<![CDATA[TAREK YOUNIS

<![CDATA[TAREK YOUNIS - Blog]]>Mon, 06 Jul 2026 02:37:55 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[Warning the Community of the Aziz Foundation and the British Muslim Trust: Yielding to Zionists to Combat Islamophobia]]>Wed, 17 Jun 2026 17:23:33 GMThttps://www.tarekyounis.org/blog/warning-the-community-of-the-aziz-foundation-and-the-british-muslim-trust-yielding-to-zionists-to-combat-islamophobia

I normally don't share my own personal experiences of discrimination. However, I was encouraged to share my story by several friends, astounded a Muslim organisation would behave in such a way. I share my account in the spirit of accountability and as it may serve as a means of protection for others. As such, I have decided to share my experiences with a prominent Muslim organisation, Aziz Foundation, who are now a part of the British Muslim Trust. The majority of what I’m sharing is straightforward and easily referenced. Little can be deflected as a matter of interpretation, save for an online video meeting with a board member. However, my case manager at CAGE was present during this meeting, taking notes. She corroborates this account.

As I’ll go on to explain, my experience with Aziz Foundation was especially disappointing, not least because of their commitment to countering Islamophobia via the newly formed British Muslim Trust, alongside the Randeree Charitable Trust. The UK Government has appointed the British Muslim Trust as a new “partner to monitor and tackle anti-Muslim hatred.” They are receiving up to £650,000 in the 2025–26 financial year, and up to £1 million per year for the next two years, through the Combatting Hate Against Muslims Fund. This means they may receive approximately £2.65 million across three years, with the possibility of more beyond that period.

The Background

Aziz Foundation and I share some history. It all began many years ago, pre-Covid, when Aziz Foundation made a call for Muslim scholars to mentor their Master students. I gladly took on this role of mentorship, knowing many post-graduate researchers have a hard time finding appropriate guidance on Islamophobia and racism. This was voluntary, unpaid labour, taken from my own personal time. The lack of payment did seem strange, given many less affluent organisations do offer payment for such work, but I agreed nonetheless for students’ sake. The point of unpaid labour becomes relevant later, which is why I am bringing it up here. Otherwise, I supervised several brilliant students, dedicating quite a lot of time and effort to meeting and guiding them through their research on Islamophobia.

Then, the genocide in Gaza unfolded. As anyone who follows my work knows, I believe Palestine and Zionism have long been in integral in Islamophobia in the Global North—from the criminal justice system to counter-extremism strategies. I have only accentuated this more prominently in my work following Oct. 7th. Naturally, UK lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) are not too keen on this work. I’ve had some smear campaigns made against me in the past, which is par for the course for anyone speaking out against the genocidal settler-colonial project. As we all know, these complaints only escalated following Oct. 7th, especially in conjunction with increasing repression against Palestinian solidarity. In my case, UKLFI have issued these complaints towards my employers and towards my professional regulator as a practitioner psychologist.

Image of the Jewish News article

One of the central thrusts of UKLFI’s complaint, as reported by Jewish News, was my expert report and endorsement for the legal case to deproscribe Hamas, as submitted by Riverway to the Sea (it is lawful to read the case). My expert contribution sits alongside such illustrious scholars as Dr Azzam Tamimi and Professor Avi Shlaim. I have explained my rationale for my endorsement here, which I will not repeat, but anyone who follows my work will know why it is essential we abolish terrorism frameworks. This expert legal report is the primary focus of the Jewish News hit piece, and therefore the principal grievance they presented to Aziz Foundation. Of course, UKLFI’s portfolio of dissatisfaction with me draws on a host of other reasons, some of which are Jewish News piece (like the tweet above), but not everything. I know this because I submitted a Subject Access Request following my deplatforming to speak at a British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy conference. UKLFI also submitted their complaints to the regulating body for my clinical psychological practice, the Health and Care Professions Council. UKLFI’s portfolio includes more social media posts and one incidence which occurred while teaching. I’ll share this incident as it is quite revealing of our current context. Though it was not raised in the Jewish News piece below, and Aziz Foundation may not have been made aware of it, I believe it is relevant nonetheless to frame the context.

Image of the Telegraph article [note: these are the student’s words, not what I actually said]

For many years, I’ve taught a class called “Politics in the Clinic.” It’s a particular class I developed, often well received, that underlines the significance of politics in mental health. The teaching in this class is on auto-pilot more or less, whereby I eventually arrive to the securitisation of mental health, and raise a number of scholarly concerns with terrorism as a construct (for anyone wondering, why as a psychologist I teach on this subject, the politics of healing maps closely unto the politics of violence). One student, astounded someone would critique terrorism at all, raised her hand with astonishment and said, “how can you say there's no such thing as terrorism?” Given the reaction, I was certain the student was going to make a complaint. So, I explained the purpose of a post-graduate programme was to engage critically on concepts we take for granted, especially those galvanised by the State. Such is the point of academia. I added, noting the student’s disapproval, they could also make a complaint against me with the module leader or the department. The student filed a complaint with the university as well as UKLFI. From my understanding, the student has received full compensation for their tuition that year, as reparation for my comment.

