or not, officials and intellectuals instantiated “the Muslim” as an
analytic figure by which to gauge various social maladies. While it remains crucial to
recognize the racial, nationalist, and religious enmities that can fuel contemporary
eruptions of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment, elaborating the historically deep
wellspring of prejudice remains essential for non-Muslims to confront this unwelcome
social inheritance in order to diffuse the negative sensibilities it
has enduringly informed.

Biography:
Peter Gottschalk is Professor of Religion at Wesleyan University. Peter’s research and
teaching concentrate on the dynamics of cultural interpretation and conflict in the
context of Islam, Hinduism, and the West. He is interested particularly in understanding
how assumptions of mutual antagonism form between groups despite evidence of
religious confluence. He has appeared on CNN, Air America, Voice of America, and
National Public Radio, while his work has been mentioned in USA Today, The New York
Times, and the On Faith website of The Washington Post.
Peter is the author of Beyond Hindu and Muslim: Multiple Identity in Narratives from
Village India (Oxford UP, 2000). He collaborated with Mathew N. Schmalz (College of the
Holy Cross) in editing Engaging South Asian Religions: Boundaries, Appropriations and
Resistance (SUNY Press, 2011), and in creating an interactive website called ‘A Virtual
Village’ (2001). He co-wrote, with Gabriel Greenberg, Islamophobia: Making Muslims the
Enemy (Rowman and Littlefield, 2007) This volume demonstrates how Americans have
had endemic fears about Islam and Muslims since before the nation’s founding. Using
political cartoons, Peter and Gabriel show that despite the different forms Islamophobia
has taken in response to shifting social, political, and economic contexts, stereotyped
Muslims have served as a foil used to prove American normality. Most recently, Peter is
completing a book for Oxford University Press on the history of British representations
of Indians during the Raj.

Nathan Lean
A Manufactured Prejudice: The Three ‘I’s of Islamophobia in America

Abstract:
In the past decade, scholarship focusing on the phenomenon of Islamophobia has parsed
its origins, manifestations, consequences and even its definition. Much of the existing
literature configures it as an ugly, albeit unintended, consequence of a variety of things:
a defensive reaction to pronounced cultural differences; a response to globalization,
growing Muslim populations and immigration; and the result of media malpractice or
Western foreign policies in the Middle East. These explanations are important and
helpful. But what if Islamophobia is not only an aftereffect or response? What if it is also
a point of departure from which exaggerated fears of or prejudices towards Muslims are
deliberately engineered in order to achieve other particular aims? This paper will
examine Islamophobia as a product that is marketed to the American public through
three specific outlets: Imperialism, Institutionalization, and Industry. In each case, I will
demonstrate how the demonization of Muslim communities through reinforced negative
stereotypes is a necessary prerequisite to: advance American influence and secure
national interests abroad; bolster a domestic security apparatus and promote policies at
home; and sustain lucrative careers that reinforce perceived threats and advocate
ideologies through the dissemination of (mis)information. The net result is a mutually
reinforcing relationship whereby the exploitation of Muslims for personal or political
gain fosters anti-Muslim prejudice amongst a public that, in turn, supports and even
demands such practices.

Biography:
Nathan Lean is the Research Director at Georgetown University’s Project on Pluralism,
Religious Diversity and Islamophobia at the Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal Center for
Muslim-Christian Understanding. Formerly, he was the Editor-in-Chief of Aslan Media.
He is the author of three books, among them the award-winning The Islamophobia
Industry: How the Right Manufactures Fear of Muslims. His fourth volume, The Changing
Middle East: Power and Politics in An Age of Revolution will be published in early 2015.
His writings on Islamophobia have been featured in the Los Angeles Times, the New
York Daily News, the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, CNN, and Salon
among others.

*
Maleiha Malik
Sharia Courts, Minority Legal Orders and Liberal Democracy

Abstract:
The paper focuses on recent controversies about sharia law that have been an
important source of the racialisation of Muslims in the UK, USA and Canada. My
argument is that it is important to distinguish between the different claims made by
Muslim in relation to sharia law. The main issue is that the development of a
separate parallel legal system but rather the modest accommodation of religious norms
in discreet areas. How should a liberal political order and the state legal system
respond? My argument develops in three parts. In section one, I suggest that the term
‘minority legal order’ is a more accurate term than parallel legal systems. In section two,
I examine the past experience of Western legal systems because it provides an important
context for understanding the present relationship between minorities, pluralism and
law. In section three, I develop a range of options that allow for the accommodation of a
minority legal order in a liberal democracy.

