YouSaid · the spoken record

Sarfraz Manzoor

lines on the record: 47
first: 2021-08-27
most recent: 2021-08-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“This is to do with geography, it's to do with class, it's also to do with government policy over the last 50 years, but it's also remembering that for Muslims as well, because sometimes there is an arrogance that comes to thinking, you know what, the way we do it is the religion. And that's not true either. You know, there are parts of the world where, you know, same-sex relationships are completely normal. There are other parts of the world where women are far more liberated than they are on the streets of some of this hounds in this country. There are so many things which we think of as challenges in this country, which are the product of factors not to do with religion, but religion often gets all the responsibility and all the blame for it.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Culture we're talking about is a very specific culture about a particular group of people who came from a particular place at a particular time. So the danger that too many people make, and I include myself in this, is to assume that the version of British Islam that people like me were raised with is actually Islam. It's a particular flavor based on class and geography and culture. If you come from Turkey, you have a totally different flavor. If you come from Iran, you'll have a totally different flavor. If you're still in Pakistan, you'll have a totally different flavor. But there is this sort of sense somehow that the version we're getting right now is the only version. And this is a challenge not just for the non-Muslim wider population to remember that, look, what's going on right now if you see something bad happen in the news, it's not really Muslim.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, that's one of the conversations I have constantly with myself in the book is how much is this culture, how much is this religion? And what's interesting to me is that it's obviously, you're absolutely right, it is much more culture. But it's also, the other thing I found was that.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it might be possible then to be able to give the assistance somebody needs, give the emotional support they might need, or be able to flag up if there are issues. But so often there is this sort of generational divide where, you know, I kept hearing a lot of these parents, a lot of their fathers aren't around because they're working all hours. They're often in the nighttime economy. They're not necessarily disposed to have heart-to-heart conversations, which then makes these young people more likely to find other people to talk to. So I do think there is a challenge. As I said in the book, I want to try and be clear-eyed and I want to be optimistic, but I also want to be clear-eyed. And I do think that a lack of honest communication between parents and their children is something which is a bit of a challenge in Muslim communities, especially working class communities. And then that does have implications, not just for extremism, but for some of the other issues that I look in in the book as well.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the things that was quite interesting talking to people about this was a phrase that came up quite a lot was the challenges around masculinity and fathers and talking to your children, relationship between parents and children. And I do think that within, often within Muslim families, the idea of having open and honest conversations between parents and their children is harder. And I do think that actually if you had a relationship where you could just tell everything to your parents or it was more open.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think, I mean, I spoke to a woman whose son went off to Syria and he died there. And I said to her, you know, was there anything? And offered they'll say afterwards, well, he did seem to spend a lot of time in with his computer. He was spending a lot of time in the mosque, but we just thought he was exploring his identity. You couldn't necessarily make the leap for one to the other. I mean, I think... I suppose the lesson really is”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Something about a loving father who just went too far, or something like that. With the Muslim, it's often about religion. And I think that the interesting thing for me about when I was doing that chapter was just this sense that, you know, in a way, it's a very, very controversial question to ask. But I asked one of the guys who works with anti-radicalization to say, did he see the people who ended up in, for example, Syria? Did he see them as victims as well? And he said, it's a hard thing to say, but in a way they are because these are people who need we need to sort of work out where the vulnerabilities are to try and get to them before the bad guys do. And you can only do that by working out what are the pressure points, you know, why might they be doing those things and then lure them back? And so I think you can only do that if you sort of disentangle the idea that somehow it's religion only that's compelling them. Often it seems to me that religion is the post sort of is the excuse or the explanation.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, basically, my sense of that is that if somebody off Muslim heritage does anything, the explanation is almost reflexively the fact that they have Muslim heritage and it isn't anything else. And so, you know, it's almost like a joke, isn't it, that Muslims don't seem to have mental illness, for example. It's like nobody ever cites mental illness or nobody ever seems to cite any other factor. So if you're a Muslim and that is part of your identity makeup, when it comes to trying to identify why you committed this crime, the religion is the thing that gets the blame. Whereas I don't think that's so true with any other group. So they'll say, oh, this person, you know, their marriage broke up and they didn't have, they won't having access to their kids and they just lost it in that moment. And the story will be sort of depicted.