From fashion magazines to social networking, the ‘Mipsterz’ to the ‘Haloodies’, halal internet dating to Muslim boy bands, Generation M are making their mark. Shelina Janmohamed, award-winning author and leading voice on Muslim youth, investigates this growing cultural phenomenon at a time when understanding the mindset of young Muslims is critical.  While responses to terrorism and Islamic extremism lead to discourse polarising Islam and the West, these young leaders are countering stereotypical representations and flexing their economic muscles.

We will be joined by a panel of Generation M individuals defying the caricatures of Islam presented in mainstream media; the young entrepreneurs, journalists, inventors and activists who are building new global identities in a changing and interconnected world.

Hosted by author Shelina Janmohamed. Shelina is author of Generation M: Young Muslims Changing the World (I.B.Tauris, 2016) and Love in a Headscarf (Aurum Press, 2014). An established commentator on Muslim social and religious trends, she has written for the Guardian, the National and the BBC. She is also vice president of Ogilvy Noor, the world’s first bespoke Islamic Branding practice.

Speakers

Aisha Gani (@aishagani) is a UK Senior Reporter for BuzzFeed News. She has written on issues from fake news, to interviewing the Muslim comedian who sat next to Donald Trump’s son on a plane, and has reported from France on the burkini ban and the refugee crisis in Europe. She was previously a news reporter at the Guardian. She is based in London.

Sheila Na’imah Nortley is an award winning film writer and producer. Starting out with her first short film in 2003, she set up her own production company and in 2009 her neo-noir short film The Hydra scooped Best Film at the BFM awards at the British Film Institute. Her acclaimed portfolio has won her debut screenings at The Ritzy in Brixton, Warner Bros, Google Headquarters and BAFTA as well as the ABFF in Miami where she won awards from Spike Lee for Best Film and Best Director. She recently won the Women of the Future Award for Arts and Culture. She is in preproduction of her feature film The Strangers.

Miqdaad Versi is the media spokesperson for the Muslim Council of Britain, as well as its Assistant Secretary General. He is a passionate community activist and works on projects including local interfaith engagement, the recent #VisitMyMosque campaign and mosque project The Salaam Centre that aims to be a community hub as well as faith centre. His recent work has included a campaign to hold media outlets accountable for their inaccuracies in reporting news about Muslims.

On the release of his new book Holy Lands: Reviving Pluralism in the Middle East, we will be joined by writer and Jerusalem correspondent for The Economist Nicolas Pelham – and others – to discuss his optimistic and vivid reportage that spans the region, from Israel and Palestine to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. We will discuss the roots of today’s sectarian tensions and how they have come to characterise the region as a whole – often without a full recognition of historical context, socio-economic factors, or the rich differences of the countries contained within it. We will look to the future and assess hope for a recovery from conflict and a return to religious plurality.

This event will be chaired by Iraqi-British journalist and political analyst Mina Al-Oraibi, a senior fellow at the Institute of State Effectiveness and a Yale World Fellow. She is a member of the Global Agenda Council on the Middle East and has written extensively on US and European policies in the Middle East, in addition to conducting several high profile interviews including with US President Barack Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi.

The panel:

Nicolas Pelham is The Economist’s Middle East correspondent, and a writer on Arab affairs for the New York Review of Books. He spent five years as a senior analyst for International Crisis Group, covering the growing power of regional national-religious movements in Iraq, Lebanon and Israel/Palestine, and has worked as a consultant for the United Nations in Gaza. He was The Economist’s correspondent in Iraq during the 2003 American invasion and in the Maghreb. He is the author of A New Muslim Order (2008), which maps Shia resurgence in the Arab world, and co-author of A History of the Middle East (2004).

Patrick Cockburn is an Irish journalist who has been a Middle East correspondent since 1979 for the Financial Times and, currently, for The Independent. He was awarded Foreign Commentator of the Year at the 2013 Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards, and is the author of several books on Iraq’s recent history, including The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq, Muqtada Al-Sadr and the Battle for the Future of Iraq and most recently The Jihadis Return: Isis and the New Sunni Uprising.

Safa Al Ahmad is a Saudi Arabian journalist and filmmaker, and joint winner of the 2015 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award for Journalism. She has been reporting on Yemen since 2010, and was one of only a handful of journalists reporting from inside the country for a Western news organisation as the crisis escalated. She has directed numerous documentaries for the BBC and PBS, including Al Qaeda in Yemen: A New Front (2012), Saudi’s Secret Uprising 2014), and more recently, Yemen Under Siege (2016).

