TOGETHER FOR REFLECTION & CONNECTIONS
THE PROJECT
These online events are aimed at connecting and reflecting on key issues concerning faith and belief communities in Europe and beyond.
Each session is part of an ongoing series of interfaith events organised by ENORB in partnership with others, including the United Religions Initiative Europe, the European Network Against Racism, and Civil Society Consulting CIC.
We welcome anyone interested in the topic to join, especially those working in the civil socity and faith sectors across Europe, to exchange ideas and contribute to latest thinking.
PAST EVENTS
European Book Club - In Conversation with Kenan Malik
May 8, 2023
ENORB welcomed Kenan to the European Book Club. Is white privilege real? Does American history begin in 1619 or 1776? Why has left-wing antisemitism grown? How racist is the working class? Who benefits most, when anti-racists speak in racial terms?
These very different questions have all emerged from today’s heated debates around race, identity and culture. The ‘culture wars’ have generated ferocious argument, but little clarity. Not So Black and White offers that clarity by taking the long view, explaining the real origins of ‘race’ in Western thought, and tracing its path from those beginnings to today’s fractious world. In doing so, the book upends many accepted views about race, identity, whiteness and privilege.
As a leading thinker Kenan Malik interweaves three narratives: the history of the idea of race, from the Enlightenment to the present; the historical and current relationship between race and class; and his account of how we created a world riven by identity politics. Through these histories, he challenges longstanding assumptions, revealing forgotten stories of a racialised working class, and questioning fashionable concepts like cultural appropriation.
Not So Black and White is both a lucid history that rewrites the story of race and class, and an elegant polemic making an anti-racist case against the politics of identity.
The conversation was be moderated and led by Kate Shurety and ENORB Anti-Racism Intern, Lorenzo Capomaggi.
Watch the full recording
European Book Club - In Conversation with Lea Ypi
March 29, 2023
ENORB hosted an online conversation with Lea Ypi, author and political theorist. She grew up in one of the most isolated countries on earth, a place where communist ideals had officially replaced religion. Albania, the last Stalinist outpost in Europe, was a place of queuing and scarcity, of political executions and secret police. To Lea, it was home. People were equal, neighbours helped each other, and children were expected to build a better world. There was community and hope.
Then, in December 1990, everything changed. Almost overnight, people could vote freely, wear what they liked and worship as they wished. But factories shut, jobs disappeared and thousands fled to Italy on crowded ships, only to be sent back. As one generation's aspirations became another's disillusionment, and as her own family's secrets were revealed, Lea found herself questioning what freedom really meant.
Free is an engrossing memoir of coming of age amid political upheaval. With acute insight and wit, Lea Ypi traces the limits of progress and the burden of the past, illuminating the spaces between ideals and reality, and the hopes and fears of people pulled up by the sweep of history.
Lea also explored how her fellow Albanians face discrimination and experience hostile scapegoating by the media and hard-right politicans, especially in the UK. She has recently written extensively on this troubling anti-Albanian racial discrimination and stereotyping.
Come and listen to what she has to say and discuss her book with us. The conversation will be moderated and led by Kate Shurety and ENORB interns, Klaudjo Marena & Lorenzo Capomaggi.
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European Book Club - In Conversation with Zsuzsanna Szelényi
March 21, 2023
ENORB hosted an online discussion with Hungarian MP, activist, and author Zsuzsanna Szelényi, who presented her recently published book: “Tainted Democracy: Viktor Orbán & the Subversion of Hungary.”
Zsuzsanna was a leading member of Orbán’s Fidesz in its early years, witnessing first-hand the party’s shift from liberalism to populist nationalism. Offering an insider’s account of Fidesz’s evolution since its creation, Zsuzsanna will be explaining how the party rose to leadership of the country under Orbán and made sweeping legal, political and economic changes to solidify its grip on power—from reining in the public media to slashing the number of parliamentary seats. She answers a key question: why has Orbán been so successful, winning widespread support within Hungary and wielding considerable influence in European politics? And how can Hungary’s opposition party Together, which she co-founded in 2014, work to turn the country around?
Underpinned by Zsuzsanna’s own experiences at the heart of Hungarian politics, Tainted Democracy offers accessible, nuanced insights into the global rise of populist autocracy—and how it can be challenged.
This conversation was moderated and led by ENORB director Mark Ereira-Guyer.
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European Book Club - In Conversation with Gaia Vince
February 21, 2023
In partnership, ENORB hosted a conversation with Gaia to explore her urgent species emergency investigation. With every degree of temperature rise, a billion people will be displaced from areas in which humans have lived for thousands of years. While we must do everything we can to mitigate climate change impacts, the brutal truth is that huge swathes of the world are becoming uninhabitable. From Bangladesh to Sudan to the western United States, the quadruple threat of drought, heat, wildfires and flooding will utterly reshape Earth’s human geography in coming decades.
NOMAD CENTURY is an urgent investigation of the most underreported, seismic consequence of climate change: how it will force us to change where – and how – we live. Gaia Vince’s latest book is packed with solutions and also a rousing call to arms, describing how we can plan for and manage the now unavoidable climate migration while we restore the planet to a fully habitable state.
In this rousing call to arms, the Royal Science Book-prize winning author Gaia Vince describes how we can plan for and manage this unavoidable climate migration while we restore the planet to a fully habitable state. The vital message of Gaia’s book is that migration is not the problem – it’s the solution.
The conversation was moderated and led by ENORB Director Mark Ereira-Guyer.
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The Rise of Global Islamophobia in the War on Terror
September 28, 2022
ENORB hosted a book club-style online event with the editors and contributing authors - Naved Bakali, Farid Hafez & Leyla Yildirim - of the new book: The Rise of Global Islamophobia in the War on Terror: Coloniality, Race & Islam.