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that story is only a footnote in the book because I obviously then became obsessed with trying to find this woman. But the guy who ran the tattoo parlor got very nervous about this. And so despite my best efforts, I wasn't able to track her particularly down. But it's a good example of when you see a woman wearing a niqab down the street, you can't necessarily know what they're thinking.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She wanted to have a rose to two. around her anus. I was like, she was driving. I said, we're going to have to stop the car here because this is not a sentence I was expecting. And she said, no, no, it was kind of extraordinary because it turns out that this woman who wearing the carb was actually a swinger. And having a rose to two apparently signals something in that community. And I said, you know, I was told that if you wear a niqab, you're not actually allowed to be in the presence of a man. And the woman said, no, no, it's true. And interestingly, it actually needed two men to do the tattoo.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, this is sort of one of those things where I wanted to kind of, you know, as a journalist, I wanted to tell stories that would surprise you, that would be unusual. And so I was interested in talking to people about the Face Veil and the Burqa. And I was actually talking to a woman about something else who's also in the book. And she said, oh, you know, you should talk to my husband because he deals with a lot of women who wear the burqa and nigab. And I said, oh, is he involved in some sort of Islamic charity or outreach or something? And she said, no, no, no, he runs a tattoo parlour. I was like, what the hell are Muslim women in the Gab's doing in tattoo parlours? He said, oh, she just told me. He said, she told me this extraordinary thing. She said, oh, you know, this woman came into his parlour a couple of weeks ago. Full Nikab, you know, like, and he thought it was like, maybe she got bad directions. And then she came in and she wanted to have...”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Whereas the people who preserve it as the slightly more misogynistic interpretation, they tend to be men who are from a patriarchal society, often from a rural community in the subcontinent. So basically what I'm saying is you can find what you want in the religion depending on what you want to start with. If you have a conclusion that the religion is liberated, there is evidence for that. If you want to believe that the religion fundamentally is misogynist, but you can find evidence for that as well. What I found very interesting was when I talked to lots of Muslim women for the chapter, they almost always said, no, there is no religion that is better for women than Islam. Just look at who the prophets' wives were. They were all entrepreneurs. They mostly did not believe that. They just said, it's the problem is men have interpreted the religion. It's not the religion itself. That's a problem.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As somebody who has a daughter, I can't sort of take a great religion. And then she puts that towards me. What I found interesting talking to scholars and actually seeing it in the real world was it seemed to me that there is an interpretation you can make if you happen to be off that mind anyway, that the religion isn't like that and that actually it's about the interpretation and the fact that on the whole historically it's been men who have interpreted the religion.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interesting thing about that is you could have two very different views about why that is there. There can be one group which says this is because there is systemic racism against Muslims and a Muslim wife or a Muslim woman is just not worth as much as a white woman and that's why there's not coverage. And then there's another school that says no, this is squeamishness about Islam that we're not prepared to call it out for what this is. And the media are so nervous about criticizing it that they won't they won't talk about it at all. And I think the broader question that you're talking about speaks to that, which is I fundamentally do have a problem with the idea that the religion may actually condone a difference of treatment towards men and women. And obviously, as you know.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is an interesting one because I think one of the things that happens with this conversation about Muslims is that there's a Where do you start from can sometimes inform what you think about everything? So if you come from a leftist progressive point of view, for example, you can just sort of refuse to admit that there are any problems at all with the culture slash religion. And if you come from a more conservative point of view, you can sort of just assume it's all about that and the whole religion is irredeemably messed up. And I'll tell you a very good example of this is you probably know the story recently of the woman Sarah Hussein who was burned to death on a street in Berry in July. And in what seems like an honor killing. And it was very interesting about the lack of attention that that story has been given compared to, say, Sarah Everard. Which led to vigils and a national conversation about safety and security and the Duchess of Cambridge made an intervention, et cetera. Whereas Sarah Husain in Berry has received virtually nothing.