Our guest blog writer is author, playwright and public educator Suhaiymah Manzoor Khan. Her work disrupts assumptions about history, race, violence, and knowledge
Foreword by Hafsah Aneela Bashir; Community Producer: Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Education Trust
Last year we explored Islamophobia Awareness Month more broadly rather than focussing on this topic just in November. We were delighted to welcome Suhaiymah back to deliver some creative writing workshops that were part of a series we planned in partnership with Muslim Northern Women. We explored archive material from special collections at the John Rylands Research Institute as well as items from our more contemporary collections held at the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race & Education Trust. Suhaiymah shares her thoughts and reflections on encountering historical mushafs (copies of the Quran) and raises some questions around how faith contests the world view.
Guest Blog by Suhaiymah Manzoor Khan; writer, poet, playwright and public educator
Over the past year, I have had the privilege of facilitating workshops for the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Centre (AIU) with Muslim Women Writers North, following a poetry commission for the John Rylands Library. The commission was a response to The Rylands’ vast archive, reflecting on whether and how I might see myself within it. It was a solitary endeavour, and as I explored the archive, my mind filled with thoughts that I couldn’t fully express in the poem I wrote. I wrote about the slave trade that Rylands’ wealth was built on, the Othering experience of reading archived literature about you but not by you, and the strange loneliness of encountering items that I shared an epistemological worldview with, but no people who did. The commission came at a time when my book Seeing for Ourselves – and Even Stranger Possibilities had just been published, making the question of seeing—or not seeing—myself/ourselves in the archive especially fascinating.
The collaboration with AIU and Muslim Women Writers North became a welcomed opportunity to share my thoughts with others who shared a similar perspective. Even the simple act of gathering in the Rylands as a group of Muslim women felt like an act of subversion in a space that Enriqueta Rylands likely never imagined people like us would occupy when she built her “Cathedral for books.”
Like myself, the women I met with had already visited the Rylands prior to our workshop and shared an uneasiness about the space. Despite its blatant beauty many felt a nervousness around crossing the threshold and being welcomed inside. But, as one woman put it, there was a “safety in numbers” which enabled us to feel a sense of belonging in the space during our time together – perhaps not a belonging to the space but to one another within it. And in the commission poem being a centrepiece of the exhibition, there was a sense that perhaps the archive could see us rather than estrange us.
And it was this theme which I wanted to explore specifically in our workshops. Many of the participants had relayed to me their experience of being shown the mushafs (copies of the Quran) held in the Rylands. They expressed a strong discomfort with the mushaf being handled by a curator who, while an expert in the preservation of old paper, languages and ink, lacked expertise in the epistemological and spiritual significance of the mushaf itself. Their concern was that they, people much better placed to understand the sacred nature of the mushaf and the requirement to be in a state of ablution when touching it—were not allowed to touch it. Meanwhile, the curator, who was not in that state, was permitted to handle the manuscript. This disparity felt deeply troubling to them.
This prompted the way I framed our first workshop, which reflected my own mindset at the time. I began the workshop in the same way Muslims are taught to begin all acts—with the baslama and hamd: Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim (In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful), Alhamdulilahi rabb al-alameen (All praise is due to Allah, Lord of all worlds). I followed this by asking God to send salutations upon the final Messenger, Muhammad ﷺ, and his family and companions. In an Islamic epistemology—an approach to understanding knowledge and truth—beginning in this way invokes barakah (blessing) into whatever follows.
In the particular space of the Rylands, invoking barakah felt essential. The Rylands, a space that othered us as racialised people, also held materials aligned with our worldview. I wanted to utter words that felt subversive to us as occupiers of the room, but that could perhaps resonate with the material objects around us, or even the very bricks and wood, which in an Islamic worldview, are creations that make tasbeeh to Allah (glorify God) just as we do.
I shared with the workshop participants my experience of writing the poem for the Rylands. I told them about my first impressions—the Rylands must have been built on slave money, yet there was no reference to this in the library. I spoke about the building itself, with its stained-glass windows depicting white male “thinkers.” There was an almost-deification of Western philosophers like Kant, whose work contributed to theorising racial hierarchy. I told them how strange it felt to pray on the upper floor of the library, knowing that these men were being revered on the window behind me, while I turned away from that Western secular epistemology of “I think, therefore I am,” and instead faced the God who simply says “kun” (be) and it is.
