How Muslims view themselves and how Western media portrays them are miles apart. Muslims see themselves as believers in a peaceful and universal faith that aims to bring mercy to all, while western media is most likely to present them as backward, intolerant, extremist, and at odds with western values. Even western Muslims who happily straddle both worlds can find themselves being caricatured in tabloids and chastised by conservative and liberal media.

In this talk, the speaker will discuss how Muslims are portrayed to the western world. The talk will cover how Muslims are stereotyped, margnisalised and even ridiculed. The speaker will share a perspective on how the western audience can see through the smoke and know Islam and Muslims as represented by the peaceful, hard-working and well-meaning majority.

Copies of the authors' book will be on sale at a discounted rate. The speakers will happily sign your copy.

Title: Framing Muslims: Stereotyping and Representation after 9/11
Speakers: Peter Morey and Amina Yaqin
Date: 2 Mar 2012 at 18:45
Venue: Abrar House, 45 Crawford Place, W1H 4LP

Free entrance. All welcome. No reservation needed.
If you have any questions, please contact Sid on sid@thecitycircle.com .

The speakers:
Peter Morey is Reader in English Literature at the University of East London. He is the author of Fictions of India: Narrative and Power (Edinburgh UP, 2000) and Rohinton Mistry (Manchester UP, 2004) as well as co-editor of Alternative Indias: Writing, Nation and Communalism (Rodopi, 2006). Along with Amina Yaqin he is co-author of Framing Muslims: Stereotyping and Representation after 9/11 (Harvard, 2011) and has co-edited a special issue of the journal Interventions, entitled 'Muslims in the Frame' (12:2, 2010) and a forthcoming volume of essays: Culture, Diaspora and Modernity in Muslim Writing (Routledge, 2012). Between 2007 and 2010 he was Principal Investigator in the Framing Muslims International Research Network funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. He is currently putting together a collaborative project on Muslims, Trust and Cultural Dialogue, and working on a monograph entitled, Islamophobia and the Novel: Cultural Difference, Conflict and World Literature.

Amina Yaqin is Senior lecturer in Urdu and Postcolonial Studies and Chair of the Centre for the Study of Pakistan at the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London). She has recently co-authored (with Peter Morey) Framing Muslims: stereotyping and representation after 9/11 (Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 2011) and co-edited a special issue of Interventions entitled, ‘Muslims in the Frame’, July 2010, 12: 2. A co-edited collection of essays is currently in press with Routledge on Culture, Diaspora and Modernity in Muslim Writing. She is currently working on her monograph entitled, Imagining Pakistan: narratives of culture, nation and gender.