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.

Syrian radio host Obaidah Zytoon and her friends are caught up in the euphoria of the 2011 Arab Spring. Cameras in hand, these artists and activists take to the streets to protest Bashar al-Assad. But as they film over the next several years, their hopes for a better future are tested by violence, imprisonment and death.

Working with acclaimed Danish director Andreas Dalsgaard, the film’s protagonists narrate and edit years of footage into a deeply moving personal narrative. Rather than dwelling on the violence of the conflict, The War Show focuses on what the revolution meant to individual people. Zytoon and her friends share similar aspirations to young people all over the world: to live free of repression.

Yet their dreams of revolution turn into the reality of civil war. Zytoon takes road trips to the centre of rebellion in Homs, to her hometown Zabadani near Lebanon, and to the north of Syria. Through poignant first-person narration, The War Show awakens audiences to understand how the conflict in Syria has impacted everyday people.

Host:

Razia Iqbal has worked for BBC news for more than 25 years. She presents Newshour on the BBC World Service and the World Tonight on Radio 4. She was the arts correspondent for a decade, and has worked as a reporter on both television and radio.

Directed by: Andreas Daslgaard, Obaidah Zytoon
Produced by: Miriam Nørgaard, Alaa Hassan
Country: Denmark
Year: 2016
Runtime: 100 mins

Pug, a wisecracking 13-year-old living on a dangerous Westside block in Baltimore, has one goal in mind: to join The 12 O’Clock Boys, the city’s notorious urban dirt bike gang. Converging from all parts of the inner city, they invade the streets and perform dangerous stunts at high speeds. The gang has a history of clashing with the police, who are forbidden to chase the bikes for fear of endangering the public.

Pug looks to the pack for mentorship, spurred by their dangerous lifestyle. He narrates their world as if explaining a dreamscape, and this insight is complemented by unprecedented, action-packed footage of the riders in their element. The film presents the pivotal years of change in a boy’s life growing up in one of the most dangerous and economically depressed cities in the United States.

Director Lotfy Nathan followed Pug for three years over the course of the film’s production, documenting his transition from a witty and energetic boy to a teenager eager to find comradeship in a gang that prides in its recklessness and disregard for authority. Nathan does not pass judgement on the group’s activities; instead he gains up-close access to their high-suspense rides, following the mayhem through the eyes of a boy on the margins.

Directed by Lotfy Nathan
Duration: 71′
Year: 2014

Nowhere To Call Home tells the powerful story of Zanta, a Tibetan woman who moves to Beijing against the wishes of her in-laws so that her young son can receive an education.

 
Widowed at 28, Tibetan farmer Zanta defies her tyrannical father-in-law and refuses to marry the family’s only surviving son following her husband’s death. When Zanta’s in-laws won’t let her seven-year-old child go to school, she flees her village and heads to Beijing where she becomes a street vendor. Destitute and embattled by discrimination, Zanta inveigles a foreign customer into helping pay her boy’s school fees. On a New Year’s trip back to her village, Zanta’s in-laws take her son hostage, drawing the unwitting American into the violent family feud. The two women forge a partnership in an attempt to outmanoeuvre the in-laws, who, according to tradition, get the final say on their grandson’s future.

In an article titled “Inspiring Dialogue, Not Dissent, in China,” the New York Times wrote that “The film breaks down the sometimes romantic Shangri-La view that Westerners have of Tibet… and offers a shocking portrait of the outright racism… Tibetans face in Chinese parts of the country.”

Directed by Jocelyn Ford
Duration: 76′
Year: 2014

At our First Wednesday Special, discuss the cultural and political changes set in motion by the events of 9/11 ten years ago and look ahead to the next decade.

We’ll also be discussing extremism, Somalia, photography in transit and the cult of youth in newspapers and there’s also a great opportunity to hear from industry veterans Martin Bell and the New York Times‘ David Carr and Richard Gizbert of Al Jazeera English.

Our screenings include a double bill of films by John D. McHugh, a special preview of The Debt, insight into the world of teenage miners in Bolivia and human trafficking in Nigeria.

Go to our website for further details of all the talks and screenings, PLUS a preview reading of Bang Bang Bang, a multimedia storytelling masterclass with Brian Storm and third party events on remembering 9/11 and on investigative journalism. 
 
Follow us on Twitter and catch up on any events you missed on the Forum blog or download our podcasts on iTunes.

The defense plans to appeal the verdict in higher instances till the European Court of Human Rights. International community has strongly condemned the case as political one and Amnesty International has already adopted the bloggers as "prisoners of conscience."

Emin Milli, 30, and Adnan Hajizade, 26, were assaulted and beaten while dining in a downtown Baku restaurant and then detained for hooliganism on early July this year.

