'Islam and Civic Responsibility' and 'Resisting Blackness'

Last Updated on Friday, 28 November 2008 17:36

SOAS/UEL Framing Muslims Seminar Series

Framing Muslims: Representation in Culture and Society Post 9/11 - Seminar

 

Date: Thursday, 27 November 2008

Venue: Room EB.G.18 (University of East London, Docklands Campus)

Time: 5:30-7:00pm

 

Dr Usama Hasan

'Islam and Civic Responsibility: the City Circle experience'

Dr Usama Hasan is Senior Lecturer in Engineering & Information Sciences at Middlesex University, an imam at Tawhid Mosque in Leyton and Director of the City Circle, a London-based network of Muslim professionals that has been at the forefront of forging an authentic Muslim identity in Britain for the last decade.

 

Dr Anita Fabos

'Resisting Blackness: Transnational Sudanese Women and Islamic Cultural Space in the Diaspora'

 

Dr Anita Fabos researches in the areas of ethnicity and race, gender, refugees in urban settings, immigration and naturalization policy, Arab nationalism, and Islam at UEL. She was formerly the Director of the Program in Forced Migration and Refugee Studies and Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the American University in Cairo. She has conducted ethnographic research among Muslim Arab Sudanese forced migrants in Cairo, published as 'Brothers' or Others? Gender and Propriety for Muslim Arab Sudanese in Egypt (Berghahn Books). Her current research interests include transnational strategies of women and men in the Sudanese diaspora, livelihoods of urban refugees, and refugee narratives.

 

Abstract:

This presentation explores the embodied strategies of Arab Muslim Sudanese in Egypt and the United Kingdom within a framework of a 'Muslim diaspora'. It compares discourses of belonging in two distinct socio-legal contexts whereby key elements of Muslim Arab Sudanese identity are performed according to local conditions, taking on different meanings. Egypt and Britain are both familiar to Sudanese through colonial relationships of domination and occupation, and later as locations for study, recreation and exile, but the contemporary legal, political and socio-cultural environments in Britain and Egypt have shaped Sudanese identity in the diaspora in distinctive ways. In Egypt, a Muslim nation with a long history of entanglement with the Muslim Arab people of northern Sudan, Sudanese immigrants and exiles have asserted their superior performance of the shared value of propriety, claimed by both as fundamental to a 'Muslim' and 'Arab' identity. In the UK Sudanese similarly present themselves in morally superior terms, joining other voices in the Muslim diaspora and finding solidarity within an Arab cultural framework. I analyse a number of bodily practices that promote a Sudanese identity abroad, tying the use of beautification procedures, and skin-lightening creams in particular, to Sudanese assertions of Arab ethnicity and Muslim belonging within a racial hierarchy that derives primary meaning from Sudan¹s own history and racial categories.

 

All are Welcome. Booking is not required.

For further information contact: Peter Morey on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Gabeba Baderoon and Schirin Amir-Moazami, Thursday, 18 September 2008

Last Updated on Tuesday, 07 October 2008 16:27

SOAS/UEL Framing Muslims Seminar Series

Framing Muslims: Representation in Culture and Society Post 9/11 - Seminar

Date: Thursday, 18 September 2008

Venue: L67, Lower Ground Floor, Main Building, (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square WC1H 0XG)

Time: 5:30-7:00pm

Gabeba Baderoon

‘Oblique Figures: Islam and the construction of sex and race in South Africa’

Gabeba Baderoon received a PhD in English from the University of Cape Town.

She has published articles on representations of Islam, slavery and the body, and has held fellowships at the African Gender Institute, the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies and the Nordic Africa Institute. Baderoon teaches in Women's Studies and African and African American Studies at Pennsylvania State University.

and

Schirin Amir-Moazami

‘Governmentalising gendered Islam: Islam-conferences and citizenship tests in Germany’

Schirin Amir-Moazami holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence.

Currently, she is involved in a larger research project on Muslims in Europe coordinated by the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin, and she teaches both at the European University of Viadrina in Frankfurt/Oder and at the Free University in Berlin. Her research focuses on the ways in which Islam is governed in European public spheres with a particular gender perspective.

All are Welcome. Booking is not required.

