The think tank’s vision calls for the establishment of a spy state. No public who understood this would agree to social suicide like that* Suicide Squad. A movie, born from the comic world, encompassing the DC Comics anti-hero team. A world of villains co-opted for black ops in service of the US
When there is no right way to review the wrong laws, diversity in counter-terrorism or policing leadership doesn’t matter* Despite – despite – everything, I think most civil society activists working on the anti-terror laws and its concomitant baggage will miss David Anderson QC, the outgoing independent reviewer of terrorism legislation. At
Arzu Merali argues that years of reports have done little but push the UK further towards Victorian victim shaming and ever widening socio-economic divides* There was that time Louise Casey did her report into homelessness. Remember that? Maybe not. Or her foray into crime and punishment? Or troubled families or anti-social behaviour? Maybe, or maybe not still,
Islamophobia is undeniably on the rise – and that’s a problem for us all as all forms of racism are relegitimised in the process* More than 20 years working in human rights and anti-racism work can leave you both pessimistic about the future and inured to rising and raging hatred, let alone
Arzu Merali reflects on the Mina stampede of 2015 and the depolitcisation of Hajj. Hajj is not supposed to be politicised. Thus spoke the Saudis and no-one since seems to have managed to regain the narrative. Instead of a journey to eternal life that Hajj symbolises and inshaAllah realises, hujjaj routinely meet
Instead of asking them what they really think this poll asked Muslims to help perpetuate a prejudiced narrative that already exists against them This story starts way back before Channel 4 commissioned ICM to find out what British Muslims think. It started a long time before the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) was
The British premier’s policy announcement of funding to teach Muslim women English has made me want to stop speaking the language I love* There’s the personal and public – a reimagining of the feminist standpoint if you like. It’s the way I see David Cameron’s speech announcing the need (and coincidentally the funding) to
In the wake of the publication of a landmark report documenting a rise in anti-Muslim racism in the UK, one of its authors, Arzu Merali, argues for a deeper understanding of the systemic roots of Islamophobia.* “While the media has always been identified as a problem area when it comes to rising
Arzu Merali of IHRC reflects on the recent memorialisation of Srebrenica and the loss of its historical context. People born in the late ‘80s onwards, of course, do not remember. Who expects them to? Yet, it wouldn’t be unreasonable that the message of this disaster, rather catastrophe, of ginormous proportions, would be
Arzu Merali reflects on the failures to remember the genocide in Bosnia, or learn the lessons of the genocide. People born in the late ‘80s onwards, of course, do not remember. Who expects them to? Yet, it wouldn’t be unreasonable that the message of this disaster, rather catastrophe, of ginormous proportions, would
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