Firas Abi Ali is a Senior Principal Analyst for IHS Country Risk, with a focus on forecasting political and violent risks in the MENA region. His expertise includes Islamic finance in Syria, Lebanon, Libya and Egypt, with a concentration on political stability and the rise of Islamist militant groups, as well as the likely evolution of conflicts and ensuing risks across the region. He makes regular appearances in the media, including interviews with Reuters, Bloomberg, the BBC, Newsweek and CNN.

To Light A Candle is a film by journalist Maziar Bahari, author of Then They Came for Me, focusing on the Baha’is of Iran and their peaceful response to decades of state-sponsored persecution. The Baha’is are Iran’s largest religious minority. Persecuted because of their faith, they are barred from teaching and studying at University. The Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE) was established in 1987 to give young Baha’is a chance to pursue knowledge and receive a quality education.

The informal courses take place in people’s homes, via mail correspondence and online lectures. The Iranian government regularly raids BIHE classes and arrests its students. Hundreds of Baha’is have been jailed for teaching and studying the BIHE. Yet, the BIHE continues to function and now 79 Universities around the world accept qualifications from the BIHE.

To Light A Candle offers a hopeful story of the BIHE and Iran, highlighting a paradigm shift in Iranian society where influential political and cultural figures are beginning to speak out about the situation of the Baha’is. In 2015 the film sparked the global Education Is Not A Crime campaign for universal access to higher education.

#NotACrime works to stop the human rights abuse of Iranian Baha’is and encourages universities around the world to admit Iranian Baha’i students. Maziar Bahari, a former Newsweek journalist who was jailed in Iran and became the subject of Jon Stewart’s film Rosewater, started the initiative.

Iran’s Baha’is are the country’s largest religious minority. Baha’is are frequently jailed on false charges and denied access to higher education. Thousands of Baha’is are currently studying through an underground education system known as the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE).

#NotACrime began in New York City in September 2015 with 11 murals on education equality and freedom of expression across the city, attracting international media attention. Leading street artists from around the world painted artworks designed to provoke conversation about the Iranian government’s long history of violating the human rights of its citizens. The campaign has spread to Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia, Cape Town and Johannesburg, and Sydney. Nearly 100 universities – including several in the United Kingdom, such as University College London and the University of Manchester – currently accept the BIHE certificate.

Azadeh Moaveni is a journalist and writer who has covered the Middle East since 2000. She was Middle East correspondent for Time magazine, and is the author of Lipstick Jihad and Honeymoon in Tehran. She is lecturer in journalism at Kingston University and is working on a book about women and radicalisation.

Director: Maziar Bahari
Country: Iran/United Kingdom
Runtime: 54′
http://www.notacrime.me/
@notacrime

Charismatic cleric Abdul Aziz Ghazi, an ISIS supporter and Taliban ally, is waging jihad against the Pakistani state. His dream is to impose a strict version of Sharia law throughout the country, as a model for the world. A flashpoint in Aziz’s holy war took place in 2007, when the government leveled his flagship mosque to the ground, killing his mother, brother, only son and 150 students. With unprecedented access, Among the Believers follows Aziz on his very personal quest to create an Islamic utopia, during the bloodiest period in Pakistan’s modern history.

The film also follows the lives of two teenage students who have attended madrassahs (Islamic seminaries) run by Aziz’s Red Mosque network. Throughout the film, their paths diverge: Talha, 12, detaches from his moderate Muslim family and decides to become a jihadi preacher. Zarina, also 12, escapes her madrassah and joins a regular school. Over the next few years, Zarina’s education is threatened by frequent Taliban attacks on schools like her own.

Aziz’s foil is nuclear physicist and leading educational activist Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy. He passionately opposes Aziz through his public appearances, lectures, and in the media. Opposition to Aziz comes to a head in December 2014, when Aziz insults a grieving nation by trying to justify the brutal massacre of 132 school children in Peshawar by the Taliban. The attack ignites a movement to end extremism in Pakistan’s mosques and madrassahs. Led by Hoodbhoy and others, Pakistan’s moderate majority focuses on Aziz and calls for his arrest.

Intimate and shocking, Among the Believers offers rare insights into the ideological battles shaping Pakistan and the Muslim world.

Directed by: Hemal Trivedi and Mohammed Naqvi
Country: Pakistan
Year: 2015
Runtime: 84’

Legendary Iranian photographer Abbas joined journalist and filmmaker Maziar Bahari in a conversation at the Frontline Club on 3 February 2016, chaired by CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer.

