The symposium’s central concern was the pressure on Muslim artists to show themselves and each other in ways that reassure rather than unsettle majority audiences: recognisably different, yet sufficiently assimilated; culturally distinctive, yet politically unthreatening. Our themed panel discussions, individual presentations and public Q&A, carefully designed by Somji, asked how photography might resist these restrictive conventions, opening space for more complex experiences, conflicting identities and alternative ways of showing and seeing.

Rather than advocating for an ever more diverse corpus of Muslim images, the symposium asked instead who determined the terms of visibility, which narratives were rewarded, and asked what artists might feel compelled to conceal. In fact, these tensions had a long-standing history. Farah-Silvana Kanaan’s advance feature for '1854 Photography', situated the discussion within longer histories of Orientalism, surveillance, and the commodification of Muslim identity. My own opening presentation on the day drew from my existing research, emphasising how late C19th and early C20th century photography, particularly the photography of colonial period, had already shown two problematic tendencies that survive to this day: firstly, that Empire had produced a limited, propogandist visual language for Muslims, and, secondly, that Muslim artists had over history ended up internalising and, wittingly or unwittingly, reproducing some of these tropes, handed down to them by colonial masters.

The programme combined this kind of critical reflection with artistic practice. Photographer and writer Asim Rafiqui’s opening presentation, 'Finding the Good Muslim', interrogated the construction of the supposedly integrated, apolitical Muslim in Western photojournalism, problematising the idea of authentic representations of a 'good' Muslim per se. Marwan Bassiouni’s 'New Western Views', photographing landscapes through mosque windows, offered a quieter challenge to assumptions about Muslim belonging. And in 'Thread and Trace', Miriam Ali and Nilupa Yasmin explored inherited textiles, prayer rugs, family memory, and faith.

Shaista Chishty’s 'The Case for Opacity' was central to the symposium’s challenge to conventional ideas of representation. Rather than assuming that visibility is always liberating, Chishty asked what it might mean to withhold, refuse or remain partially unreadable. Her contribution highlighted the risks involved when Muslim lives are made visible only through frameworks that demand explanation, accessibility or political usefulness. Opacity emerged not as an absence of communication, but as a form of agency: a way of resisting the expectation that artists and communities must make themselves fully available to public scrutiny.

A conversation between Mahtab Hussain and Mohamed Somji examined the relationship between photographic representation, surveillance and British Muslim experience. Hussain’s practice, attentive to portraiture, masculinity, class and belonging, brought the lived consequences of representation into focus. The discussion considered how images can challenge stereotypes while also becoming entangled in the systems that produce them. It asked whether portraiture could offer recognition without reducing its subjects to symbols of community, faith or difference, and how artists might negotiate the expectations placed upon them by institutions and audiences.

Rehan Jamil’s contribution extended these questions by drawing attention to the importance of voice, participation, and the conditions under which Muslim stories are produced in the visual realm. Rather than treating representation as something delivered to communities by photographers or cultural institutions, Jamil emphasised the need to consider who is involved in shaping an image, whose interpretation is trusted, and who retains control over its circulation. This perspective reinforced the symposium’s broader argument that representation is not only about what appears in a photograph, but also about the relationships, permissions, and power structures behind it.

A panel on commissioning and curating then addressed the institutional decisions shaping which images which reach audiences—and, of course, whose work is shown and on which platforms. Enriched by the critical discussions outlined above, which probed questions of the ‘what’, ‘how’, and also the ‘by whom’ of Muslim photography, this critical discussion was especially impactful. It was rewarding to see in attendance colleagues from Arts Council England, whose work is hugely concerned with diversity and inclusion, and to hear from them that the day had given even them “food for thought” Soul City Arts had been able to curate an event that would ripple back across arts the sector.

The programme concluded with a closed-door listening circle, 'What We Don’t Say', in which artists especially were encouraged to vent feelings, with no holes barred, about their experiences as Muslim photographers. The session was not recorded and will not be cited here to keep the promises we made to our contributors. It is perhaps telling, though, that such sessions are still necessary, with the fear of falling outside the framing of the acceptable or ‘good Muslim’ still serving to delimit what some practitioners feel they can and cannot say in public. Appropriately enough we closed with Professor Mahmood Mamdani author of the iconic study 'Good Muslim, Bad Muslim',which had first diagnosed the problematic binary of acceptability and unacceptability, and given leant its name to our symposium. It was a rare treat and a coup in itself to have him speak.

Reflecting back on the day, the symposium’s significance lay for me not in the proposition of a single alternative image of Muslim life and culture, but in challenging the demand for such a thing. By bringing creative practice into sustained dialogue with academic criticism, 'Good Muslim, Bad Muslim' offered a valuable model for artistic engagement: one that foregrounded complexity, encouraged disagreement and made room for voices that conventional frameworks of representation often exclude—all whilst opening out the possibility for making real change in the position of Muslims across the arts sector.

