The gulf between Islam and the West is widening. A faith rich with strong values and traditions, observed by nearly two billion people across the world, is seen by the West as something to be feared rather than understood. Sensational headlines and hard-line policies spark enmity, while ignoring the feelings, narratives and perceptions that preoccupy Muslims today.
Join Ed Husain, author of The House of Islam as he seeks to provide entry to the minds and hearts of Muslims the world over and explain how the West and Islam can co-exist in peace.
Sure to be a fascinating discussion, the Belfast Book Festival is delighted to welcome Ed Husain to Belfast.
Ed Husain is the author of The Islamist, a memoir of his time inside radical Islamism. Having rejected extremism, he now advises governments and political leaders on Islam. He is a senior fellow at Civitas, Institute for the Study of Civil Society in London and a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre in Washington DC. He was a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York for five years and co-founded Quilliam, the world’s first counter-extremism think-tank in Britain. He has written for the New York Times, the Telegraph, the Financial Times and appeared on CNN, BBC, and others.