Bahari and Abbas have collaborated to launch abbas.site, a platform showcasing Abbas’s photographic body of work on Iran since 1970, including his coverage of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Legendary photographer Abbas & @maziarbahari at @frontlineclub to talk about our new website https://t.co/bZLo4xtbIW pic.twitter.com/6mhEP8fXJx

— JournoIsNotACrime (@JournoNotACrime) February 3, 2016

Abbas’s work includes “the most iconic photos of Iranian history between 1971 and 2005,” said Bahari. “He shows parts of Iran in one photograph in a way that some people have to write many books about.”

“This is the first time I’m showing contact sheets,” said Abbas, as he showed his images of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s Persepolis celebration in 1971. “Normally photographers don’t show them. It’s like your personal diary, but I thought after 37 years, I can show not just the photos, but what led to the photos.”

“I wanted to show the complexity of Iran through the complexity of the lives of 12 Iranians. One would lead to another, like a circle. But the revolution started, and that was the end of the work.”

“How did you make sure you didn’t get hurt when the revolution turned violent?” asked Palmer.

“Well, I ran fast!” said Abbas.

“Some of the violence and hate which emerged later was already written on [the revolutionaries’] faces,” Abbas said, on the subject of his work in the early stages of the Islamic Revolution in 1977.

He showed his photos of Iranian Prime Minister Hoveyda at home, and then in a morgue shortly after his execution by the Revolutionary Guard in 1979.

“Although you feel very strongly for the man on the slab, you still do your work as a photographer. You try to compose the best picture… In all situations of strife or violence or emotional upheaval, you put a curtain between you and what’s happening. Because if you don’t, you can’t function,” he said.

“As a photographer, you don’t think, you just act. You capture energies you’re not even aware of. It’s when you do the editing and the sequencing that you become conscious.

“The act of photography is very intuitive. Your intuition is fed by your education, your culture, by the argument you had with your girlfriend the night before… that makes you take this picture instead of that one.”

Khomeini’s return to Iran in 1979, captured by Abbas @frontlineclub pic.twitter.com/7jdRut7I3y

— Charlotte Beale (@CharlotteAGB) February 3, 2016

Abbas commented that great photography is a combination of two things – “information and aesthetics.”

“When the two come together, in a suspended moment, that’s it. I don’t freeze the moment, I suspend it. I like to give the impression to my reader that the people in my photograph kept on doing the thing they were doing before I took the photograph.”

On the subjectivity of his work, Abbas commented: “the difference between a militant and a photographer [is that] the militant has his own agenda. The photographer, although he feels strongly, has a duty to his readers and also as a historian of the present, to be as fair as possible.”

In response to a question on how he manages his presence as a photographer, Abbas responded: “as much as possible, you try only to be a witness, not a partisan. Sometimes it’s hard, because of course they know what you are when you have a camera in your hand.”

In response to an audience member who asked what model of camera he prefers, Abbas said, “my favourite camera is my eye. It works very well.”

The discussion then moved to Abbas‘s references as a photographer, with Bahari commenting: “when you ask about Abbas‘s icons he doesn’t talk about Cartier-Bresson – he talks about Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Cezanne, who really painted life.”

On the methods of the photographer, Abbas commented: “Instead of writing with words, you write with light.”

Visit abbas.site to view the project in full. 

On Monday 26 October, renowned Egyptian writer, feminist and activist Nawal El Saadawi joined journalist Wendell Steavenson and a packed audience at the Frontline Club for a discussion that spanned the topics of linguistic philosophy, feminism and globalisation – all of which were explored in the context of El Saadawi‘s own life experiences and recent developments in Egyptian politics.

Sitting in same room as legend #NawalElSaadaei @frontlineclub pic.twitter.com/93hzphE6My

— Nahla Al-Ageli (@NahlaInk) October 26, 2015

The discussion began with a focus on the United States’ continued military aid to Egypt. This was something El Saadawi felt passionately against, not just in Egypt’s case but on a global level. “Fair trade, not aid,” she said.

“The 2011 revolution was hijacked by the United States working with Egyptian politicians. Hilary Clinton came to Tahrir Square as soon as the revolution began. Why?”


The conversation then moved onto the subject of globalisation, and how colonising powers have always played the game of “divide and rule.”

El Saadawi expanded: “When Sadat and Reagan came, they brought the Muslim Brothers. Why? They wanted to fragment the country by religion. They wanted to fragment the country by class. They wanted to fragment the army. What is the difference between Syria and Egypt now? Syria is completely fragmented, because the army is fragmented. And this is why we are unified in comparison. This is why the Americans are against Sisi.”

