UK’s first ever Muslim festival to be held to celebrate Islamic literature, ideas and culture

As Islamophobic hate-crime surges across the nation, the UK is to hold the first ever festival, “MFest”. It will be dedicated to celebrating the variety and beauty of Muslim literature, ideas and culture between the 27^th and 29^th of April 2018 at the British Library, London.

MFest is set to bring a range of works from notable Muslim writers, poets and artists from various disciplines including dance, theatre, literature, stand-up comedy and visual arts to an audience of Muslims and non-Muslims.

Notable writers attending include Kamila Shamsi – who has authored critically acclaimed books such as ‘Kartography’ – and Elif Shafak – who authored ‘The Architect’s Apprentice’ which was longlisted for the Walter Scott Historical Novel Price, 2015.

The festival will also aim to hold and encourage challenging discussions on contentious topics including identity, race and global politics.

The festival, sponsored by the Aziz Foundation and DeepMind, will include one event which will host a discussion on the practice of people studying Islam on the internet and how this is shaped by the function of in-built algorithms and the emergence of Artificial Intelligence.

Tufyal Choudhury, Director of MFest, added: “we are delighted to launch a festival of books and ideas that recognises the diversity, differences and dynamics of Muslim cultures and lives”.

Choudhury said that the festival will “challenge a fundamental feature of Islamophobia, which sees Islam and Muslims as a monolithic, static block”.

You can book tickets for the various events here.

The discount code, MFestEB18, will provide a 25% discount to tickets for early buyers until the 9^th of March 2018.