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Read and I would talk to people in my book and say, you know, we'd move out of our Asian neighborhood because we wanted to sort of get up in the world and we'd go to some very white area. And within six months, we were there were no whites left. Everybody just left. So I suppose the point to your question is, I suppose to fear less and be more hopeful about what new people can bring to a culture and to an economy.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Beyond my pay grade to some extent, but I do think that I think the thing I just said earlier essentially, I think there's a sense of fear people sometimes have about why somebody might want to come to this country and the idea that if they come into this country that they're somehow going to be a drain on resources. And my sense is that if you want to bring people into the country, firstly, you have to try and give them, you should be optimistic about the idea that they can add something to the country rather than necessarily fearing that they're only going to be taking away. That's my first thing. And the second thing is I think that we need to sort of encourage the idea of communal belonging when people do get here. And I think that is something which is a composition for both sides. So, you know, we talk about, we were talking about segregation earlier, and it's so easy to just say, oh, you know, why do these people come? They only want to live among themselves without thinking about all the white people who move as soon as somebody who's not white moves onto their street. You know, the number of times I would.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That he would eventually create a chasm between him and his kids because they would become so immersed in the world of the country that they were being raised that they would forget the past. So I think he did it out of a very rational decision that he felt like it was better for him and his family, but he wasn't absolutely necessarily convinced that they weren't going to have some consequences if he didn't control the access of his children to the outside world.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think what he admired was opportunity. I think he basically just felt that if you think about Ines, the same as the people, how different is it from the people who are trying to leave Afghanistan right now, really? In the end, you don't make those risks. You don't take those journeys. You don't leave everyone you know to go to a place about which you know nothing unless you're desperate or unless you feel that the place you're going to is going to give you opportunities. So I think he saw it as a place of absolutely of opportunity. I think he really liked the sense of order. I think he liked the predictability that if you rang 999 there was a there was half a chance that the police would come. I think he liked order, he liked tradition. He liked all of those things. I think the thing he feared was whether in coming there was going to be a paid.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But the interesting thing about that is there are people. I grew up in the 80s where the idea of I remember watching LA Law and thinking there's absolutely no way there's any point in me being a lawyer unless it was going to be an immigration lawyer trying to get some forced marriage situation sorted or something. The idea of doing something cool would have been impossible. Whereas now a young Muslim or a young Asian kid can grow up and three members of the cabinet are British Asian and one of them's a British Pakistani who's featured in the book. So I do think that the space has increased in the time from my father's generation, which is progress.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But their ideas of what success looks like are still fixed. So my mom is still appalled that I don't wear a suit. If I do go on TV, she only ever looks at the fact that my shoes look tatty or whatever. Because for her, success is about how you dress and how you look as opposed to what you've necessarily achieved in other forms. And the idea that you could be someone who would do those sorts of things and not look smarter is just she just doesn't, she can't fathom it.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he would be reading the Financial Times and he'd be sort of circling stock market shares that had gone up and down as if somehow he was a trader. And one of my clearest memories is that he went to Pakistan in 1986. And before he went, he got business cards printed which said Mohammed Manzor investment consultant because in his mind, that's the sort of world he wanted to be in, you know. And so I think that it was a tragedy for him was that he had those abilities, but the world just saw him as this first generation immigrant. So he would dress in a pinstriped suit and he would look as if he was this person that he aspired to be. But the space and the talent and the space and the opportunities weren't there for him. And what's kind of interesting about that for me is that I then ended up doing some, I moved on a little bit from my parents in some ways.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, the interesting thing about that question is I was thinking about how when it comes to, especially if you're a minority of any form, where you get to in life isn't really only about your abilities, is it? It's not just about. Give you that chance, you know, and it's always a tragedy when someone has abilities and has talents, but the time is not ready for them to give them that space. And, you know, that is not a story that's limited to my father's generation at all. But with my dad, yeah, he was somebody who came over from Britain, took from Pakistan in the early 60s. He worked on a factory in the car factory in Vauxhall in Luton. But the interesting thing was that as a young kid, as an eight-year-old, nine-year-old, I remember my dad would... The Financial Times”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, everything comes with a price. I think that's one of the themes in the