When Steavenson questioned her about the way the Egyptian government has been punishing members of the Muslim Brotherhood with imprisonment and death sentencing, El Saadawi said: “I am against the death penalty. I am against putting anybody in prison. I am against all that. But I am also against a religious state. Whether Islamic, Jewish, or Christian. We cannot have true equality in any religious state, because all religions oppress women.”


She continued by explaining the extent to which gender inequality has been rooted in religion: “In the three major monotheistic religions, Adam was set free as an innocent, while Eve was a sinner because she ate from the tree of knowledge. Women are not expected to be equal. Why do you think I’ve had three husbands? Because they hated my intelligence. They wanted a stupid woman.”


Even though El Saadawi‘s main work and research focus revolves around injustice, she revealed her enduring optimism in the face of adversity. “I am always optimistic. I learned very much about this in the experience of prison. The women I was with were very pessimistic, because Sadat told us he will kill us. So every day they woke up crying, and I started dancing. I told them we will live and be free; just to have that idea gave me hope. When you have hope, you inspire people with hope, and hope is power. In the worst situations, I am hopeful.”


Steavenson asked about the moment when her sense of justice came into being, and why she initially became motivated to challenge injustice.

El Saadawi explained that when she was 7 and 8 years old, she felt something was not right in the way that she was treated in comparison with her brother. Her older brother was lazy and spoilt, whereas she was hardworking and neglected.

“During Eid, I received half the money that my brother received in gifts. I asked my parents why. They said because God said so. They thought they would shut me up by saying ‘God’. So my first letter ever when I was 8 years old was to God, but I still haven’t got an answer!”

(l-r) Ian Black and Gerard Russell

“It’s just useful when we see today the narrative of conflict to remember that it was actually possible for faiths to coexist quite remarkably,” said Gerard Russell, referring to Baghdad in c. 800 C.E.

On Tuesday 13 February, the former United Nations and British diplomat joined an audience at the Frontline Club to share insights from his latest book, Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms. Ian Black, Middle East editor at The Guardian, chaired the evening.

In light of current events, namely the rise of Islamic State, the ongoing attacks by Boko Haram in Nigeria and continued religious repression in Iran and elsewhere, the night’s reflection on the history of Islam was a reminder that coexistence was once the norm in the Middle East.

“Islam, certainly in its early centuries, provided an environment in which a multitude of ideas could exist and be expressed… even, frankly, insults to Islam,” said Russell.

“Baghdad was a city founded with the assistance of a Jewish astrologer. It contained many Christian scholars and ministers. It had a pagan mathematician and it had outspoken atheists living in it. So I can’t help but think that if in those days it was possible, then it must be possible today.”

Russell also reminded the audience that religious tolerance was not exclusive to the ancient world, picking out the examples of Abd Al-Karim Qasim, the Iraqi nationalist of the 1950s with mixed Sunni and Shia heritage, and Egypt’s three Christian Prime Ministers between 1860 and 1930.

Gerard Russell signs copies of his book Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms

“People were falling over backwards really to be, in those days, trying to keep the nation together and not seeing things necessarily through the prism of religion but sometimes through the prism of common citizenship… I’d like to think that is an aberration. A change that will change back,” he said.

Asked if we might one day re-enter a golden age of a tolerant Middle East, Russell said: “Gosh! What a headline that would be, it’s a great headline if I were anybody of consequence: ‘There’ll be synagogues in Saudi Arabia!’… Why not? Because actually there have been churches in Saudi Arabia; there were churches in Jeddah. There were churches, I think, within living memory.”

As well as looking into the past, Russell talked extensively about the situations of the dying religions of the Middle East. The Druze, the Samaritans and the Yazidis, to name a few, all face their own challenges – be it threats of repression or destruction from the outside, or struggles to propagate their religion and beliefs in their younger generations.

“The Yazidis are doing their best with the internet,” explained Russell, “… they’ve got all these different casts and rules about who they marry. It’s very tough for the men as well as for the women and they are using the internet to try and link themselves up with each other”.

“One man told me that in his home town of 10,000 he didn’t have a single Yazidi he could marry because he came from just the most extraordinary combination of cast and tribe, and he’d moved to Nebraska where the job was going to be considerably harder.”

In many of these communities, a lot of old traditions are dying out because of similar problems. However, while the Yazidis are much more tolerant than many of the groups which Russell has studied, intermarriage is still punished.

Another real problem that these communities are facing is that their isolation, which once protected them, is fast disappearing. Russell said: “Frankly the wrong kind of people are getting to hear of the existence of philosophies and religions that they don’t like.” He worried that the publication of his book could endanger the people it was written about.

“I just worry that the wrong kind of person would get it and think this is a great manual for groups they should proceed to destroy, because it sets out all the ways in which they deviate from the norm.”

