The Bonfire Night Uprising in Chapeltown, Leeds, on 5.11.1975
It’s now 50 years since 11 black youths and me were arrested during or after the first uprising by black British youth. Rage against the police erupted in Chapeltown, Leeds, in the north of England, on Bonfire Night in 1975. Youths attacked an unmarked police car as it drove through the crowd on Spencer Place […]
The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities 2021 (Chair: Dr Tony Sewell) — Why it is so very wrong
This article joins the storm of criticism that greeted Dr Tony Sewell and his Commission’s report when it was published on 31.3.21. It makes some specific criticisms, but it provides a broader context than most of the responses I’ve read so far. Firstly, it aligns the Commission with the ‘culture war’ the current UK government […]
Five global challenges: how might Hizmet respond?
Hizmet, the social movement inspired by the neo-Sufi thinker Fetullah Gülen, is currently being dismembered by the autocratic president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He accuses Gülen of ordering a coup attempt on 15th July 2016, saying it was was led by Hizmet members in the army. This is strenuously denied by Gülen and Hizmet, […]
Reflections on the Srebrenica genocide in July 1995
Qari Asim MBE, the Chief Imam of Makkah Mosque in Leeds, asked me to contribute to the community Iftar on 12th July 2015 which was dedicated to remembering the murder of 8,000 or so Muslim men and boys in Bosnia twenty years ago. I was given five minutes so I didn’t read the text I’d written […]