Citation

Phillips R. Trans. Inst. Br. Geogr. 2009; 34(4): 506-520.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1475-5661.2009.00353.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Divisive Orientalist discourses and practices, mobilised in the ‘war on terror’, have been resisted through collaborative political projects designed to contest and close gaps between East and West, Muslim and non-Muslim. Through interviews with Muslim-identified and other British anti-war activists, this paper traces the making of a ‘new bridge between the East and the West’. It then goes on to examine the limitations of this political model and describe the search for political relationships that would mobilise Muslim identities in more subtle ways and speak past rather than against contemporary Orientalism.