Wine-Drinking Muslim Feminist: Builds Bridges Between Divided Worlds.
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Back Story
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: The Voice of Reason in Britain Today
“We came, we saw, we faced discrimination and humiliation. We survived, we fell in love, had children, and joined this ever-changing rainbow nation. We of migrant stock should never forget this history and turn away from those seeking sanctuary. But many do.” These are the words of Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, an award-winning journalist and author who has championed equal rights and fairness in almost every corner of the political sphere, most of all on issues of racism and gender. She said this in a 2015 article for The Independent, titled: ‘Some of the UK’s settled migrants are hostile to the current plight of refugees. How can this be?’. The article details her experience with xenophobic settled migrants or their descendants, also stating, “I will forever be grateful to the Britons who befriended me when, in 1972, Idi Amin exiled us Ugandan Asians from our homeland”.
Yasmin was born in Kampala with Indian heritage, and her faith is Nizari Ismaili of Shia Islam. In 1972, the Ugandan government, under the administration of Idi Amin, one of history’s most brutal despots, declared war on Ugandan Asians, from committing violent atrocities to economic aggression. One of these included ordering all those with British passports – many Ugandan Asians were from British India and had come to East Africa looking for peace and prosperity – to leave the country. Yasmin was one of the 50,000 who fled, and one of the 30,000 who fled to the UK.
With a bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Makerere University, she continued her studies at the University of Oxford. She then taught for over a decade, and subsequently worked with immigrants and refugees. She has carried out research for the Institute for Public Policy Research and the Foreign Policy Centre and has since become a fellow for Liverpool John Moores University, and professor at Cardiff and Lincoln Universities. However, it is in her journalistic work and her authorial writing where she has wielded the most influence for the greater good by consistently calling for a fairer society in Britain. She has had a weekly column in The Independent, writing for other newspapers as well, and has published over twenty books on racism, migration, mixed marriage, and gender equality. In these, she has clearly emerged as the voice of reason that a multi-cultural Britain desperately needs.
Possessing a highly analytical and empathetic mind developed from her time on the train tracks rather than on either side, she is not afraid to voice her opinion even if it may be uncomfortable for some – a true advocate for truth and fairness. In The Independent, where she has a weekly column, with articles like ‘It’s our leaders who are creating a generation of terrorists’ from 2016, which says that, “Repulsive Islamists and their ideologies are hell-bent on annihilating modernity and cumulated human cultures. But I do believe that European politicians have, over many decades, created the conditions for fanaticism to seed and grow. The abysmal official responses to the refugee flows are leading to new anti-Western furies … Some inhabitants describe the place as Europe’s biggest jihadist factories.” Before that in 2011, she argued for a fairer view of Israel-Palestine conflict: “All of us need to stop and think, to use this moment of upheaval to scrutinise ourselves and our habituated responses to the Middle East … We Muslims need to accept our burdens too … It is no longer morally justifiable for activists to target only Israel and either ignore or find excuses for corrupt, murderous Arab despots.”
In ‘Feminism and identity politics: Is identity politics holding feminism back?’, which can be found on IAI Player, Yasmin has described herself as a "practising and wine-drinking Muslim … lifelong anti-racist, pro-European, and feminist”. She also said, “I am never going to be a patriot of this country. I am never going to be the right kind of Muslim, an unself-critical feminist … those who have this restless brain have to examine our own positions and the groups to which we are allied because nothing can remain unchanged.” In this recording, she also mentions how she burned her bra while at Oxford. She is not afraid to express views which may go against the grain of groups she herself would see herself as part of, or to make decisions in her personal life which might affect her standing in the public sphere, such as marrying a white man for which she faced much backlash in her own community, saying she had committed “ideological treachery” in Love in Your Fifties.
Her most significant works include her autobiography, No Place Like Home, in which she explores what it was like to grow up in a community with a racial heritage that excluded her from both black and white circles. It was a society that suffered from a racial hierarchy that elicited in its members such anxiety that eventually resulted in the violence under the regime of Idi Amin. She has also written The Settler’s Cookbook: A Memoir of Love, Migration and Food which explores the history of Indians migrating to the UK through East Africa, Refusing the Veil which sets out a balanced debate on why modern Islamic women should refuse the veil, In Defence of Political Correctness in which she argues that political correctness has resulted in a fairer and more compassionate society, and most recently Ladies Who Punch, telling the stories of fifty women who rose through rebellion.