Note: this piece was posted with a back date

According to Reporters Without Borders blog, friends and supporters of detained bloggers will hold birthday parties for, but without Emin in Baku, Strasbourg, Paris, London, New York, Budapest, Houston and possibly, Basel.

Ironically, Adnan Hajizade also had to mark his birthday in jail this year – just five days after his arrest he turned 26.

However, the new government in Baku fell – various narratives talk of it as either a coup, or a national salvation. Hikmat Hajizade was dismissed from his post and recalled home. And then, it happened in Baku, when the ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of Azerbaijan was assaulted and severely beaten while walking in the street of its capital – somewhere in downtown in 1993.

Now, after sixteen years, history is repeating itself once again: this time it is Hikmat Hajizade’s son Adnan who was assaulted and severely beaten together with his friend Emin Milli while dining in a downtown restaurant. Yet, what ended for Hikmat Hajizade with injuries and possibly, bitter pains, has ended for Adnan with additional two-month pretrial detention and plus, a hooliganism charge promising up to 5 years in jail. Not an adequate perspective for a University of Richmond alumnus and BP employee, and a pioneer of video-blogging in Azerbaijan. Neither for his friend, Emin Milli – former country director of Friedrich Ebert Foundation and former Council of Europe consultant.

Back in 1993, when Hikmat Hajizade was assaulted and beaten, the country was embroiled in a bitter chaos, partly a fault of incompetency of the government once he represented. Baku’s major street fights and last armed uprising were to be subdued two years later – I still recall those bullet sounds in my neighbourhood. Now, the country enjoys a stability and oil revenues have created some sense of prosperity – however, the state of freedoms seems to change in a worse direction – sixteen years ago, a father would be beaten, but now, a son is not only beaten, but is also jailed and can face an endarkening prison sentence.

Democratic activism is a long tradition in Hajizade family, as well as the state of being assaulted and beaten for their activities – the only new element here is the fact that Adnan Hajizade now is being tried for both. Below – is the interview of Adnan Hajizade’s father to RFE/RL Azeri service, with English subtitles.

Living in an increasingly restricted society, failed by traditional media and broadcasting tightly controlled by the government, Internet users in Azerbaijan have embraced new media and social networking sites like Facebook as last refuge. Their usage of these online tools for communication and networking, mobilizing and news sharing, as well as advocacy and activism has resulted in what one blogger has effectively called Republic of Facebook .

Below are the excerpts and the summary of his blog post reproduced by the kind permission of the author.

Published in a start-up blog titled Bakrabo4iy , the post starts with a short retreat to the Soviet times:

In the USSR, the people were discussing politics in kitchen, sitting on white greased stools. Trusted friends would gather in the evenings and would have freethinking conversations. Without anxiety and fear that someone can spy on them, ideas of communism would be criticized harshly.

In Azerbaijan, everything is virtual and ironic nowadays. It is Facebook that plays the role of underground kitchen. The social networking site created by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 to connect young people and transformed into something like global Classmates all over the world, it has become almost the last bastion of freedom in Azerbaijan.

Then the writer gives a description of internet users in Azerbaijan dividing them into two loose groups. The first group, according to the post, consists of the majority with low educational level and poor Internet skills, who use those skills to meet mostly their material and physical desires. Then, there follows a description of the minority:

The second group of people in Azerbaijan is traditionally supposed to be abnormal. These unique smart guys and gals can be met only in Facebook. The majority of them know several languages and almost all speak English. All of them have higher education. Many studied abroad. They are liberals, democrats, intellectuals, cosmopolitans and objectivists.

The activities of this minority in Facebook are jokingly labeled ‘hooliganism’ by the author in an apparent hint to the ‘hooliganism’ charges that the arrested bloggers are indicted of.

What today happens in Facebook can be compared only to the Matrix. As if you live in a fine and fluffy world where opposition may revolt from time to time. And you do not pay any attention to them. It was always like that, and thus, it is sound and reasonable. So was always, it is self-evident.

But then you enter Facebook and see that quite affluent and successful people talk about those acute problems, which you already knew about, but could not accept their existence – all of these were beneath the fog for you. As if Morpheus has called you, appointed a meeting and gave a pill. Take it if you want to learn the truth, don’t take if you don’t. A choice is yours.

And here comes the Republic of Facebook:

Facebook is the non-existing Republic of Crimea of Vasily Aksyonov – the great writer had created an utopian republic not grasped by the red army and moving on his own way of development.

However, it is not correct to consider Facebook as a political hobby group. Facebook is an avant-garde, non-conformism, objectivism, talent, tolerance and the most important – honesty.

Jacobin Club of the pacifists.