book, actually. Everything comes with a price. So there are people in the book who at the age of 17 are given a photograph by their parents, by their dad, to say this woman is coming over from Karachi on a plane next week. Let's all go to Heathrow and meet her and you're going to get married the following week. And those marriages carry on. Most of those people are still married to those people. They've got kids. There's something quite lovely about that. But they've paid a price in some ways. I paid a price as well. You know, yes, I've got things that are some of the things that I wanted when I was growing up, but then you pay a price of not being fully embraced and entrenched in the community that you grew up in. So I kind of feel like it's not where you start out in these journeys, it's where you end up, but also let's not be naive to think that there isn't a price to be paid. And it's just really a matter of for each individual way.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then I was being faced by a very different version of relationships and marriage in my family. And I felt really trapped because I knew which one I wanted. but how to sort of reach that and to sort of swerve away from what seemed inevitable felt very challenging. So yeah, it was a scary time”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, when you're living at home and you know you're in a very kind of it's a controlling family let's just say and you're not in a family where you speak up or speak out against your parents I just thought remember thinking the script that I would like my life to follow is very very different from this and I remember just thinking I mean I remember I said this in the book that I This was round about the time in neighbors people of a certain age will remember that Scott and Charlene were in a relationship Kylie Manogan, Jason Donovan. And for some reason I was really taken by this relationship because it seemed to represent the absolute epitome of what true love could be. And I remember writing in my diary, like, why can't life be just like it is for Scott and Charlene? And so I think that was what it was. Like I was getting fed cultural messages from neighbors and from the music of Lionel Richie and Foreigner, which was about what love should be.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Revealing the chasm that you can have with two people in the same room in the same town, that you just think this sounds absolutely nuts, but you're trying to make me see this as a reasonable thing. They were saying, look, I'm not saying now, of course not. You haven't even got a university yet. I'm talking about after you've graduated. And so it was the fact that he was trying to sound reasonable whilst at the same time sounding completely insane that I remember. And I think the other thing I really remember is powerlessness because.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, basically, it was December 1988. I was 17 and my dad brought me into his room and he said he wanted to have a chat with me. And he just said that there was a girl back in the village or a village somewhere in Pakistan. And she was somebody that they had their eye on as a potential spouse. He sort of made clear that he wasn't thinking that she was going to get married at the age of 11 because we weren't that crazy. But he kind of wanted to sort of register my level of interest so that some years down the line after I'd graduated or whatever, you know, then I could sort of do the right thing and marry this person who I didn't know. What I found, what I remember about it is, I just remember it sort of.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A point of principle to show that actually these things are not the preserve of any one religion and she didn't want to insult the religion by pretending to feel or believe something that she didn't.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, because in the book I meet quite a lot of people whose partners do convert. And the conversion should possibly be put in quotes box because it's sort of done really to placate the Muslim family so that they can sort of basically say, oh, yeah, she's now, well, he has now sort of, you know, he's part of the gang in some ways. Bridget just said, look, I respect religion. I respect the faith. And it's an insult to the faith to say I've converted when I haven't. So that's the first part. And then the second part was that she kind of liked the idea and she was animated by the idea of proving that the positive values that sometimes people who are Muslim seem to attribute only to Muslims, hospitality, tolerance, kindness, etc. That they're not just a preserve of Muslims. And so she said, I want to show that you can be a lovely person and a good person and not convert and demonstrate that. And so for her.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nothing that unusual about it, and there are versions of this sort of story throughout the book, and then other stories which are worse and more positive as well. And part of that is part of the interesting experience of writing it was to try and be able to place what happened to me in a larger context.