Biography:
Maleiha Malik is a Professor in Law. She studied at the University of London and
University of Oxford. She is a barrister and a member of the Honourable Society of
Gray’s Inn. Maleiha Malik’s research focuses on the theory and practice of discrimination
law. She has written extensively on discrimination law, minority protection and feminist
theory. She is the co-author of a leading text titled Discrimination Law: Theory and
Practice which was published in 2008. Among her many other publications on Muslims,
law and discrimination, is her groundbreaking work, Patterns of Prejudice: Anti-Muslim
Prejudice in the West, Past and Present. (2008). She is, along with Dr Jon Wilson from the
Department of History at KCL, the co-ordinator of the AHRC project on ‘Traditions in the
Present’ which explores the relevance of 'tradition' in contemporary societies. Maleiha
Malik's current research focuses on the intersection between sexual and cultural
equality, and it explores the adjustments that may need to be made to feminist theory to
accommodate increasing cultural pluralism. She teaches courses in Jurisprudence and
Legal Theory, Discrimination Law and European Law to undergraduate and
postgraduate students.
 *

Peter Morey
Muslim Misery Memoirs: Exotic Suffering, Truth and Genre

Abstract:
In this paper, I will examine an example of a sub-genre that has experienced an
exponential boom in popularity and sales since 9/11: those texts I would call Muslim
misery memoirs. These texts partake in large measure of the culturalist discourse that
sees Muslims, and Muslim lands, as inherently different and threatening. They depict
Islam as a source of oppression, drawing on an Orientalist historical template that for
good measure also evokes recognisable historical types of enemy and the kinds of
repression of minorities and women the West has supposedly eradicated. Hence they
tend often to inscribe the regions they depict somewhat schizophrenically: as a potential
threat to those freedoms cherished in the West if left unconfronted, and in terms of a
backwardness that renders them supine in the face of a neo-imperial project of rescue,
modernisation and enlightenment. Their overarching message appears to be that rescue
by the West, which is to say the United States military, cannot come soon enough for the
benighted figures that haunt their pages, suffering all manner of deprivation and abuse
in the name of Islam. Examples of this sub-genre include Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in
Tehran and Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, but this paper will concentrate on Asne
Seierstadt’s journalistic account The Bookseller of Kabul (2004). I will argue that, despite
its seemingly confident moral prognosis, The Bookseller of Kabul at the same time
displays an unexpected level of anxiety about the project of 'unveiling' the East to the
West, and in particular about the legitimacy of writing as a mode of conveying an other
culture in a politically fraught context. This often resolves itself through questions of
genre and the difficulty of maintaining clear generic limits.

Biography:
Peter Morey is Professor of English and Postcolonial Studies at the University of East
London. He has published widely in the fields of colonial and postcolonial literary and
cultural studies, particularly in the area of South Asian and diaspora literature. His
books include, Fictions of India: Narrative and Power (Edinburgh UP, 2000), Rohinton
Mistry (Manchester UP, 2004), Alternative Indias: Writing, Nation and Communalism
(Rodopi, 2006), Framing Muslims: Stereotyping and Representation after 9/11 (Harvard
UP, 2011) and Culture, Diaspora and Modernity in Muslim Writing (Routledge, 2012).
Between 2007 and 2010 he was Principal Investigator in the AHRC Newtork award-
funded project, Framing Muslims, which explored the representation of Muslims in
contemporary, historical and geographical contexts. He is currently RCUK Global
Uncertainties Leadership Fellow directing the Muslims, Trust and Cultural Dialogue
Project.

Fiyaz Mughal
On-line Hatred & Anti-Muslim Prejudice

Biography:
Fiyaz has over 15 years experience in the community and voluntary sector in positions
that have included social policy lobbying, project and general management, and conflict
resolution work. He has worked in a number of organizations providing training to
women right through to European transnational faith related programmes and advice
and information projects. He is the Founder and Director of a non-profit organization,
Faith Matters (www.faith-matters.org) which works on reducing extremism and
developing platforms for discourse and interaction between Muslim, Sikh, Christian and
Jewish communities right across the UK. Fiyaz was previously a Councillor in Haringey
(2006-2010) and a Councillor in Oxford (2002-2004). He was also appointed to be on
the Working Group for Communities that was linked to the Extremism Task Force
developed in 2005 after the 7/7 bombings. He was appointed by the then Secretary of
State for the Department for Communities and Local Government to be a member of the
Local Delivery Advisory Group on Preventing Violent Extremism. He was also appointed
as the Advisor to the Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg MP, on interfaith and
preventing radicalisation and extremism between 2009 - 2010. Fiyaz was honoured in
June 2009 by Her Majesty the Queen and was bestowed with the Honour of the Order of
the British Empire. He is also founder and director of Tell Mama, an organisation
dedicated to recording and countering Islamophobia.

Geoffrey Nash
Islamophobia, Postcolonialism, and Contemporary British Literature

Abstract:
Is contemporary British literature Islamophobic? How important and influential is
literature as a site in the broader configuration of Islamophobia? Does the embedding of
Islamophobic notions and messages within literature contribute significantly to the
wider Islamophobia within society? What role have well-known individual authors, the
celebrities of literature, had in the dissemination of anti-Islamic ideas? During the
decade since 9/11, British literature has been one vehicle among others for conveying
negative clichés about Islam and Muslims. This in turn builds on a period, emerging out
of the Rushdie Affair, during which anti-Muslim discourse became almost standard and
hegemonic among intellectuals. The perspective might be stretched even further back to
the era of colonialism. ‘In many ways, the concept of Islamophobia not only possesses a
current reality based on existing politics, but there is an historical legacy that has taken
shape precisely because of the colonial experience’ (Abbas 2013: 17). What part, if any,
does postcolonialism play in Islamophobic representations of Muslims in recent British
literature? In addressing these issues, the paper argues that the stances adopted
towards Islam in postcolonial writing have often been complicit in actively
disseminating Islamophobic attitudes, or at the very least in reinforcing them. However
recent postcolonial writing can also be potentially liberating in entering into positive
dialogue with aspects of Muslim belief and practice signposting the way towards a more
healthy interaction between postcolonial and Muslim voices.

Biography:
Geoffrey Nash’s work focuses on western writing that addresses the Middle East and the
Islamic world. His expertise encompasses Arab-American and European writing on the
Middle East. He has a particular interest in Orientalism and the Orientalists, travel
writing, Arab Anglophone fiction and Islamic themes in contemporary British fiction.
Among his recent publications are the edited volume Postcolonialism and Islam (2013)
and his monograph, Writing Muslim Identity (2012).

Sherene Razack
Law’s Preoccupation with the Muslim Psyche: How Muslims Are Bodies Outside
the Law

Abstract:
Asked to offer an opinion of Omar Khadr’s “risk of dangerousness as a violent jihadist,”
state appointed psychiatrist  Welner conducted a seven hour interview with Khadr at
Guantanamo. Having no prior experience in assessing “jihadists,” Welner consulted with
Danish psychologist Nicolai Sennels. Well known in Europe for his racist views of
Muslims, Sennels believes that “massive inbreeding within the Muslim culture during
the last 1,400 years may have done catastrophic damage to their gene pool.”  Muslims
are genetically unable to integrate into European society and they possess an in born
capacity to be violent. As I have shown in Casting Out, this biological view of Muslim
degeneracy has gained currency in European and North American courts and
parliaments, often in as openly racist a form as in Sennels’ opinions, but also disguised
as moderate arguments about Muslim cultural incapacity to integrate. In this paper I
consider how law’s contemporary preoccupation with the Muslim psyche renders all
Muslims as less than human. I explore the logic of this eviction both from law and from
humanity.

Biography:
Sherene Razack is a professor in the department of Sociology and Equity Studies in
Education at the University of Toronto. Her research and teaching interests lie in the
area of race and gender issues in the law. Her most recent research investigates the
deaths of Aboriginal people held in police custody in Canada. Her books include Casting
Out: The Eviction of Muslims From Western Law and Politics (2008), Dark Threats and
White Knights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping and the New Imperialism (2004), an
edited collection Race, Space and the Law: Unmapping A White Settler Society (2002),
Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race, and Culture in Courtrooms and Classrooms
(1998) and Canadian Feminism and the Law: The Women’s Legal and Education Fund and
the Pursuit of Equality (1991).

Stephen Sheehi
Post-Islamophobia: Islamophobia in Post-Racial America.
 
