Season 2: Sarfraz Manzoor in Conversation with Will Buckingham

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

In this week’s episode, writer Will Buckingham talks to journalist, screenwriter and broadcaster Sarfraz Manzoor about his latest book, They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other. Join them as they talk about the deep divisions in British culture and the way that stories can connect us and promise a much more hopeful future.

You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org.

For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/

Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest

Credits

Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director)
Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands

TRANSCRIPT

BLF Series 2 - Sarfraz Manzoor

Intro

Welcome to the second series of the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…podcast. We are really excited to be back for a second season and to continue to connect readers and writers in the Midlands, and far beyond.

You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org.

In this week’s episode, writer Will Buckingham talks to journalist, screenwriter and broadcaster Sarfraz Manzoor about his latest book, They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other. Join them as they talk about the deep divisions in British culture, the history of Muslim Britain and stories that promise a much more hopeful future.

Will Buckingham

Hello, and welcome to this Birmingham Lit Fest podcast. I'm Will Buckingham, and I'm your host for today's show. I'm a writer and philosopher originally from the UK. I'm currently an immigrant to Sofia, Bulgaria. And today's guest; I will be talking to Sarfraz Manzoor whose brilliant book They: What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other has just been published. Sarfraz is a journalist, an author, broadcaster and he's written and presented documentaries for BBC Radio and Television and is a regular columnist for The Guardian, the Sunday Times and The Times. His first book, a memoir called Greetings from Bury Park, was published to critical acclaim in 2007. And it was adapted for the big screen in 2019 and released as Blinded by the Light which I've just added to my to watch list. Sarfraz lives in London, he's married with two children and a cat called Socks - I'm hoping that Socks will also call by to have their say in this podcast at some stage. Sarfraz’s book They is an insightful journey across and between cultures, an attempt to cut through what sometimes seems like the clamour of mutual misunderstanding and to take a long and intensely personal view into relationships between Muslims and Non-Muslims in today's Britain. So welcome on board Sarfraz.

Sarfraz Manzoor

Hi Will, good to talk to you.

Will Buckingham

Very nice to chat to you. I thought a good place to start talking about your book was about your own experience as somebody who is a living example of the complexity of identity and belonging that you explore in the book. So, the title of your book might suggest to readers that Muslims and Non-Muslims are kind of distinct blocks of people. But in reality, things are much fuzzier, more interesting and more tangled. So, I'd love you to start by telling us a little bit about yourself and how, throughout your life, you've navigated these complexities.

Sarfraz Manzoor

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, because I always think with identity, there are two sides to it. One is how you identify yourself. But there's also how others identify you, you know, and so it's interesting. So, the book title is They: what Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other, but growing up, the Muslim part wasn't really a big part of my identity. So, I grew up in working class Luton, in the 70s, in the 80s. My dad worked at the Vauxhall car factory; I went to a bog-standard comp. And if you would ask me at that point, what my identity was, it would have been Pakistani, really. It was much more about that, my dad never really talked about religion, but he talked about Pakistan, he talked about it in opposition to England, even though we happened to live in England. So, my identity was Pakistani, and then I guess it was also working class, you know, I wouldn't have used those words necessarily, because that was all I knew. But, certainly, when I went to university, I was really aware about, you know, the things that weren't available to me, the social networks that weren't available, that was all about class. So, I think class, and nationality were my identities. And I really, to be honest, didn't think about the religion stuff until other people started thinking about it for me. You know, with the Rushdie affair in the late 80s, that obviously was a big moment. And then obviously, since 9/11, as well. And that's when those identities start becoming more prevalent, and so, then you get into different sorts of lives. And so now, I would say, frankly, my identity is more husband, father, you know, middle aged man, all those kinds of things. But this is the part that I was interested in, when I walk down the street, most people still don't see those things, they still see skin colour, they still see ethnicity, they still think maybe religion. And so that's the thing is what I'm fascinated by: whatever narrative we have of ourselves compared to what others have. So, for example, you're in Bulgaria right now. Now, because of the fact that you are white skinned, if you were walking down the street in Sofia, nobody would know that you were British, would they? And so, the identity that you have of yourself, versus what anybody will see of you will be totally different. And it's only when you open your mouth that might get revealed. Whereas if you come from a background like mine, people are always projecting their ideas of what they think you are. And so that's part of the story in the book as well.

Will Buckingham

Which is, I suppose, in a way why the book is called They, because it's about that ascribing identity to other people.

Sarfraz Manzoor

Exactly. And it's also this idea about otherness that we talk about, you know, otherness is quite a fashionable word. But I'm always fascinated by what is it that allegedly binds us and doesn't, you know, and so, we can talk about the structure, but what I try and do in my book is sort of imagine I was sitting opposite an Islamophobe. And I was asking them, so what do you think Muslims are like, and I imagined that they would have a list of all these kinds of things. That they only live amongst themselves, they only want to marry other Muslims, they hate Jews, they hate gay people, their religion is extreme. And I just thought I'd go through each one of those, and...