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It isn't too much to expect that your world and your family will expand, that you will have-in-laws and you will have, and I sort of had to tell her that the chances are... And that's quite a hard thing to take as well. I mean, I should say some of this has improved 11 years on, but no, that was very difficult. And the other thing about this sort of stuff is, you know, it's one of the things in the book is these narratives don't end with a necessarily a happy or a sad ending. They just carry on. So there's progress in some ways and there's lack of progress in others. I've got an older sister, for example, who I literally have, you know, I've spoken to, I think, twice since we got married. And my daughter now is 10. And it's quite bizarre for her to know that there is this auntie with four cousins that she has that she knows nothing about. She sort of refers to her as a mysterious auntie. And the interesting thing about the story I'm just telling you is that there are”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just like are they just being this nice to wind me up to just remind me that you're not getting this welcome when you come to Luton? So I would go to Scotland and they would source halal meat so that they could have, I could eat chicken with them and things like that, which all sounds lovely, but it's actually can actually be quite exhausting when you have someone potential in-laws who are that nice. So that created tensions because then that made me want to I would sometimes sabotage and say not mean things but slightly cutting things because I couldn't handle the level of niceness that they had so those tensions were difficult and and also what was difficult is I think when you start a relationship with someone”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was really hard, and to be honest, it's one of those things where it's very difficult because there was a lack of symmetry because my family were very, very hostile and opposed to Bridget. And, well, not to her personally, but just to the idea of her. And that was difficult because she'd obviously say, I don't understand this because all the parents of my previous boyfriends have loved me. And I was like, well, it's not really your personality that they have a problem with. But what made it particularly difficult is that her parents and are kind of almost comedically too nice. So they grew up in a kind of hippie community in the borders of Scotland. And they didn't do it. They didn't do it by deliberately, but they just are so friendly that that made the fact that my family weren't very pleasant worse, because then that actually created tension between me and Bridget.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The idea about sort of, I mean, one of the things also about when it comes to marriages and relationships was, you know, if you go with, if you end up with someone who is a, if you marry a white woman, the chances are that when things get hard, she'll leave you. So my brother, when I was telling him about the relationship with my now wife, he'd say, look, this sounds great, but what happens when you get ill? She's not going to be around, is she? What happens when you sort of maybe lose your job? She's not going to be around. So he'd always draw up these apocalyptic scenarios, which normally led to me being ill or on the edge of death, where I would then be left alone. And his implication was if you have an arranged marriage, you might not like the person you're with, but at least you'll never leave you.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, the stereotypes that I grew up with, I mean, the terrifying thing is that they're still things that I hear now, not necessarily just from my family, but around. And they're all to do with sort of a sense of a lack of values in some way. So I remember my dad constantly telling me that white people treated their dogs better than they treated their parents. And I have a scene in the book where I visit my dad's grave and the taxi driver's coming back after having picked me up and he says, you know, you see all these white people crying about their parents in the graveyard, but they didn't treat him very well when they were alive. You know, this kind of idea of a lack of respect, which would be manifested in the fact that no Asian would ever consider putting their parents in an old people's home, but white people just chuck them in as soon as they could. You know, that sort of idea.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Still self segregating, it's still self selecting, but certain ideas and certain things that we might want to have around us that constitute our kind of people are perhaps seen as less controversial than other kinds.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wasn't a complete sentence, though, because when I said I was a poster boy, it was slightly self deprecating, and I said I could also be seen as a terrifying warning of integration as well. I think that's absolutely true. And I think that that is one of the things where I sort of say where I live now in its own way is a bubble, is in some ways segregated. The idea of, I think I say something like, you know, now in the world I'm in, the idea of those people would be people who go to McDonald's, you know, or anybody who doesn't sort of fetishize sourdough. So you kind of do grow and find your own tribes and your own communities. And I guess what's interesting is which communities which are segregated we tolerate and think is a good thing and which we don't. So when I'm looking now for where I'm going to live, it isn't a mosque that I'm looking for. It's a second-hand bookshop.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think all of those things lead to that, and I think that means that it becomes harder to do things that are not sort of within the grain of what most people do when you come from that world. And it becomes like, for example, if I was to do the things that I've done while still living in the community I grew up in, there would be a greater price to be paid. So I think there is something to be said for the fact that actually there is a bigger world out there. And if you live in a community that doesn't see that, then you will pay the price of having fewer opportunities as a community of that.