Literature and Islamophobia

I have been invited to speak at the LSE ‘Space for Thought’ Literary Festival on Literature and Islamophobia.

The event will be held at LSE (London School of Economics) today (19th Feb from 630pm to 8pm). The panel will also feature one Dutch Muslim writer Naema Tahir and a British Muslim writer Shelina Zahra Janmohamed. We will all comment on the subject - Literature and Islamophobia - from our perspectives of multicultural origin based in writers.

This was the blurb about the event:

There are few places in Europe in which the voices of multiculturalism and Islamophobia have clashed more forcefully than in the Netherlands, often in the most dramatic ways. To name just a few, Pim Fortuyn, Theo Van Gogh, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and most recently Geert Wilders have been very much in the international press over the last decade. In the UK we are now 14 years on from the publication of the influential Runnymede Trust report Islamophobia: a Challenge for us All which sets out an agenda for overcoming social exclusion of British Muslims. Fiction writers from Muslim backgrounds have played an important role in the debate about multiculturalism and Islamophobia. We will explore how they see their art as a tool to facilitate cross-cultural dialogue and political discourse about integration.

Our panel consists of Şenay Özdemir and Naema Tahir, two women Muslim writers from the Netherlands, and Shelina Zahra Janmohamed, a woman Muslim writer from North London, who will talk about what motivates their art as women Muslim writers in respectively the Netherlands and the UK.

I am looking forward to it, as I really don't know how this topic is being discussed in Great Britain. I don't know what to expect; on one hand I think the debate must be the same (as British PM Cameron functioning as a parrot to what Angela Merkel and Geert Wilders have said about 'the multicultural society' having failed), on the other hand I expect that the British muslim society reacts on islamophobia very differently as they have been in Britain for a longer time and are higher
educated (on average) than Dutch muslims.

We'll see..I'm definitely going to listen what Naema and Shelina have to say, and of course looking forward to the questions of the audience. Because that tells so much more than anything.. What do people want to know? What are they looking for? And who are they? I'll hopefully let you know soon...Now, I have to get ready and do some homework before calling a London taxi! Ciao!