Abstract: 
Over the past several years, the public discussion and mainstream disavowal of
Islamophobia in American media and civil society has served as a counterweight to the
steady flow of individual and programmatic campaigns of racist slander, racial profiling,
and hate acts against Muslims and Arabs in the United States. This presentation
examines the domestic politics of this  hate speech against the overwhelming public
reaction against Islamophobia in “post-racial” America’s civil society and media. We will
discover that the ressentiment between white majoritarian North American culture and
its racialized minorities, in this case Arab and Muslim Americans, is determined less by a
stigmatization of Islamophobia itself than mediated by a blend of class interests and
domestic politics that perpetually manage and reconfigure America’s racial hierarchy in
relation to its socio-economic structure. This analysis roots itself in an understanding
the Islamophobia is an ideological formation interwoven into American polity, history
and culture; a complex political and cultural phenomenon that operates across political
parties, classes, and racial groups. As such, this analysis, which is indebted to the work of
Althusser, Omi and Winant, and Frye-Jacobson,  concludes with a critical examination of
Muslim and Arab American collusion with the racialized hierarchy in the United States, a
hierarchy that is historically and political informed by class collusion between middle-
class Muslim and Arab Americans and mainstream White America.

Biography:
Stephen Sheehi is Associate Professor of Arabic and Arab Culture and the Director of the
Arabic Program at the University of Southern Carolina. His work interrogates various
modalities of self, society, and political economy within the Arab world. His first book,
Foundations of Modern Arab Identity offered a new paradigm for understanding the
foundational writing of Arab intellectuals of the 19th century Arab Renaissance. Among
his other publications is Islamophobia: The Ideological Campaign Against Muclims
(Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2011) which examines the rise of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab
sentiments in the West following the end of the Cold War. The argument of the book is
that Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiments are an ideological component of North
American culture and arise from the United States’ race history as much as foreign
interests. He has also published extensively on photography, art, literature, politics, and
intellectual history and has lectured internationally including at the Human Rights
Council in Geneva, Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Istanbul, and the Library of
Congress. He is currently completing a pioneering study of the history of photography in
the Arab world.

Asmaa Soliman
Young Muslims in Germany and their Usage of New Media to Counter
Islamophobia

Abstract:
This paper examines two young German Muslims who both use the internet differently
to resist Islamophobic attitudes and negative associations with Islam and Muslims. One
of them is Nuri Senay, a young Muslim man who founded muslime.tv, an online website
that shows short documentary videos about Muslim life in Germany. The other one is
Kuebra Guemuesay who is known for her blog Ein Fremdwoerterbuch that sheds light on
her personal life and views as a Muslim girl living in Germany. The paper contextualises
the case studies within theoretical criticisms raised towards the Habermasian public
sphere and scholars’ conceptualisation of counterpublics. It finds out that muslime.tv as
well as Ein Fremdwoerterbuch can both be seen as counterpublics that challenge
Islamophobia, which is visible within the mainstream public. Both online platforms give
various insights into Muslims’ lifestyles that connect Muslims with positive
characteristics and that bring forward a Muslim identity’s normality. They also use new
media to criticise Islamophobic expressions and to feature Islamophobic attacks that are
rather ignored in the main public.

Biography:
Asmaa Soliman, from Aachen, Germany, is a research assistant at Muslims, Trust and
Cultural Dialogue in London. She has previously worked for several media companies
and research projects in Germany, Egypt and the UK, mostly in relation to religion, Islam
and intercultural dialogue. In 2011 she joined the University College London’s Centre for
Multidisciplinary and Intercultural Inquiry where she is finalising her PHD. Her research
topic is on Muslim youth culture in Germany. Asmaa taught courses in European Studies,
Media Culture, Arts and Culture and Security Studies. She wrote several articles about
Muslims in Europe. She received her BA in Arts & Culture from Maastricht University,
her first MA in Media Culture and her second MA in International Politics from City
University London. She is involved in many NGOs including UPF (Universal Peace
Federation), St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace, SOLIYA and UNAOC
(United Nations Alliance of Civilisations).

Sarah Soyei
Creating Critical Thinkers: Educating Young People to Reject Islamophobia

Abstract:
Young people are fed Islamophobic messages every day, via traditional and social media,
family and friends. These create a climate of fear, encourage anger, intolerance and
division within schools and communities. If they are to reject prejudice, young people
need to be provided with an alternative message to that espoused by populist politicians
and media. However, educators can feel trepidation in tackling issues of Islamophobia
due to a lack of knowledge, training and support in undertaking this work.
Over the past 7 years, I have worked with hundreds of educators and thousands of
young people throughout England to deliver workshops aimed at challenging
Islamophobic attitudes and practices, deconstructing misconceptions about Muslims
and equipping people to think critically about the information that they receive. Prior to
and during the workshops, participants are encouraged to share their questions and
concerns in order for these to be addressed.
This presentation will outline the current state of play with regards to Islamophobia
within the education system, highlight the prevalent themes that I have encountered in
undertaking this work and showcase the techniques that I have employed in order to
create a positive culture change within schools.