In fact, the project ties in with a whole string of recent work by Ali and the company he founded, Soul City Arts, which criss-crosses various formats, media, venues and audiences. The Wembley painting follows hot on the heels of ‘Ramadan Streets’, which was a completely different affair and on a completely different scale. Held over ten nights during the holy month, Ali and collaborators worked to curate a night market involving food, crafts, and entertainment for Birmingham’s public.

In recent years, Ramadan has become an increasingly public festival in the West. Impromptu street markets now fill our city streets, bringing fun, colour and a certain measure of chaos to our communities. Ali’s job, part commission, part self-appointed task, was to deliver a safe, organised, and focussed version of one such market, to make the experience manageable, sustainable, but also to keep it real, authentic, and not to suck the soul out of a flowering of urban Muslim culture. In the event, people came and loved what they saw. In fact, there were around 30,000 of them.

Both these recent SCA projects, painting and night market, reflect a common, core endeavour – to place Islamic values and traditions on show within the public gaze and to represent Muslims living their faith in a positive, but also unapologetic way. And it’s this open, yet unapologetic stance that marks out how faith informs SCA’s work. They will assure you that their art isn’t threateningly Islamic. They don’t want to preach, to convert, to take over, to force values and beliefs down the throats of others, or even to be militant and aggressive. They don’t want to do any of the things the reactionary politicians, jingoists, and the right-wing media would have you believe. Yet neither will they hide away their faces, nor dilute nor compromise on their values and traditions. In fact, they want to show you that it is precisely those Islamic traditions which compel them to show kindness, charity, and hospitality, and also to stand for social and political justice. And people need not be afraid of what they stand for: many non-Muslims work regularly with SCA, finding common cause.

My own connection to SCA, which now stretches back now over years, pivots around this set of values. As a cultural historian and literary scholar, I have been studying the way in which Western culture and society have all too often sought to air-brush Islam, to sanitise and normalise Islam, to domesticate it and make it palatable precisely in the moment it seeks to connect with, embrace and include it: in other words, Muslims belong, as long as they are the right kind of Muslims. Yet, who gets to decide who that is and what that means? Studying this history reminds us to pose precisely that question, to ask what real diversity is, whom the tick-box ‘inclusivity’ agendas of today are seeking to include – and at what ‘cost’ and with what ‘losses’ so-called inclusivity policies operate.

Currently writing from my base in Naarm/ Melbourne, it’s great to know that Ali and SCA will be returning to Australia later in July 2025 with their ‘Fear of Faith’ project. It’s not the first time he has been here, having worked in the past with a range of local artists, arts organisations, and communities. But this visit marks the beginning of a new phase in SCA’s Australian legacy. We’ll be able to reveal more about the programme soon. One thing remains sure, though: as they invite audiences in, asking them to engage and collaborate, they will also ask them to let go of any lingering fear they might have. To overcome the fear of faith which so many of us, if we are honest, still carry with us.

The result was our Magic Table. Re-purposing a recording studio in Chicago and Soul City Arts’ Port Hope warehouse in the UK, we dusted off the live streaming technology we thought we had left behind with the COVID pandemic and took it to new levels. This was no functional live link-up between sterile corporate meeting spaces or university seminar rooms – and neither was it an awkward Zoom call. The ambience created and the choice of the powerfully connective topic of food – and this is my conviction – went a long way to making a qualitative shift the in the kind of conversations we had.

In the two beautifully lit spaces, immersed in ambient sound, screens and projections were used to create the captivating illusion of one long, single dining table spanning an ocean, where diners in both locations could share food and conversation as if seated together. In this virtually unified setting, two guest chefs, Munayam and Maryam Khan (no relation) recreated each other’s dishes and offered live cooking demonstrations from the end of the table. We then ate together, exchanged thoughts, feelings and stories awoken by the memories of food and cooking. Each sharing, each story told unlocked the next and paved the way to a growing intimacy, which came about despite the distance. Diners were able to show vulnerability, sharing memories of family, love, loss, and bereavement across two continents. The experience testified to the affective power of art to forge bonds and encourage sharing at the deepest level. Wherever in the world we might be.

The event’s original title, ‘Diasporic Dialogue: A Global Dining Experience’, was overwritten by the new experience we created – now the magic table was at the centre of the concept and is in the title of the short film chronicling the event.

It marks the first chapter in a sequence of events I am helping Soul City Arts to run, funded by Warwick University’s Place Based Research Fund, and designed to find innovative new ways of using their creative space to engage new audiences and do so in new ways. Further chapters will follow. I will document them here and, eventually, a longer film and a journal article will follow as we reflect critically on our work. For now, though, watch our film and join us at the magic table.