Sharing this with the Muslim Women Writers North was affirming. I could see them recognise what I was speaking about. The money that built the library came from cotton picked by enslaved people—many of whom were likely Muslims from West Africa. These were people who worshiped the same God, prayed the same prayers, read the same Quran, and held the same worldview as us. In that sense, a kinship was made visible between us, today, and those distant souls whose faces and names were erased in a building that owes its existence to them. The mushafs and other Islamic literature held in the Rylands seemed to embody the commonality we shared in our Otherness as our presence in the Rylands. We weren’t a part of it, but we were. Our worldview wasn’t prized, but it was preserved in the belly of the archive itself.
Given this, we discussed where “we” were in the archive. We went further, querying the assumption behind the first question—did we even need to be archived? In the Quran, Allah says, “He sends down rain from the sky, causing the valleys to flow, each according to its capacity. The currents then carry along rising foam, similar to the slag produced from metal that people melt in the fire for ornaments or tools. This is how Allah compares truth to falsehood. The ˹worthless˺ scum is then cast away, but what benefits people remains on the earth. This is how Allah sets forth parables.” (13:17) If God states that what benefits humanity will remain on the earth, then are our attempts to archive and preserve truly necessary? What is the ultimate goal of archiving?
I asked this as someone prone to hoarding and archiving everything related to my loved ones or myself. Likewise, the participants wrestled with these contradictions. But we agreed that there was a freedom that came with trusting in Allah. In not needing to place our trust in archives for our reality to be “real” or known. Having Allah as the ultimate witness, and the Preserved Tablet in which everything is written as our record, meant we didn’t have to place so much attachment to material objects. When it came to the Qurans, our conversation often reminded us that the Quran, in Islam, is a recital memorised and held in hearts, passed down through chains of oral transmission. So, the preservation of the written text is just one part of its preservation. In reality, living, breathing human beings are also archives, and our preservation of lives—especially in a time of genocide—should be a higher priority than preserving objects.
Yet, as we sat in the Rylands, in a time when the cultural and historical institutions of Palestine are being bombed and destroyed (an Epistemicide), our questions felt even more urgent. What would we do without places like the Rylands? Could we do without them? What should become of them?
These questions led to some of the most thought-provoking workshops I’ve had the privilege of facilitating. It felt like we engaged with questions we rarely get to ask. And the writing that came out of them was more imaginative than I could have hoped for.
The experience left me energized and eager to bring Islam’s epistemology to the forefront of my questions. When we celebrate decoloniality but still cling to secular ways of knowing or deeming knowledge valuable, we aren’t truly “decolonising” our assumptions. Even though our workshops often felt subversive in centring Islam—and this blog post may feel unusual in my candid sharing of my worldview—this is exactly what is needed. We must ask deeper questions, not just of archives, but of the knowledge we hold in our heads, homes, hearts, and on our tongues. Why should “I” or “we” only be concerned with being “seen” on a physical, racial level? What about being seen on a deeper, human, and spiritual level? What critiques can we raise from this vantage point?
For me, it was this perspective that allowed me to engage with the Rylands in a meaningful way and to feel connected to the enslaved people upon whom its existence rests. It was also how I navigated the fact that the mushafs were held there. This was proof that the archive wasn’t inherently good or necessary—some things should be allowed to expire and crumble under the loving hands of those who hold them not just physically, but in their hearts.
And if closeness to God is achieved through holding the Dunya (worldly realm) neither in the hand nor the heart, then perhaps some ambivalence towards archives gives us a way out of worrying about preservation so deeply. After all, in Islam, when we pass on, it won’t be what we leave behind that benefits us, but what we send ahead. This belief is crucial to reckon with. If we want to counter Islamophobia, we must also contend with how secularism emerged from a colonial capitalist moment in history. It is neither ahistorical nor universal. So, when we seek to counter Islamophobia, we can’t just focus on countering racialisation, we must go further. Let us examine the very worldviews that underpin our assumptions. Do they depend on the subjugation and devaluation of Others? If so, where is this evident in our processes –archival or otherwise-? And how can we work to trouble, disrupt and divest from this imbalance?
Suhaiymah Manzoor Khan; writer, poet, playwright and public educator
