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Is there a problem with Muslim public intellectuals and scholars that engage with the political right? My guest this week, Yayha Birt, believes that white convert scholars that interact with the likes of Jordan Peterson should evaluate whether they risk confirming their anti-Islam prejudices and a distasteful pro-white ideology that today undergirds the populist white nativist backlash. In a recent piece he penned, Birt, a Muslim convert, is critical of those that belong to the neo-traditionalist school, an Islamic persuasion he shares, who need to ask more profound questions about their outreach activities with the right-wing and whether by doing so they undermine second and third generation Muslims who face racial and religious hatred in the mainstream. Yahya believes that although one needs to show due respect to scholars this does not mean we must show them deference when they show political naivety or confirm problematic political causes.

Yahya Birt is a research director at the Ayaan Institute in London and is a community historian who has taught at the University of Leeds. He has published over a dozen peer-reviewed articles on Islam in Britain and co-edited British Secularism and Religion (2016), Islam in Victorian Liverpool (2021) and The Collected Poems of Abdullah Quilliam (2021). 

His most recent book on Abdullah Quilliam can be found here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Islam-Victorian-Liverpool-Britains-Community/dp/1800119828/ 

More about Yahya Birt here https://ayaaninstitute.com/yahya-birt/ 

Thanks to the team: Riaz Hasan, Musab Muhammad, Reem Walid, Adeel Alam, Ahaz Atif and Umar Abdul Salam.

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