The 'War on Terror' ushered in a new era of anti-Muslim bias and racism. Anti-Muslim racism, or Islamophobia, is influenced by local economies, power structures, and histories. However, the War on Terror, a conflict undefined by time and place, with a homogenized Muslim 'Other' framed as a perpetual enemy, has contributed to a global Islamophobic narrative.
This new edited international volume examines the connections between interpersonal and institutional anti-Muslim racism that have contributed to the growth and emboldening of nativist and populist protest movements globally. It maps out categories of Islamophobia, revealing how localised histories, conflicts and contemporary geopolitical realities have textured the ways that Islamophobia has manifested across the global North and South. At the same time, it seeks to highlight activism and resistance confronting Islamophobia.
The book is published by Manchester University Press on 9th September 2022. For more information see: Manchester University Press
The conversation was hosted by ENORB Director Mark Ereira-Guyer, with the help of ENORB interns Klaudjo Marena, Martina Molinari, and Eleni Palioura
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European Islamophobia Report 2021: the latest findings
September 21, 2022
ENORB hosted a conversation for reflection and connection as part of its programme of interfaith dialogue and continued focus on the rising concerns among faith and civil society organisations about the contemporary development of Islamophobia and resulting anti-Muslim hatred in Europe. We are delighted that co-editors Farid Hafez and Enes Bayraklı, and co-authors Amani Hassani and Anna Ardin joined us to present the latest findings from the European Islamophobia Report, published by the Leopold Weiss Institute.
The Report shows that anti-muslim racism and hatred has worsened across Europe with Islamophobia becoming “part and parcel of the policy-making of European states” and anti-Muslim racism in many countries being “co-opted by far-right politicians and parties to further their political narratives and agendas”.
The conversation was hosted by ENORB Director Mark Ereira-Guyer and facilitated by Sadia Akram, Programme Director of the Forum for Discussion on Israel & Palestine (FODIP) and also a leading consultant at Civil Society Consulting CIC.
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Feminism or Fascism? The crisis of masculinity & democracy
July 7, 2022
At this event, we explored the interrelated ‘crises’ of masculinity and democracy, with leading feminist writers Rafia Zakaria and Laurie Penny, who have both recently published important and critical books associated with this theme.
ENORB Director Mark Ereira-Guyer hosted the event and ENORB Board member Nyanchama and Zlakha Ahmed from APNA HAQ (and ENAR board member) also took part in the conversation.
This webinar was facilitated by ENORB intern Martina Molinari and Rebecca Pauley from Civil Society Consulting CIC – who are both gender specialists by training.
This event inspired our new project “EUROPEAN BOOK CLUB - We Should All Be Feminists” coming up!
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Power of Rationality with Steven Pinker – WORLD HUMANIST DAY
June 21, 2022
We were delighted to meet with Steven Pinker on World Humanist Day. Pinker is an experimental psychologist, and Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He is interested in all aspects of language and mind, and his research particularly focuses on common knowledge, language acquisition, emotion, the moral sense, rationality, and trends in violence.
During the event, we focused on his latest book, Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters. Pinker unravelled the paradox that, while science has made considerable progress, scepticism towards it is still widespread, leading, for example, to the spread of fake news and conspiracy theories.
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SAHARA SISTERHOOD: Improving women's spiritual, mental & physical wellbeing
June 20, 2022
Sahara Sisterhood is a project ran by Navleen Kaur and Rose Codling that has been created to provide a safe and secure space for a way of living life with an embodied experience in modern times. The aim of the session is to empower women, allowing them to rise above the challenges of mental abuse, domestic violence, and trauma in all aspects of life. Sahara Sisterhood aims to strengthen and support the people who choose to embark upon this journey of self-expansion.
ENORB hosted an in-person women only session with Sahara Sisterhood (upwards of three hours in duration) that was designed to strengthen spiritual, mental and physical wellbeing and support women to become ambassadors and catalysts of positive change - tackling discrimination, racism and extremism.
Islamophobia Endemic in Europe
March 15, 2022
This event was the inaugural online dialogue style webinar focused on the contemporary rise of Islamophobia and resulting anti-Muslim hatred in Europe. The webinar was structured in response to the two recent monumental reports on the topic, and hosted on International Day to Combat Islamophobia.
The panel included:
Dr Farid Hafez, founder and co-editor, European Islamophobia Report (2020);
Dr Stephen Jones, the co-author of The Dinner Table Prejudice: Islamophobia in Contemporary Britain (Jan 2022); and
Linda Hyökki, a Finnish/Turkish writer and commentator on Islamophobia and racism, currently completing a Ph.D. on Finnish Muslim converts’ experiences of Islamophobia.
Watch the full recording
European Faith & Belief Communities - Tackling Covid-19 and the Infodemic
February 3, 2022
Communities across Europe have shown remarkable solidarity with others, working with each other across faith and belief boundaries, bringing out the best in faith and belief communities. Their contributions and responses to the pandemic have been truly remarkable.
This collaborative webinar was hosted with ENORB"’s partners to explore and share the many positive contributions that were made during the pandemic.
In the session we examined how best to overcome the associated Covid-19 'infodemic' Europe faces - with misinformation, anti-vax conspiracy theories, 'otherising' and increasing evidence of social polarisation.
Mustafa Field, Director of Faith's Forum for London, shared their their recent work around overcoming vaccine hesitancy. Additionally, Giulia Dessi, project manager at the Media Diversity Institute, presented the findings from the 'Get The Trolls Out!' report 'Antisemitism and anti-vax discourse in Europe'.
