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The Widening Circle
Podcast Ask an Iranian exile why a mosque in Hamburg should be closed and you may be told about Evin prison. The chain feels unbreakable from the inside. The state that jailed my cousin calls itself Islamic; Islam is therefore the thing that jailed my cousin; anything Islamic anywhere is therefore the enemy. Each step… — read more
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Remigration Includes You
Podcast On the Iranians cheering Europe’s far right, the word sitting in its manifesto, and the people that word names Iranians demonstrating outside the Alte Oper, Frankfurt, 17 February 2024. One placard reads ‘Die AfD ist keine Alternative für Deutschland – AFD Wählen ist so 1933’; the Persian placards call for the end of the… — read more
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Nobody Is Free to Stay
Podcast The programme opens in Istanbul, at a reading of the Shahnameh. Fifty thousand couplets, a thousand years old, recited aloud by Iranians far from home. Within two minutes the frame is set: this, we are told, is where Iranians go now, as disillusionment with Islam takes hold. ‘War, God and the Islamic Republic’, an… — read more
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Finding Light in the Darkness
Podcast The following is the full text of my talk delivered at the 13th Annual Iftar at Alyth Synagogue in North London on 8th March. It was offered in the moments before Jewish, Christian, and Muslim guests broke bread together at Iftar — an occasion made particularly poignant by a broader climate in which conflict… — read more