For further information contact: Peter Morey on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

UEL/SOAS Framing Muslims Seminar Series May 14th 5.30-7.00pm

Last Updated on Tuesday, 26 August 2008 22:04

UEL/SOAS Framing Muslims Seminar Series

Date: 14 May 2008

Venue: FG08

Time: 5:30-7:00pm

Humera Khan, 'Historical Roots of Contemporary Islamophobia'

Biography:

Humera Khan is a freelance consultant and researcher. She is a founder member of An-Nisa Society, an organisation managed by women working for the welfare of Muslim families. Humera has been involved in setting up projects such as Islamic counselling, the Supplementary Muslim School, a series of books on sexual health from an Islamic perspective called ‘Cycle of Life’, a Girls & Young Women’s Drama group. In 2006 she concluded an 18 month project on Muslim fatherhood with a national conference in November 2007 entitled 'Searching for Dad: Exploring Muslim fatherhood'. Currently Humera is working on a three-tiered project entitled ‘British Muslim or Wot?’ working with Muslim boys and young men aged between 13 and 19 years of age. This project includes a two week summer scheme, a film making course and workshops in local state schools on issues to do with identity and alienation. As a freelance consultant Humera has written numerous articles for publications including Q-News, Guardian and the Independent. She has also had various media and public appearances speaking on issues such as multiculturalism, Islamophobia and racism, sexual abuse, generation conflicts, domestic violence and gender.

Professor Andrew Pilkington, ‘From multiculturalism to the new integrationism: Muslims and competing policy discourses’

Abstract:

It is imperative that an appropriate balance is reached between three key principles: equality, diversity and social cohesion. In many countries across the world, however, there is a discernible move away from a concern for equality and diversity as the problem of order looms larger. Muslims in particular are typically represented as a threat to social order. I shall focus here on Britain in presenting my central thesis that there is a very real danger that a new nationalist discourse centred on community cohesion and integration is trouncing any duties on us to promote racial equality and respect cultural diversity. The paper comprises two sections. I shall firstly identify a radical hour when there was for the first time official recognition that institutional racism existed in British society and some urgency that this needed to be combated. I shall secondly highlight the fragility of such progressiveness and identify how the dominant policy discourse has changed since 2001. Here, I shall highlight in particular how the prominence given to institutional racism, with the publication of the Macpherson report, was remarkably short lived and how multiculturalism has come under increasing attack. The new integrationism that has emerged in their stead demonises Muslims and marginalises earlier concerns for equality and diversity.

Biography

Andrew Pilkington is Professor of Sociology at the University of Northampton. He is currently Associate Director of the Centre for Children and Youth and Director of the Equality and Diversity Research Group. He has written extensively in the field of the sociology and is regularly invited to give presentations of his work across the world. Within the last academic year, this has entailed giving keynotes and other talks in Jamaica, Singapore, Spain, New Zealand and Australia. His research has especially focused on issues relating to race and ethnicity, and he has published widely in this area, including Racial Disadvantage and Ethnic Diversity in Britain (Palgrave, 2003). He is an Associate of the Centre for Sociology, Anthropology and Politics, Chair of the Association of Teachers of Social Sciences and is particularly interested in exploring different pedagogies in addressing equality and diversity issues.

Nakba Day Events UEL 15 & 16th May

Last Updated on Tuesday, 26 August 2008 22:05

Palestine: 60 years of dispossession and resistance

Nakba Day events at the University of East London

15 and 16 May 2008, Docklands Campus, UEL

On Nakba Day, 15 May, Palestinians mark events which resulted in mass displacement and exclusion. In 2008 it will be 60 years since a million people were compelled to leave their homes - most never returned.

You are invited to the Docklands Campus of the University of East London to join historians, social scientists and film-makers in discussion on the conflict of 1948, its outcomes and the implications for Palestinians and for Israeli society.

Thursday 15 May, 2pm @ 8.30pm. Lectures and discussion on 1948 and the Palestinian refugee issue today. Speakers include:

· Prof Joseph Massad (Columbia University, New York)

author: The Persistence of the Palestinian Question

· Dr Nur Masalha (University of Surrey)

author: Imperial Israel and the Palestinians

· Dr Dina Matar (School of Oriental & African Studies)

editor: Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication

· Prof Haim Bresheeth (University of East London)

author: The Nakba in Palestinian Cinema

· Nizar Hassan (Sapir College, Sderot)

film-maker: director Egteyah (ìInvasionî), Karm Abu Khalil

· Dr Eyal Sivan (University of East London)

film-maker: director Route 181

· Prof Moshe Machover (Kings College London)

writer and activist

· Omar Barghouti (Tel Aviv University)

Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel

· PLUS film - 1948 by Mohammad Bakri (Israel, 1998, 90 min)


Friday 16 May, 2pm - 10pm. Films introduced by directors and their collaborators:

· The Roof by Kamal Aljafari (Palestine, 2006, 61 min)

· Egteyah by Nizar Hassan (Palestine, 2003, 90 min)

· Route 181 by Michele Khleifi and Eyal Sivan (2003, France, 4hr 30 min)

· A State of Danger by Haim Bresheeth and Jenny Morgan (UK, 1989, 30 min)

· Karm Abu Khalil by Nizar Hassan (Palestine, 2003, 90 mins)


Organised by: Refugee Research Centre, UEL; Matrix East Research Lab, UEL; and Framing Muslims - an AHRC research programme. Entrance is free: you are strongly encouraged to book a place by contacting Phil Marfleet; This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; tel 020 8 223 7690.

