The publisher asked me to offer further details about my upcoming book, which will be released later in 2022. The book’s overview is as follows, but I will also use this chance to share my answers to the author’s marketing in order to highlight a little more about what the book is about;
Ruminations comprises social critique, political analysis, and a biographical description of Tahir Abbas, a social scientist working on issues of ethnicity, social conflict, and politics. Abbas was born in Birmingham, UK, and has lived and worked in London, Istanbul, and The Hague, Netherlands. In this autoethnographic account, he examines the intersections of race, class, ethnicity, and Islam in the context of the British Muslim landscape through his subjective experiences: growing up in Birmingham; navigating the precariousness of the education system; working in central government during the 9/11 attacks; and eventually becoming a leading expert in the field.
What influenced you to write this book?
During the lockdown, I had plenty of time to ponder my life and consider what a fatal epidemic would do to humanity. I began writing my early memoirs in the late 2000s simply to ensure that I recalled essential memories and experiences that I would one day sew together, and the lockdown time provided the impetus I needed to finish it. I had read many memoirs about key British Muslim figures many years ago and was curious about how the narrative within them was constructed, and I wanted to provide something myself, but while it would be a story that many would be familiar with, the additional value that I could add as an academic working on these issues myself is that I could provide a level of reflexivity and objectivity that may not be found elsewhere. So, having had the opportunity to understand and reflect on these issues over the years, I was motivated to try and tell a story about the life experiences of British Muslims and British Azad Kashmiris, reflecting not only on actual lived realities but also on what they mean in terms of the implications they raise, particularly from the period of the late 1970s to the ends of the 1980s, when Britain faced unprecended economic, social, and cultural changes.
Why did you choose to write this book? Is there an underlying message behind it?
There are times when we, as human beings, have the agency to make the impact that we desire. But this agency must be developed, primed, and focused on breaking down the barriers that strive to hinder regular people from attaining their goals. What is clear from my analysis of UK society, economy, and politics over the last forty years is how this is almost rigged to prevent ordinary people from getting the same opportunities that those with existing privileges can mobilise with aplomb, but also prevent them from being accessible to others, making it impossible for the many to get ahead at the expense of the few who continue to do so. And I wanted to write this book to explain not only the horrors and complexities of racism and racialisation, but also that while there are many unpleasant events in British life that many people must endure, it is possible to overcome them while retaining one’s basic identity and sense of self.
What do you think readers will learn or take away from this book?
I did not want my book to be seen as some vanity exercise in which I showcase who I am and how, through some innate brilliance, I have transcended all of my obstacles. This is, of course, complete nonsense, and it is the last thing I want people to remember because one of the most crucial lessons I have learned in my life is the importance of mastering one’s ego, and most people fail to do so, which leads to deep psychological and emotional problems as well as material conflict with others. I want readers to have the notion that this book depicts the life narrative of a minority who internalised and then intellectually externalised his life reality to act as a series of lessons. I also believe that people should take away the fact that there are up to three-quarters of a million Azad Kashmiris in the UK context, as well as the exposure that this group of people deserves in an academic policy or community-oriented setting where there is too often an emphasis on national categories such as Pakistani, which mask many ethnic, linguistic, and even religious differences that are of interest and note for researchers, policy-makers, and ordinary members of society.
Tell us about the writing process behind this book. Was there a routine for when you wrote?
I began writing this book in the late 2000s after spending a significant amount of time reading all of the pertinent biographies that were available at the time. These focused on coming of age as British Muslims and how tough it was for them to navigate it all. But, of course, many of those works were written to reflect a specific kind of narrative at the time. I wanted to challenge these popular narratives since they were rather curated and ended up misinforming audiences rather than enlightening them honestly. As the pandemic took its toll and I ran out of energy to focus on solely academic writing, producing this book was a breeze since I could take my time and space to build on concepts without having to reduce all of my writing into complex and abstract technical nouns. Once I get into a writing zone, I write in bursts, and sometimes during these moments, I can churn out 2 to 3,000 words at a time. My aim is always to get a first draft written quickly and work on it until I feel it is ready.
The book is organised into two parts, the first of which tells my tale and the second of which is a collection of observations. In more recent times, the Brexit and Trump regimes, for example, have raised urgent questions about nationalism, authoritarianism, and populism. I also expand on my findings from extended trips to Jakarta, Islamabad, Jerusalem, and New York City. I enjoy penetrating the underbelly of a particular city to discover what lies beneath all that external presentation. Every society has a dark side, and my observations invariably allow me to comment on these societies to discover some of the interrelationships between these common experiences. There is an inherent streak concerning globalisation, neoliberal economics, identity politics, and the idea that there are races or cultures that are somehow superior to others, which ends up normalising neoliberal economic paradigms, such that racial capitalism remains the dominant motif in contemporary global society.
Tell us a bit about yourself.
Since 1996, I have been an academic, living, working, and teaching in Birmingham, Istanbul, and currently in The Hague. I have lived in and travelled to several countries for study objectives. For example, Indonesia, Pakistan, Israel, and the United States of America. I currently live and teach in the Netherlands as a professor, and my research focuses on polarisation, radicalisation, social conflict, and attempting to understand minority experiences to discover connections and shared themes. My entire life has been devoted to academia. That is all I have. I like to think of myself as a person of paradoxes because I enjoy discussing society and politics, yet I am not a particularly social person. I dislike routines, but without some structure in my day, things go out of hand. I am happiest when I am completely immersed in a subject and then create something from it. For me, the creative process also includes writing and presenting, whether for the development of those ideas or to move them into new spaces. I also require goals and deadlines to complete tasks. Otherwise, I postpone not because I am lazy but because my brain needs to be concentrated on one task at a time for me to be productive. I have lately picked up my paintbrushes again since I moved into a new flat with nothing on the walls, and I believe it is both cheaper and more enjoyable to paint and sketch works to hang up on them.
Do you have any plans for other books?
Ruminations is my fifth sole-authored book. I am also working on two more co-edited book projects, one about Muslims in education in the United Kingdom and the other about counter-terrorism in the Global North and Global South. My next monograph will present a broad theory of radicalisation. That will take some time because it must be a lengthy and instructive piece of writing that serves to influence the field’s direction. I would not have finished Ruminations and submitted it unless I believed it could benefit others, allowing people to laugh and cry but also to share the energy that is the human spirit, which everyone should recognise.
Any final thoughts or messages?
I hope the book has the desired impact, that people read it with interest, and that it inspires other writers and thinkers to tell their tales about being and becoming, with all their implications for problems of identity, status, belonging, and so on.