We at Network of Sisters in Academia (NeSA) are deeply alarmed and outraged at the abduction of our sister and fellow academic Rumeysa Öztürk and demand that authorities declare her location and secure her liberty so she can return safely to her studies

But where are these rules and prescriptions about propriety in political expression to be found? It is curious indeed that a nation whose parliamentary system has coordinated interest groups at its core, finds it hard to stomach coordinated political agency from its minorities.

To return to my point about form, perhaps the obsessive fear mongering around phrases like ‘allahu akbar’ best illustrates how the *form* of political agency is framed as a threat, a problem and in need of regulation.

In civic life, ministerial interventions have regularly sought to regulate and discipline Muslim individuals and organisations in public life. The sinking of the Interfaith Network and the performative announcement of an 'extremism definition' illustrate this.

Like Trojan Horse (2014) before it, the High Court decision in April 2024 to uphold Michaela School's ban on Muslim ritual prayer defaults to a perception of public expressions of Muslimness divisive and a threat, and an overtly political one at that.

The case of Marieha Hussain and her 'coconut placard' has come to be emblematic of how voices in media and politics collude to false/hostile portrayals of dissenting critique, which in these securitised times has an undoubted chilling effect on politically active Muslims

Unpacking a series of recent e.g.s, I demonstrate how our media and political classes struggle to make sense of Muslim political agency that is dissenting both in principle *and* in form. It is more often typecast as unbecoming, unruly, unrefined, unintelligible and undemocratic