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just think it's about, I don't know if it's necessarily even inequality, although I think that's probably part of it. I do think there is a poverty of imagination and a poverty of opportunity that can come from living in a community that's monocultural. And so that can just be specifically about things like where do you get the ideas that challenge what you've been raised by? Where do you get the idea that you can do something different with your life? Where do you get the idea that you can do something which may not be what your parents want? And so there is a sort of implied poverty there because the idea that you might want to do something which isn't just following your parents in manual labor or whatever they're doing maybe not necessarily marrying the person who your parents might want all of those things where there might be a sense of communal pressure when you're in a particular community that if you're not in that community you can take those risks because there's less at stake.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nice things about that, you know. I don't think that one should sort of overly esteem them because there's a price that comes with that as well. But another thing is language. You know, for example, I've got two children who Cannot speak my mother tongue of Urdu, and therefore there can't speak to my mother. Now, if I was living in a much more Asian area, which was in quotes, less integrated, there's a chance that they would meet more people from that world, they might be able to speak it. I think that would be actually a gain. So it's more complicated than just one thing is good and one thing is bad.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“General position that interaction and integration is a good thing, but that in some ways is me being defensive as well, because I grew up in a Muslim community in Luton and now live in a very integrated community, which is another way of saying white community in North London. And so in a way, I'm trying to defend the journey I've made. But I think the interesting thing is there's a price to be paid for everything. That doesn't mean that segregation is great, but there is something to be said for preserving certain values. I don't think necessarily losing everything is a good thing. And so when you go to somewhere like Blackburn or Oldham and you see extended families all kind of living quite close together and you see a sense of community, which is lacking in the specific world in which I'm living in right now. And by community, I don't mean not knowing the neighbors. I mean a sense of community in terms of culturally preserving certain things.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, one of the things that I wanted to try and do when I wrote the book was I didn't want it to be something where I start from a position on page one and then by the time you get to page 448 I've basically just proved how correct I was on page one. I kind of wanted it to be genuinely a journey and I wanted to ask myself some of the hard questions as well rather than just being completely certain of what I know. So you're right. I basically started from a”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and a sense of trying to preserve and protect that. And what's interesting to me is that that isn't just a story from the 1960s. That's true now as well. And I think there are certain aspects of what you might call South Asian or Muslim culture, which they feel are threatened by too much integration and too much interaction. And therefore to stay inside that community means that in some ways you're sort of defending your sense of self, your sense of identity from it being diluted or challenged.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think there is a generational aspect. So the story that I'm trying to tell is historical and linear to some extent. So the first chapter begins with the men, so largely the men who arrive in the early 60s, late 50s from the subcontinent, and why they might want to sort of live among themselves is kind of obvious, because they're in a new country, they want us to be surrounded by some senses of familiarity. What then happens is that when people start congregating, then an infrastructure develops mosques, places that might sell the kind of food that people might want, maybe religious schooling, and then that becomes a magnet for the community because you feel like there is a sense of communal, all the amenities you might need. So there is, I think, a practical basis, but there is also something else, I think, which is a sense of culture, tradition, value.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Believe things which are in contradiction with what we perceive to be Western values or British values, that in some sense they are not quite like us. So I think that was the sort of more broader concern. And then you can sort of drill into that specific ideas, whether it's about what the religion may say about women or extremism, et cetera. But broadly was this idea of otherness. And that's why the book is called they, because there's a sense of mutual otherness going on.”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I try to do when I was thinking about the book was sort of imagine an encounter with someone who is, let's just say skeptical about Muslims and Islam. So if I was to sort of run into someone who was an Islamophobe of some kind, what would they say about the religion or about Muslims? And I basically just did a brainstorm. And it wasn't actually that hard. You just have to go onto Twitter and you can find inspiration for what those things might be. You know, there are specific things and each chapter sort of tackles each specific thing. So for example, they all want to live among themselves. They only want to marry people from their own faith. They have problem with homosexuality. They have a problem with anti-Semitism. But there was a more fundamental worry or concern, which I sort of discerned, which was this sort of sense of otherness, you know, that the idea that Muslims somehow”
2021-08-27 · Intelligence Squared · They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, Sarfraz Manzoor and Ros Urwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source