Can we be something more honest than “woke”? I’ve been thinking a lot about the performativity of all our politics recently. I am worried. An MP describes people as ‘a funny tinge’ and to be a “good” person you have to perform outrage/ridicule, though I’m sure many of us funny-tinged people feel nothing deeper than an eye-roll. It’s not that deep. And by not that … Continue reading Everybody wants to be ‘woke’ but who wants to be honest?
It has been exactly one Gregorian-calendar-month since I left Granada, Spain, where I attended the Critical Muslim Studies two-week summer school. I had intended to write up some notes or musings as soon as I got back because there was so much to reflect on from what I enjoyed, to what frustrated me, and unresolved questions. But upon returning to the UK a certain heaviness … Continue reading What if Neo had taken both pills? | A Reflection on a Summer School and Feelings of Madness
This post is a response to a question I got asked during my Instagram takeover of amaliah.com’s story (@thebrownhijabi). I mentioned my fascination with “the way liberal feminism colludes with islamophobia” and was then asked to elaborate – which I did, but which I want to do more now. How do liberal feminism and Islamophobia work together? First off, we need to define what I … Continue reading When Feminism & Islamophobia are Two Sides of the Same Coin
Today we stand in a moment, or many moments, where people talk about the world being broken. For many of us, globally and historically it has been broken and breaking and completely destroyed already many times and again and again. How do we move forward then? How do we reconceptualise societies that are healing rather than negligent, celebratory rather than unjust and fundamentally committed to … Continue reading Ramadan Reflection: Islam is a duty to Resist
Yesterday morning I flicked through twitter as I usually do whilst eating my porridge and listening to the drone of the BBC news. As I flicked though, a line from the news tab caught my attention: ‘Some of the child refugees coming here are actually adults’ the voice declared, scandalised… I frowned and thought there must be some sort of punch-line, but this wasn’t farce. It … Continue reading ‘Testing’ if refugees are children is about racism and ideology, not welfare
Content Note: discussion of migration, racism, racialised masculinities, masculinity, gendering of migration, colonialism, imperialism, Euro-centrism, dehumanisation of black and brown bodies. “Migrant crisis”. These two words have become so overused as a label to term the plight of non-white human beings deemed “problems” to the European continent, that they have lost any poignancy they may once have held. I saw an article yesterday headlined something … Continue reading Why are we calling it a “Migrant Crisis”?
The Brown Hijabi 