by Latifa Akay
Maslaha's Raheel wrote about the importance of the arts for Muslim communities for the Centre For London's 'London Essay' series. Read the full piece here.
"Simple fictions create pat narratives that pit ‘us’ against ‘them’. They exclude people: those who don’t control the narratives are absent. As in paintings that celebrated Britain’s colonial past, the ‘others’ are just out of frame. Their stories become trite and one-dimensional. While these fictions may be at ease with exploring an aspect of another person’s identity, the whole is too much trouble to understand."