<aside> 📚 About Beyond Books
Beyond Books acknowledges and treasures space for reading, lending, purchasing and discussing what books are, have been and could be to us. Bringing forward voices that encourage and cultivate conversations, offering narratives and ideas informed by our identities, lived experiences and dreams, it is a platform where books and other means of sharing stories are used to democratise knowledge, imagination, and enjoyment. We envisage Beyond Books will be key to unlock the dream matter in all of us, strengthening our infrastructure to unleash the capacity to engage, learn, grow and delve into many possibilities for ourselves and our places.
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We invite you to join us for our first Beyond Books talk of the year, which welcomes Farzana Khan in conversation with writer, poet, activist and educator Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, who brings a vital new perspective on Britain with her book Tangled in Terror. This book ******brings attention to a more honest story of a nation struggling with Islamophobia, by focusing not on what it is, but what it does, and how it shows up in our education, how we travel, our healthcare, legal system and at work.
Suhaiymah’s book raises a number of questions to help us imagine a new economy: Are we destroying life and hoarding wealth in the name of border security? Who is safer when the nation is secure? Is Islamophobia a political project designed to divide people for a brand of safety that materially benefits only a few? And what does a ‘safe world on our own terms’ look like? These questions prompt us to look at a national narrative to expose the consequences and misconceptions around modern Islam.
“It can feel daunting to face the need to re-imagine the world, but, as I hope this book has demonstrated, that is our only choice.”
— Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, Tangled in Terror
As we explore what it means to live within a ‘safe and just space’ laid out in the Doughnut Economics framework*,* we’ve been holding conversations that dive deeper into the challenges of the social foundations we need to build on to create a society based in care, trust and economic equity. Along this journey we’ve been honoured to be proximate to many brilliant minds that have been investigating our collective memory of colonial and anti-colonial arguments, including Fatima Manji (Hidden Heritage), Dr Kavita Bhanot (Decolonise Not Diversify), Sumaya Kassim, Aliyah Hasinah, Shaheen Kasmani and Abeera Kamran amongst others (The Past is Now), Melz Owusu (Decolonise Da Ting), Dr Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman with their work and research into Birmingham’s colonial histories and more.
At CIVIC SQUARE we want to continue to have these conversations on what it truly means to bring all people into the safe and just economic space. We believe this calls for the courage to be vulnerable and true to yourself. We invited Farzana to host the incredible Suhaiymah because of their unwavering commitment to challenging oppression and injustice in society with confidence, knowledge and authenticity. They are two women that embody the strength and bravery we need, so we are incredibly honoured to invite to join us at South Loop Park on the 20th March. We warmly welcome you to join this conversation to learn about the unseen ways Islamophobia impacts our society.
“[Society is based on] the close dependency of everyone’s happiness upon the happiness of all.”
— Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics