Event Details

Speakers: Ehsan Masood, Sunny Hundal and Dr Brian Klug  

City Circle invites you to a thought-provoking discussion on Friday, 16th March, "Independent Voices: Challenging the Myth of Monolithic Communities", about internal criticism among "marginalised" or "minority" communities and how these communities should be more widely perceived. If there is a myth of a community monolith, whose interests does it serve? Politicians who want to outsource responsibility for dealing with diverse citizens by dealing with individual community leaders responsible for their own flock, expected to regulate themselves and their own problems. Or maybe community leaders benefit by promoting themselves and their own views by making everyone follow one particular line, and who may enact measures to silence or marginalise dissenting voices within their own communities. Or do those outside these communities who seek to stereotype and stigmatise communities by saying they are all the same benefit most by this arrangement? 

Or, or the other side of the argument, are these independent voices truly independent? Do they not merely reflect a dominant liberal consensus suspicious of difference? Do they serve to misconstrue community interests as always parochial and self-serving? Why are they often perceived or labelled as being less religious or secular? Do they have a positive agenda beyond criticising the parochial nature of community organisations? If dissent is often challenged within communities, what form does it take and is its power to marginalise overstated? 

City Circle has invited an expert panel, Ehsan Masood, Brian Klug and Sunny Hundal, to reflect on trials and tribulations of opening up debate and challenging "orthodoxy" from a comparative approach. Through this, the debate may allow us to understand the commonalities and distinctions between the Jewish, Muslim and Sikh experiences of these dynamics. 

Ehsan Masood is a writer and journalist based in London . He has written regularly for Prospect Magazine and OpenDemocracy on issues around community representation among British Muslims. He is the editor of two books published in 2006: Dry: Life Without Water (Harvard University Press) and How Do You Know: Reading Ziauddin Sardar on Islam, Science and Cultural Relations (Pluto Press, 2006). He also writes for New Scientist and is a consultant to the Science and Development Network. 

Dr. Brian Klug is Senior Research Fellow & Tutor in Philosophy at St. Benets Hall, Oxford . He is on the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University and the staff of the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Oxford . An Honorary Fellow of the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations at the University of Southampton , he is Associate Editor of the journal Patterns of Prejudice. He is a founder member of two groups: the Jewish Forum for Justice and Human Rights (JFJHR) and Independent Jewish Voices (IJV). He has written and broadcast widely on race, antisemitism, Jewish identity, Zionism and related subjects. 

Sunny Hundal is founder of the thinktank New Generation Network. He is also editor of the online magazine Asians in Media and manages the group blog Pickled Politics, covering global current affairs and politics from a progressive standpoint. As a journalist and commentator, he has written for the Guardian, the Independent, The TImes and the Financial Times, on media and race-related issues. Last year, we was voted Guardian blogger of the year. An ardent environmentalist and liberal, he is a vegetarian and cares strongly about the oppression of people everywhere and the degradation of nature. 

All are welcome. Free entrance.