She also established and founded the British Muslims for Secular Democracy an organization which is dedicated to resolving she's within Islam to build a more democratic Britain. In ‘Representing ourselves better’, Imran Ahmad said that “Our aim is to drive a more balanced view of Muslims in this country, to help solve Muslim-related issues such as religious extremism and racism against Muslims, and to promote democracy through an education programme among Muslim communities. Slowly, we are beginning to gain some momentum, but being noticed as a force representing democratic Muslims is a challenge - because we don't say outrageous and hysterical things … We are not saying that society itself must be secular, or that people should not hold religious values. But we believe the machinery of government should be secular; it should be driven by reason and common values, rather than by any prevailing theology or cultural traditions. And everyone should have the right to participate on equal terms.”
As well as winning multiple awards for her writing, in 2001 she was going to be appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to journalism, but later returned the award in criticism of the Labour government at the time. She performed a one-woman show in Soho Theatre in London about her life in Uganda, which was described as “very funny and touching”. She was instrumental in beginning an investigation into sexual abuses committed by BBC presenter, Stuart Hall, after being sent a letter from one of his victims. Yasmin wrote in 2012: “I know we journalists are thought heartless by millions of Britons. But it is heartening that there are readers who trust us. Most of us try hard not to break the faith they have in us.”
Bibliography:
Ahlin, Charlotte (2017), ‘11 Authors Who Were Once Refugees’, Bustle.
https://www.bustle.com/p/11-famous-authors-who-were-once-refugees-34484
Ahmad, Imran (2008), ‘Representing ourselves better’, The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/may/01/representingourselvesbetter
Alibhai-Brown, Yasmin (2023), ‘Feminism and identity politics: Is identity politics holding feminism back?’, IAI Player. https://iai.tv/video/feminism-and-identity-politics
Alibhai-Brown, Yasmin (2013), ‘How I exposed Stuart Hall’s sex abuse: Yasmin Alibhai-Brown on the letter that kick-started the investigation’, The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/how-i-exposed-stuart-hall-s-sex-abuse-yasmin-alibhaibrown-on-the-letter-that-kickstarted-the-investigation-8601517.html
Alibhai-Brown, Yasmin (2008), ‘Love in your fifties’, The Guardian.
Alibhai-Brown, Yasmin (2011), ‘Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Stop blaming Israel for every grievance in the Middle East’, The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/yasmin-alibhai-brown/yasmin-alibhaibrown-stop-blaming-israel-for-every-grievance-in-the-middle-east-2277726.html
Alibhai-Brown, Yasmin (2016), ‘It’s our leaders who are creating a generation of terrorists’ The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/our-leaders-are-creating-a-generation-of-terrorists-a6942906.html
Alibhai-Brown, Yasmin (2015), ‘Some of the UK’s settled migrants are hostile to the current plight of refugees. How can this be?’, The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/some-of-the-uk-s-settled-migrants-are-hostile-to-the-current-plight-of-refugees-how-can-this-be-a6698976.html
Jha Chatterjee, Sonali (2007), ‘Ismailis in the News: Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, writer and journalist’, Ismailimail. https://ismailimail.blog/2007/02/17/ismailis-in-the-news-yasmin-alibhai-brown-writer-and-journalist/
Taylor, Paul (2005), ‘Nowhere to Belong: Tales of an Extravagant Stranger, Soho Theatre, London’, The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/nowhere-to-belong-tales-of-an-extravagant-stranger-soho-theatre-london-527075.html
Wikipedia, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasmin_Alibhai-Brown
Wikipedia, Idi Amin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idi_Amin#Persecution_of_ethnic_and_political_groups
In this post Ava highlights the arty refugee experience of Yasmin Alibahi Brown. She is a citizen journalist on a placement with us organised by Oxford University Career Services. She also organised the micro game to make the journalistic experience interactive.
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