Docklands Campus is adjacent to Cyprus Station, Docklands Light Railway

A website link is: http://www.haimbresheeth.com/2008/04/01/nakba-day-events-at-uel

SOAS/UEL Framing Muslims Seminar Series, April 17 2008, 5:30-7pm

Last Updated on Friday, 18 April 2008 08:43

Venue: SOAS, Room L67

Time: 5:30-7:00pm

Speaker: Katherine Brown

Paper Title: 'Gender, Security and Citizenship: the gendered politics in and of Britain's Muslim communities'

Abstract:This paper assesses the impact of security debates in the UK on the development of British Muslim identities and citizenship. The discourses of state agencies locate Islam and Muslim communities not simply as "problem communities" but as security concerns. Thus, debates about how minority communities can realise rights and citizenship are more than the 'politics of difference' and now include the 'politics of fear'. This paper argues that for some Muslim women adopting a religio-political identity has enabled complex forms of political engagement with the state through the opening up of 'opportunity spaces' generated by security discourses. Paradoxically, this engagement relies on and challenges both the "politics of fear" and the "politics of difference". The paper uses 'gender' as a variable by focusing on Muslim women and as an analytical category with which to deconstruct the simplified assumptions prevailing in the securitization of Muslim communities. The paper will focus on three case studies: shari'a law debates in the UK; the pro-hijab campaigns and the 'forced marriage-immigration' debate.

Speaker Biography: Katherine recently joined the department of Defence Studies of Kings College London, prior to which she had been a lecturer in the Department of Politics and IR at the University of Southampton. Her current research project examines the role and appropriation of Muslim women in security politics/policies in the UK. Another element within this research considers Muslim women's participation in political violence and resistance. This research stems from an interest in the role of gender in the securitisation of political Islam as part of the 'war on terror'.

Speaker: Tahir Abbas

Title: 'Islamophobia and media (mis)representation: a post 07/07 analysis'

Speaker Biography: Tahir Abbas is Reader in Sociology and Director of the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Culture at the University of Birmingham. He was previously a Senior Research Officer at the Home Office as well as the Department for Constitutional Affairs in London, Project Director of Race Equality West Midlands in Worcester, ESRC Research Fellow at the University of Central England Business School, and PhD Research Student at the University of Warwick Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations. He has published widely and his key books include, The Education of British South Asians, and as editor, Muslim Britain, Islamic Political Radicalism, and Immigration and Race Relations: Sociology and John Rex (with Frank Reeves).

 

Eric Mace and Dibyesh Anand

Last Updated on Tuesday, 15 April 2008 17:21

Eric Mace Hegemony and counter-hegemony in the television performance of racial differences in France and Dibyesh Anand Framing a Danger? The "Muslim Problem" in the Hindu Nationalist Imagination

 

 

 

Eric Mace describes the position of Muslims in France, how their presence reflects the legacy of French colonialism in North Africa, and how communities have been subject to stereotyping which works to question their position in relation to French national identity and citizenship. Dibyesh Anand charts some of the rhetoric by which Hindu nationalist extremists continue to position Muslims in India as beyond, and not really belonging to, the nation.

Read more: Eric Mace and Dibyesh Anand

Anshuman Mondal - Reframing the “Islamic Turn” Amongst Young British Muslims

Last Updated on Wednesday, 02 April 2008 15:23

 

Anshuman Mondal is Senior Lecturer at Brunel University. He has published essays on Indian literature in English, Gandhi, gender politics in Indian nationalism, modern Arabic narrative genres, modern Islam and fundamentalism, and the politics of the Middle East. He is the author of Nationalism and Post-Colonial Identity: Culture and Ideology in India and Egypt (Routledge, Curzon, 2003) and Amitav Ghosh for Manchester University Press’s Contemporary World Writers series

Read more: Anshuman Mondal - Reframing the “Islamic Turn” Amongst Young British Muslims

Rehana Ahmed - Faith, Class and Cultural Resistance: Hanif Kureishi and Monica Ali

Last Updated on Tuesday, 15 April 2008 17:23

Rehana Ahmed completed her PhD at Nottingham Trent University in 2006. Her research interests are in twentieth-century and contemporary British Asian literature and culture, and she has taught courses in postcolonial writing at Nottingham Trent University and Royal Holloway, University of London. In October 2007 she will take up a postdoctoral research position at the Open University, working on the collaborative AHRC-funded project ‘Making Britain: South Asian Visions of Home and Abroad, 1870–1950’.

Read more: Rehana Ahmed - Faith, Class and Cultural Resistance: Hanif Kureishi and Monica Ali