Community care, not control
Community care, not control is a series of interviews showing the shared experiences of women and girls who are Muslim, Black, brown and queer. These conversations navigate the impact of having our thoughts and bodies constantly controlled and policed, whether it's in education, border control, housing or prisons. Our multiple identities are often forgotten or not understood by policy makers, which leads to more harm from systems that are meant to provide care.
About this project
We know from our work that Muslim women and girls face specific and complex barriers that contribute to their experience of Islamophobia and sexism. This happens in the context of Muslims being more likely than the general population to be exposed to a range of social and economic risk factors and determinants for poor mental health, including poverty, financial precarity and inadequate housing. Muslim communities are also more likely to be punished and criminalised through counter-terrorism policies like Prevent and the prison system.
These forms of oppression aren’t isolated, they’re part of a wider system that also harms other marginalised communities.
The government’s response “to show care” is to invest in different forms of punishment by expanding what is a hate crime or embedding more police in our communities. But as Sarah Lamble explains: “hate crime laws are primarily about imposing more severe punishments; they don’t actually prevent violence and harm.”
We’ll hear from community members and organisers on how to resist state control and create new paths to liberation through solidarity.
Illustrations by Roxanne @roxanne_jingco | www.iamroxanne.co.uk