Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan - Tangled in Terror: Uprooting Islamophobia (Outspoken by Pluto)

Tangled in Terror

I am profoundly grateful to Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan for writing this book. It is brave. It is necessary. It is true. It is what we Muslims have been waiting for. A brilliant, powerful and moving account of Islamophobia, not as an individual moral deficiency, but as rooted in colonial histories of white supremacy and global capitalism. For me, Tangled in Terror triggered long-felt pain, anger, grief at the abuse, torture and genocidal violence Muslims are made to suffer the world over. Violence which not only evades accountability, but seems at times not even to register as harm. Manzoor-Khan carefully traces the origins and shape of the historical and ongoing terrorisation of Muslims, revealing untold injustices, and showing us how to untangle ourselves from terror and instead find threads of resistance.

Nadine El-Enany, author of (B)ordering Britain and
Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Race and Law

Courageously makes explicit the implicit unfreedoms of our society.

Lowkey, poet and rapper

An unflinching account of the forces that have converged to cast Muslims as a permanent threat while profiting off our marginalisation.

Aamer Rahman, writer and comedian

Lyrical and uncompromising Suhaiymah writes to disrupt.

gal-dem

A fearless writer who cuts through nonsense. Suhaiymahs voice is one of the most exciting of her generation.

Fatima Manji, award-winning broadcaster, Channel 4 News

This is the first time the breadth and depth of the Islamophobia we face has been collated in one place and analysed with such precision. It really feels like our book.

Moazzam Begg, author of Enemy Combatant: The Terrifying True
Story of a Briton in Guantnamo and outreach director for CAGE

Suhaiymahs writing is fierce and clarifying. She understands that the task is to resist oversimplified definitions of Islamophobia and instead turn the readers attention toward its political function how it increases proximity to violence and impoverishes us all.

Lola Olufemi, author of Feminism, Interrupted

Hugely important, unflinching and rigorous.

Preti Taneja, author of the Desmond Elliot Prize-winning
We That Are Young

One of Britains most promising young voices.

Priyamvada Gopal, author of Insurgent Empire:
Anticolonial Resistance & British Dissent

Unapologetically abolitionist, Tangled in Terror resonates as a powerful act of refusal and resistance. It lays the foundations for a resistance that unequivocally demands an end to ALL forms of violence and ALL forms of racism, together.

Helen Brewer, migrant justice activist,
and member of the Stansted 15

Offers a rich account of the ways Islamophobia upholds systems of extraction, exploitation and domination, propelled by the urgency of our collective political predicament.

Sita Balani, co-author of Empires Endgame:
Racism and the British State

A deeply insightful intervention on the ongoing entrenchment of white supremacy and islamophobia. Tangled in Terror is a motivator, to understand, reflect, and take action in deliberate, radical and life-affirming ways.

Cradle Community, an abolitionist collective

This eloquent book dissects the structures of power which create, uphold and perpetuate Islamophobia and tells us what it is like to be a Muslim woman in this intensely hostile climate.

Amrit Wilson, writer, journalist and activist

Conveys the trauma that is so often unspoken of in discussions of state enabled bigotry against Muslims, written with deep clarity.

Omar Suleiman, scholar, civil rights leader,
writer and public speaker

Tangled in Terror brought tears to my eyes and fire to my heart. The gift of this book is feeling the world changing around you with each word. An astounding, ground-shaking piece of work.

Sabrina Mahfouz, playwright, poet, writer and editor of
The Things I Would Tell You

Outspoken by Pluto

Series Editor: Neda Tehrani

Platforming underrepresented voices; intervening in important political issues; revealing powerful histories and giving voice to our experiences; Outspoken by Pluto is a book series unlike any other. Unravelling debates on feminism and class, work and borders, unions and climate justice, this series has the answers to the questions youre asking. These are books that dissent.

Also available:

Uprooting Islamophobia

Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan

First published 2022 by Pluto Press

New Wing, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA

www.plutobooks.com

Copyright Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan 2022

The right of Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 7453 4541 3 Paperback

ISBN 978 0 7453 4545 1 PDF

ISBN 978 0 7453 4543 7 EPUB

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.

Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England

Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America

More thanks than I can mention are owed for this book. In honesty, it is the culmination of thinking I have been doing for most of my adult life and therefore a product of conversations and lessons learned from so many people, books, lectures, passing comments, poems, calls, late-night conversations, khutbahs, voice-notes and everything in between.

But I want to take some space in particular to thank Azeezat. Thank you for helping me to hear myself, for being honest with me, and for pushing me to write the version of this book that mattered most to me. Your care and generous capacity for imagining and listening have shaped so much of what I hope this book can be. And thank you for also reminding me that I am allowed (and hope) to change and grow after this.

Special thanks also go to Phelan, for always being beside me in the discursive trenches and having my back in untangling every set of ideas we stumble upon. To Bava, for making me feel unconditionally supported, for sharing a persistent hopefulness in the face of despair, and for reminding me that truths are more multifaceted than we like to admit. To Alaa, for teaching me how to listen to and value the unglamourous dreams and forms of resistance that surround us; and for your encouragement which comforted me at some of the most difficult parts of writing this.