We Are a Muslim, Please

Oct 22, 2024 6:24 PM

Author:Zaiba Malik

For Zaiba Malik, growing up in Bradford in the '70s and '80s certainly has its moments - staying up all night during Ramadan with her father; watching mad Mr Aziz searching for his goat during Eid; dancing along to Top of the Pops (so long as no-one's watching). And, of course, there's her mother - whether she's writing another ingratiating letter to the Queen or repeatedly referring to Tom Jones as 'Thumb Jone'.

But Zaiba's story is also one of anxiety and seemingly irreconcilable opposites. Growing up she is constantly torn between two identities: 'British' and 'Muslim'. Alienated at school and confused at home, the racism she encounters as a child mirrors the horrors she experiences at the hands of Bangladeshi interrogators

as a journalist years later.

We Are A Muslim, Please is a stirring and enchanting memoir. We see, through Zaiba's childhood eyes, the poignancy of growing up in a world whose prejudices, contradictions and ambiguities are at once distressing and utterly captivating.

Reviews

Award-winning journalist Zaiba Malik has made a name for herself with uncompromising investigations of corruption, prejudice and extremism. Her autobiography, We Are A Muslim, Please takes us from her childhood in 1970s Bradford to her experience in a Bangladeshi interrogation chamber. Few people are better placed to explore the issues facing Muslim women in Britain and the softness of the title...belies the hard-hitting nature of Malik's work. The final part of the book, a letter to one of the 7/7 suicide bombers, is particularly heartfelt and thought-provoking.

—— Waterstone’s Books Quarterly

[We Are A Muslim, Please] vividly conveys the secure by stifling atmosphere Malik left behind when she went to college...but it is to thoughtful people like Malik that the future belongs.

—— Joan Smith , Independent

Extraordinary ... spare, uncomplicated, and terribly vivid for it

—— Independent

[A] heart-wrenching memoir ... the setting, beautifully rendered, recalls early DH Lawrence. It is a world of pain and prejudice, evoked in spare, restrained prose that brilliantly illuminates a time, a place and a family struggling valiantly to beat impossible odds. As an emotional experience and a vivid retelling of the author's past, it exerts uncommon power.

—— New York Times

A remarkable memoir ... vivid, compassionaite and notably unsentimental

—— Times Literary Supplement

[An] affecting debut ... the nonagenarian gives voice to a childhood version of himself who witnesses his older sister's love for a Christian boy break down the invisible wall that kept Jewish families from Christians across the street. Yet when major world events touch the poverty-stricken block, the individual coming-of-age is intensified without being trivialized, and the conversational account takes on the heft of a historical novel with stirring success.

—— Publishers Weekly

A fascinating, poignant story ... which leaves one with a sense of hope

—— William Woodruff, author of The Road to Nab End

A superb story ... A delightful, fascinating read which held me spell-bound throughout.

—— Billy Hopkins, author of Our Kid

An enormously intellectually challenging book. A fascinating way of approaching the subject

—— Rabbi Julia Neuberger

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