Of course 🙂

Not at all, don’t think about it as academic, but experiential, which is where the real value lies and I’m sure you have a lot to say - we should definitely talk about this, I’d love to document something, maybe we can do something together if you’re up for it x

See also this thread from @tarekyounis.bsky.social and the full report for other colleagues’ contributions bsky.app/profile/tare...

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.

During the recent general election, Muslim agency was again typecast as sectarian, inappropriate and in British. There seemed to be particular objection to bloc voting efforts or the vocal challenging of MPs from major parties.

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.

It should be noted that Muslim congregational ritual prayer is in its essence, not a conscious or deliberate political act, perhaps, like any mundane act, it *becomes one* when it is performed in defiance of structural obstacles or incursions.

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

Discourse from voices in media and politics has depicted pro-Palestine activism as 'hateful', 'extremist' and 'anti-semitic' - and these depictions have been directly drawn on during recent anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant riots.

[side point - it is ironic, that, as I show in my other writing, Muslim public political agency has long agonised over how to express itself in a way that is legible and conforming to political/establishment norms, both stated and implicit]

www.bloomsbury.com/uk/muslim-id...

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