Biography:
Sarah Soyei is Head of Partnerships at EqualiTeach. She obtained a distinction in her MA
in Equal Opportunities and Society and has authored several publications in the field,
including research into the barriers to tackling racism and promoting equality in
England’s schools, guidance for Initial Teacher Training providers and co-authoring
international guidelines on countering intolerance and discrimination against Muslims. 
Sarah has worked in the field of equality and diversity training and consultancy for over
10 years and during this time has overseen the development and delivery of educational
programmes working with over 200,000 people. These have included programmes of
work commissioned by the government, EHRC, the Football Foundation, over 20 Local
Authorities and private sector organisations such as Partnerships in Care. She has
delivered presentations at the House of Commons, London’s City Hall and several
national and international conferences.

Abdoolkarim Vakil
Present at the Creation?: Islamophobia and the Making of Muslims

Abstract:
This paper explores the uses and abuses of history for Islamophobia.
 
Biography:
AbdoolKarim Vakil is Lecturer in Contemporary History in the departments of History
and of Spanish, Portuguese & Latin American Studies at King's College London. His work
focuses on 19th and 20th century Portuguese intellectual and cultural nationalism,
identity politics, colonialism, postcolonialism, Islam and Muslim politics. He is co-editor
with S. Sayyid of Thinking Through Islamophobia: Global Perspectives (Hurst, 2011).
AbdoolKarim currently chairs the Muslim Council of Britain's Research and
Documentation Committee.

Amina Yaqin
Intercultural and familial tales of trust and mistrust: the “halal” romance of Leila
Aboulela’s Minaret
 
 Abstract:
In interviews Leila Aboulela is outspoken about an "Islamic individualism" in her novels.
That her fiction is responding to Islamophobia is evident in both the Translator and the
Minaret. In this paper I wish to analyse the latter novel as an example of a literary
response to Islamophobia through its characterisation of a diasporic Sudanese female
protagonist Najwa. Her story represents a complicated immigrant narrative of trust and
mistrust noticeably in her personal relationships guided by varying impulses of emotion
and reason. She is rejected by both the secularist and the Islamist in her pursuit of love,
and her need to be loved in the way she wants seems to be answered only by living an
everyday modest Islamic lifestyle that ends in pilgrimage. My paper will engage with
readings of Aboulela’s fiction as a ‘domestic multicultural romance’ and its ‘Islamic turn’
toward agency alongside a reading of Saba Mahmood's Politics of Piety. 

Biography:
Amina Yaqin is Senior Lecturer in Urdu and Postcolonial Studies and Chair of the Centre
for the Study of Pakistan. Her research interests include colonial and postcolonial
literary and cultural studies. She is co-author (with Peter Morey) of Framing Muslims:
stereotyping and representation after 9/11 (Harvard University Press, 2011) and co-
editor of Culture, Diaspora and Modernity in Muslim Writing (Routledge, 2012). Her
articles have appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as Interventions, Comparative
Critical Studies, Fashion Theory and Journal of Women’s History. She has been Co-Director
of the AHRC funded International Research Network Framing Muslims from 2007-2010
and is currently Project Partner for ‘Muslims, Trust and Cultural Dialogue’ an
intercultural research project funded by the RCUK. Her publications on twentieth
century Urdu literary trends include a journal special issue on the celebrated Pakistani
poet, Faiz Ahmad Faiz (Pakistaniaat, 2013). She has published numerous articles in peer
reviewed journals on the Urdu poets Kishwar Naheed and Fahmida Riaz, Urdu fiction
and autobiography and the contexts and intertexts of Urdu in English fiction by writers
such as Nadeem Aslam, Anita Desai, Fawzia Afzal Khan and Salman Rushdie. She is
working on her next book Twentieth Century Women’s Poetry from Pakistan: feminist
resistance and gendered subjectivities. She is also known as a translator of Urdu literature
and recently contributed to Howard Brenton’s Partition play, Drawing the Line.