This being said, based on lessons of the past Russell was confident and hopeful about the future of the region.

“There is nothing written in fate about religious conflict in the Middle East… I certainly see a lot of hope that we’re going to go through this rather dark time and come out the other end.”

Copies of Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms for sale at the Frontline Club, available online here.

The Middle East has long been home to many varied and distinctive faiths. These religions represent the last vestiges of the magnificent civilisations in ancient history: Persia, Babylon, Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs. Their followers have learned to to survive the perils of attacks and assimilation, but today with the region in turmoil they face greater threats than ever before.

Former diplomat Gerard Russell has lived alongside the Mandaeans and Yazidis of Iraq, the Zoroastrians of Iran, the Copts of Egypt, and others. He has learnt their histories, participated in their rituals, and come to understand the threats to their communities.

Russell will be joining us in conversation with The Guardian‘s Middle East editor, Ian Black, to take us on a journey across the past and present of the Middle East, into the religious communities that have survived for centuries and talking about what needs to be done to ensure their future.

Gerard Russell is a former United Nations and British diplomat. During his time with the British Foreign Service, which took him to Cairo, Jerusalem, Baghdad, Jeddah and Kabul, he was described as ‘the foremost expert on the Islamic world in his generation’. In 2009 he moved to the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and is now working in a strategic communications consultancy in London. He is author of Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys Into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East.

Photo: Gerard Russell. The old city of Yazd, built from mud brick and dating back many centuries, still partly survives. To the left is the nakhl, representing the death of
Hussein, grandson of the prophet Mohammed; it is used in yearly parades.

The film also reveals for the first time how the Salafists make their own rules, as they round up and punish those who infringe their strict interpretation of Islamic law. This film examines how the Salafists implement what they see as God’s law in Bizerte, and how far they are prepared to go to impose it on others. From Tunisia to Egypt and beyond, Salafists pose a serious challenge to authorities. The battle for influence and control is only just beginning.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Zuhair Latif, the BBC Arabic reporter on The Battle for Bizerte. Zuhair Latif is a Tunisian journalist who has 17 years of experience in broadcast journalism, covering conflicts in many countries including Afghanistan, Iraq, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kosova, Chechenya, and East Timor. The Q&A will be chaired by BBC Arabic TV presenter, Makki Helal.

This screening is organised by BBC Arabic.

The ‘ante-chamber of terror’ as the French security service is said to have dubbed the Tablighi Jamaat, or an other-worldly group of Muslims dedicated to piety and preaching? A movement of separatist, supremacist misogynists bent on the Islamisation of Europe, or a misunderstood part of Britain’s multicultural mosaic?

This little-known Muslim association whose name means ‘the preaching group’ has raised hundreds of thousands of pounds to secure planning permission for its new world centre or markaz in Newham – yet scholars are completely at odds over its purpose and ethos.

This event launches Tablighi Jamaat by Dr Zacharias Pieri – the first of an authoritative new series Handy Books for Journalists on Religion in World Affairs published by Lapido Media.

With:

Ziauddin Sardar, prolific writer, broadcaster and scholar of different Islams who wrote the three-part documentary Life of Mohammed broadcast in 2011 by BBC2. He is a former adviser to Anwar Ibrahim, leader of the Malaysian opposition; founding Commissioner of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and a regular contributor to the nation’s better newspapers, including the New Statesman. Author of Balti Britain and Desperately Seeking Paradise in which he describes his own encounter with the TJ, he is the founding editor of the ground-breaking quarterly Critical Muslim (Hurst) and Chair of the Muslim Institute.

Dan Damon, former war correspondent who covered the Middle East and Bosnia with his camerawoman wife, Sian, is founder of News Network International and Sony Gold Award-winning presenter of the BBC World Service’s daily news magazine, World Update.

Jeremy Hunter, renowned photojournalist who specialises in the religious festivals of remote societies and is the only photographer to get official permission to photograph the Tablighi Jamaat’s little-known ‘gathering’ in Bangladesh that attracts more Muslims than the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Hunter contributes to The Sunday Times, The Telegraph Magazine, The Sunday Telegraph Magazine, The Guardian, Mail on Sunday, Conde Nast Traveller, /i>GEO, Stern, and many travel-related magazines. His reportages have been recognised with two UNESCO awards.

Dr Zacharias Pieri, is a political sociologist with extensive ethnographic research experience of British Muslim communities. Tablighi Jamaat in Britain is based on two years observation of the TJ in Newham. His current research is directed at identity politics and Islam in contemporary societies.

This event marks the fifth anniversary of the international religious literacy charity Lapido Media.