The War on Terror—the phrase may be less ubiquitous than it once was, but the impact of the ‘war’ continues to resonate in Britain today. Academics, politicians and civil liberties campaigners have demonstrated how the continuing post- 9/11 surveillance and institutionally focussed strategies of “prevent” are Islamophobic, while misreporting and misrepresentation of Muslims in the British media has been proven to be endemic.

Join Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, Miqdaad Versi, Saeed Khan and Amina Yaqin as they unpack how the recent rise in Islamophobic attacks at street level can be directly related to the War on Terror, and the subsequent erosion of Muslim civil liberties.

This event is supported by Amal (a Saïd Foundation programme).

About The Host

Baroness Sayeeda Warsi

Sayeeda Warsi,  Britain’s first Muslim Cabinet minister, is also a lawyer, businesswoman and racial justice campaigner and was appointed a life peer at the age of thirty-six.  In the summer of 2014 she resigned from government citing its ‘morally indefensible’ policy on Gaza.

 

About The Speakers

Miqdaad Versi

Miqdaad Versi has a degree in Mathematics at the University of Oxford. He is Assistant Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain and a member of the Muslim Leadership Group for the Citizens Commission on Islam.  He leads much of the MCB work on counter-terrorism. He has media experience with broadcast and print media, including Newsnight, The Times and Al-Jazeera English amongst many others, and is a contributor to The Guardian’s online comment section “Comment is Free”.

 

Amina Yaqin

Amina Yaqin is Senior Lecturer in Urdu and Postcolonial Studies, SOAS University of London. She is co-editor of Contesting Islamophobia: anti-Muslim prejudice in media, culture and politics (2019); Muslims, Trust and Multiculturalism: New Directions (2018), and co-author of Framing Muslims: stereotyping and representation after 9/11 (2011)