23/05/2026
Join us for an evening of readings from contributors to CM Issue 57: Fire. This Thursday 28th May.
We are delighted to welcome the editor and contributors to the Critical Muslim journal to Blackwell's in partnership with Vellum Press, a local, Manchester-based publishing house working on Academic projects, to celebrate the publication of Issue 57: Fire. The authors will read from and discuss their work. The event will be chaired by CM editor Dr Shamim Miah.
Thursday 28th May. Doors: 6.30pm, Start: 6.45pm
Tickets are £4 or admission is free when purchasing a Magazine & Ticket option.
About Critical Muslim:
A quarterly publication of ideas and issues showcasing groundbreaking thinking on Islam and what it means to be a Muslim in a rapidly changing, interconnected world. Each edition centers on a discrete theme, and contributions include reportage, academic analysis, cultural commentary, photography, poetry, and book reviews.
About the issue:
Humanity shares an intimate history with fire. It appears in arts and language predating civilisation, often seen as its origin point. From Prometheus's theft and Hawaii's volcano goddess Pele to the smokeless flames that created djinns in pre-Islamic tales, where we see humanity, we see fire. It can be a source of creation and a source of destruction. Necessary, but uncontained-troublesome indeed. Revealer, for better or worse. Fire features in a variety of religious practices, often as a metaphor for divine intervention, especially in the Abrahamic religions. Today, however, fire seems to be the element of the age-from the scorching words and red-hot extreme opinions of our public debates, to the climate change-fuelled flames that now regularly engulf entire continents. We seem upon the precipice of ultimate irony: born by flame, to perish by flame. But must the tale of humanity and fire end in a terminal ash heap? This issue of Critical Muslim investigates.
About the speakers:
Dr Shamim Miah is the author of four books in which he conceptualises, theorises and explicates experiences within Muslim communities. His recent book is titled, Ibn Khaldun: History, Education and Society (2023), includes a forward by Dr Anwar Ibrahim, the current Prime Minister of Malaysia. His other books are Race, Space and Multiculturalism in Northern England (co-author-2020); Muslims and the Question of Security: Trojan Horse, Prevent and Racial Politics (2017) and Muslims Schooling and the Question of Self-Segregation which received the ‘highly commended’ book award by the Society for Educational Studies’ (2016). Shamim is the co-editor for Muslim's in Britain series (Oxford University Press). He is also a senior fellow at the Centre for Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies, co-editing the Postnormal Times Reader, Volume 2 (2024), and an author and reviews editor for the journal Critical Muslim.
Robin Yassin-Kassab is a noted British Syrian writer and journalist. He has been commenting on the Syrian Revolution and war since 2011 with by-lines in The Guardian, Foreign Policy and Newsweek, among others, and appearances on the BBC, Channel 4 and Al Jazeera. He also writes for the quarterly journal, Critical Muslim, and is the author, with Leila al-Shami, of the critically acclaimed Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War (shortlisted for the Folio Prize) and a novel, The Road from Damascus. Yassin-Kassab is currently the English editor of the Prisons Museum, an NGO which documents and investigates prisons run by both ISIS and the Assad regime. He lives in Scotland. He has a new book The Blood Between Us: Syria After the Fall of Assad coming out this June, 2026.
Dr Alev Adil is a Cypriot-born writer, performance artist, and academic known for her poetry, essays, and scholarly work highlighting Cypriot literature worldwide. Adil is a frequent writer for and the reviews editor of the quarterly journal Critical Muslim. She co-edited Nicosia Beyond Barriers: Voices from a Divided City, a People’s Book Prize finalist, and writes reviews for the Times Literary Supplement. Her poetry and essays, described as “eloquent” by The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Poetry and “notable in the Cypriot canon” by the Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Literatures in English, appear in anthologies and are taught across universities in the UK, US, and Europe. She has led MA programmes in Creative Writing and Film, held senior academic roles, exhibited film-poems at Tate Britain, the British Museum, and Leventis Gallery. Her art work is held in Cyprus’s State Collection.
If you cannot make the event but would like a dedicated copy of the book, please email [email protected] or call us on 0161 274 3331.
Our event format is usually a 45 minute discussion between the author and interviewer, followed by a chance for audience members to ask questions. There will be the opportunity to get your book signed/dedicated after the event. Events are a brilliant opportunity to discover new books, meet authors and likeminded readers and learn something new.
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