In memoir, vignettes, poetry and essays, Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan records her observations from the stands at the dizzying circus of being seen and unseen. She surveys the criminalising stadium of civic life, the open-air arenas of family, friendship and grief, the performative pageantry of the public eye and the unclad secrets of the self in solitude, paying attention to what’s on show and what goes undetected. Perhaps the strangest, most exciting possibilities are opened when we surrender to another kind of sight. Submitting to the gaze of the Unseen and the All-Seeing, Manzoor-Khan invites us to close our eyes and discover what it would mean to look with our souls instead.
Islamophobia is everywhere. It is a narrative and history woven so deeply into our everyday lives that we don't even notice it – in our education, how we travel, our healthcare, legal system and at work. Behind the scenes it affects the most vulnerable, at the border and in prisons. Despite this, the conversation about Islamophobia is relegated to microaggressions and slurs. Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan reveals how Islamophobia not only lives under the skin of those who it marks, but is an international political project designed to divide people in the name of security, in order to materially benefit global stakeholders. It can only be truly uprooted when we focus not on what it is but what it does. Tangled in Terror shows that until the most marginalised Muslims are safe, nobody is safe.