LONDON: From a jaded TV chat show host to a Middle Eastern actress who longs to be cast as a ghostbuster, not endless jihadi brides, the stories in Sabrina Mahfouz’s anthology of British Muslim women all do one thing: challenge stereotypes.
Mahfouz, a poet and playwright, brought together 22 women, with roots ranging from Pakistan to Palestine, to lift the lid on their minds and lives, which are often invisible in Britain.
“There is such a narrow perception in the UK of who a person of Muslim heritage can be, act, think or look like and I wanted to challenge that in any way that I could,” London-born Mahfouz told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“At a time of such extreme Islamophobia, the more literature can do to challenge this destructive narrative, the better.”
More than three percent of Britain’s 65 million population are Muslim, with the highest proportion living in London, government data shows.
Police said hate crimes against Muslims rose after a series of Islamist militant attacks, including an attack on London Bridge and during a music concert by US singer Ariana Grande in Manchester in northern England.
“The Things I Would Tell You” includes poetry, essays and short stories from award-winning novelists, such as Leila Aboulela and Kamila Shamsie, emerging talents and new writers.
Journalist Triska Hamid describes the frustrations young Muslim women have finding love via Islamic dating apps that allow them to swipe through photos, chat online and meet up.
The poems of Sudanese-born Asma Elbadawi, 27, who successfully lobbied the International Basketball Federation to allow players to compete in hijab, reflect on the dual identities of many immigrants in Britain.
“Our parents picked a better life for us over being with our families,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, describing how her parents moved from Khartoum to Bradford when she was just one-year-old.
While most British Muslims were born overseas, the majority identify as British, according to the Muslim Council of Britain, the country’s largest umbrella Islamic organization.
Women are the main targets of anti-Muslim prejudice, accounting for six out of ten complainants, according to Iman Atta, director of Tell MAMA, a British organization that monitors such incidents.
In addition to enduring abuse for wearing Islamic clothing like headscarves and face veils, Muslim women often face a triple economic disadvantage, according to a 2016 parliamentary report, being female, Muslim and from an ethnic minority group.
The anthology confronts taboos, such as Shaista Aziz’s hard-hitting essay on “honor” killings in Pakistan, including that of Qandeel Baloch, who was strangled by her brother in 2016 for her risqué social media posts.
More than 500 people — almost all women — die in Pakistan each year in such killings, usually carried out by members of the victim’s family for bringing “shame” on the community.
“It is profoundly shocking that young women’s lives can be taken with such breathtaking ease and with no justice, no redress for them,” the British-Pakistani journalist and stand-up comedian told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Aziz said the book’s inclusion in the ongoing Cheltenham Literature Festival in the west of England highlighted its broad popularity and that the British public are keen to hear more Muslim women’s voices.
“It just shows you, this is Britain,” she said.
Jihadi brides, dating and identity: British Muslim women speak out
Jihadi brides, dating and identity: British Muslim women speak out
Afghanistan says it thwarted Pakistani airstrike on Bagram Air Base as fighting enters fourth day
- The fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years
- Pakistan accuses Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it
KABUL: Afghanistan thwarted attempted airstrikes on Bagram Air Base, the former US military base north of Kabul, authorities said Sunday, while cross-border fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan stretched into a fourth day.
The fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years, with Pakistan declaring that it’s in “open war” with Afghanistan.
The conflict has alarmed the international community, particularly as the area is one where other militant organizations, including Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group, still have a presence and have been trying to resurface.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it and also of allying with its archrival India.
Border clashes in October killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants until a Qatari-mediated ceasefire ended the intense fighting. But several rounds of peace talks in Turkiye in November failed to produce a lasting agreement, and the two sides have occasionally traded fire since then.
On Sunday, the police headquarters of Parwan province, where Bagram is located, said in a statement that several Pakistani military jets had entered Afghan airspace “and attempted to bomb Bagram Air Base” at around 5 a.m.
The statement said Afghan forces responded with “anti-aircraft and missile defense systems” and had managed to thwart the attack.
There was no immediate response from Pakistan’s military or government regarding Kabul’s claim of attempted airstrikes on Bagram or the ongoing fighting.
Bagram was the United States’ largest military base in Afghanistan. It was taken over by the Taliban as they swept across the country and took control in the wake of the chaotic US withdrawal from the country in 2021. Last year, US President Donald Trump suggested he wanted to reestablish a US presence at the base.
The current fighting began when Afghanistan launched a broad cross-border attack on Thursday night, saying it was in retaliation for Pakistani airstrikes the previous Sunday.
Pakistan had said its airstrike had targeted the outlawed Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. Afghanistan had said only civilians were killed.
The TTP militant group, which is separate but closely allied with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, operates inside Pakistan, where it has been blamed for hundreds of deaths in bombings and other attacks over the years.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of providing a safe haven within Afghanistan for the TTP, an accusation that Afghanistan denies.
After Thursday’s Afghan attack, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif declared that “our patience has now run out. Now it is open war between us.”
In the ongoing fighting, each side claims to have killed hundreds of the other side’s forces — and both governments put their own casualties at drastically lower numbers.
Two Pakistani security officials said that Pakistani ground forces were still in control on Sunday of a key Afghan post and a 32-square-kilometer area in the southern Zhob sector near Kandahar province, after having seized it during fighting Friday. The captured post and surrounding area remain under Pakistani control, they added. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
In Kabul, the Afghan government rejected Pakistan’s claims. Deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat called the reports “baseless.”
Afghan officials said that fighting had continued overnight and into Sunday in the border areas.
The police command spokesman for Nangarhar province, Said Tayyeb Hammad, said that anti-aircraft missiles were used from the provincial capital, Jalalabad, and surrounding areas on Pakistani fighter jets flying overhead Sunday morning.
Defense Ministry spokesman Enayatulah Khowarazmi said that Afghan forces had launched counterattacks with snipers across the border from Nangarhar, Paktia, Khost and Kandahar provinces overnight. He said that two Pakistani drones had been shot down and dozens of Pakistani soldiers had been killed.
Fitrat said that Pakistani drone attacks hit civilian homes in Nangarhar province late Saturday, killing a woman and a child, while mortar fire killed another civilian when it hit a home in Paktia province.
There was no immediate response to the claims from Pakistani officials.
