Arzu recalls the response of friends and people she met in Bosnia the day after the UK’s Brexit Referendum. In the result to leave the European Union, and the campaign that led up to they saw their own experiences before the Bosnian war unleashed in the British public space. Ten years on,
Arzu argues that we need to join the dots and realise that the narratives of the UK and the west more broadly as ‘liberal’ ‘tolerant’ and ‘just’ are fictions that we have internalised. This week’s sentencing of the Filton Four, and the decision by the Court of Appeal to uphold the proscription
Some thoughts from Arzu on the anti-migrant ‘protests’, court rulings against asylum hotels, narratives around grooming gangs and how they all align post the 2024 summer pogroms in the UK. Yesterday the High Court granted a temporary injunction against Somani Hotels housing asylum seekers at one of their hotels in Epping.
Organised by the Decolonising the Mind group, venue IHRC offices, Wembley, UK. Saturday 26th April. Arzu Merali presenting. From 2 to 4pm IHRC Bookshop 202 Preston Road, HA9 8PA. Nearest Station: Preston Rd (Metropolitan Line) Registration is a must via this link. Light Refreshments This workshop will look at two aspects of
Arzu refers to a recent article for more information on education and the ideological drift of Islamophobia in the UK. I stumbled upon this piece in LRB this week ‘Making Media Great Again’ by Peter Geoghegan on the media tycoon Paul Marshall. It provides more information on Ark Academy schools, which I alluded
Nuanced reading is possible without having to label every enjoyable work decolonial, argues Arzu. Fatima Manji’s Hidden Heritage: Rediscovering Britain’s relationship with the Orient (2021) is exquisitely written. It is beautifully vivid in its descriptions not just of the objets d’art, historical artefacts and buildings she finds on her travels around British
Things need to change in mainstream pro-Palestine civil society movements in Western Europe argues Arzu Merali, when so many of the racist, Islamophobic, anti-Palestinian narratives that have been employed to justify and enact genocide have been internalised by mainstream social justice organisations. The result has been to uphold those narratives and invite
November in the UK has been designated Islamophobia Awareness Month. Arzu gives some thoughts on what seriously tackling Islamophobia requires. It is coming to the end of the Julian year and my review of past works is barely started. As I have written on Islamophobia for the best part of three
Some notes on the arrest of the Israeli filmmaker and academic at the protest against the Israeli genocide on Friday 1st November 2024 under anti-terrorism laws. This is for my non-UK friends in particular. I wish I could say I am shocked or stunned. To do so would mean I still believe
Arzu appeared on TRT’s Roundtable to discuss the causes of the race riots in the UK in the past few weeks. Riots by far-right groups in the UK have left many Muslims feeling scared and isolated in the country they call home. What do these actions say about the state of race