Such experiences have been the bane of my academic work. I continuously navigate complaints as soon as I discuss the War on Terror, Palestine, racism or Islamophobia—which is about everything I teach and write about. I increasingly have to with students who adamantly support racist ideologies and ethno-nationalism. For example, one student questioned, as I was discussing the French colonisation of Algeria and how they introduced mental health system there, “what about the Algerian colonisation of France?” Such experiences with students have left me quite disillusioned with academia. Yet, I persisted because, overall, I didn't receive the harsh disciplinary treatment countless friends and colleagues have received over the years. In this line of work, you expect to be debased and de-platformed. Not by Muslim organisations, however.

Image of Jewish News article and where Aziz affirmed they will no longer work with me

The Incident

Part of UKLFI’s strategy to vilify my name involves, of course, media outlets like the Telegraph and the Jewish News. This is where Aziz Foundation comes in. The Jewish News—a Zionist media outlet—reached out to my employers for comment. Institutions should always employ rigorous internal mechanisms of consultation and accountability before engaging with sensationalised claims. No one, including my university, provided comments to Jewish News, which is the proper reaction with smear campaigns. Except for Aziz Foundation. I was surprised Jewish News contacted them in the first place. Most likely, given Aziz Foundation’s proximity to the UK government via British Muslim Trust, Jewish News found it opportune to hear their views on the matter.

Aziz Foundation casually threw me under the bus. As you can read above, they said they’ll never work with me again and removed me from their site. They never once reached out to me for comment, or even inform me of my removal—I only learned of it through the Jewish News. That is egregious, of course, because my removal legitimises UKLFI’s complaints, notwithstanding how simple and obvious it was to issue a “no comment,” like everyone else. But the story doesn't end there.

As our faith encourages, I decided to engage with Aziz Foundation in a dialogue. Engaging with them made it worse. I emailed them on June 18th, 2025, and after some delayed correspondence, I was told a board member was willing to meet me. We met on Teams on July 25th. Before our meeting, I had a feeling I needed a 3rd party present as a witness. I asked my CAGE case manager if she could join the meeting, which she graciously agreed to. As soon as the meeting began, I also requested for the meeting to be recorded, but the board member disapproved.

In summary, I explained to the board member everything you read thus far, including how much I had dedicated of my own time and labour to the Aziz Foundation—without payment. As such, it is especially egregious to throw me under the bus when Jewish News first reached out to them, neither verifying the veracity of the claim nor at least informing me personally they will never work with me again.

The board member then explained: they had to make several strategic changes to Aziz Foundation, especially as they developed stronger links to government. I asked, and he affirmed, this is considering the new British Muslim Trust, of which they are a part of. In other words, Aziz Foundation is trying to maintain its position in the corridors of power. They want to play a more active role against Islamophobia. So, they couldn’t be seen to associate with someone like me—someone Zionists clearly disapprove of.

The irony was glaring. I asked, how can Aziz Foundation justify denouncing a Muslim scholar of Islamophobia, when vilified by an Islamophobic media outlet, in the name of countering Islamophobia? The board member couldn't respond, other than it being the decision of the board. I then asked, now that the damage is done, what support they can offer me considering he admitted they denounced me to maintain positive relations with the government. Nothing, he replied. I told him, if you’re affirming Islamophobic strategies to counter Islamophobia, then there's no blessing in your work. And without offering any form of reparation or support, I would have no other choice but to eventually go public. Do what you want, he said.

There is also a particular ignorance in Aziz Foundation’s strategy to be in the good graces of the Labour government, who have displayed nothing but contempt for immigrants, Palestine and the Muslim community. As el-Hajj Malik el-Shabaaz (Malcolm X), said about the Democrats, “You put them first and they put you last. Because you're a chump! A political chump.”

You may wonder why I didn’t go public with this right away. The simple answer to that is that I've been so preoccupied supporting people impacted by Islamophobia, the War on Terror and repression around Palestine, I’ve made it a habit to brush away these experiences when they happen in my direction. You may disagree with that, and you’d be right. But the truth is, if we spent our days calling out the charlatans in our community, we’d live and die entirely on that hill. As everyone knows, racism is distraction—I'd rather maintain my focus elsewhere. As far as things go, Aziz Foundation’s behaviour reflects terribly on them, but otherwise Zionists are going to keep going after myself and others, and I’m grateful to have been protected so far by the brunt of it.

However, given that, over the last few months, it seems as though Aziz Foundations is growing more prominent in combating Islamophobia. Close friends have thus encouraged me to go public—especially because I said I would—to warn others not to engage with Aziz Foundation or the British Muslim Trust. You should consider: if they can so easily denounce a Muslim scholar, who writes and campaigns extensively on Islamophobia, is anyone safe from their mistreatment? We don't need organisations like Aziz Foundation to protect us. And our community certainly won’t benefit from losers clawing up the corridors of power at all costs.

As a scholar, I think there are a few analytical points to underline as well. First, organisations like Aziz Foundation and its ill behaviour are a mainstay among marginalised communities. The very nature of marginalisation in racist times means there will always be coconuts who serve the State in the name of their community, because they cannot imagine any salvation outside of the State itself. Those who aspire towards the corridors of power in these racial formations will always have to sacrifice something: themselves or their community, in some way, shape, or form. This was just one of many egregious accounts. The reader is encouraged to consider this as an integral issue in the Muslim community as a whole and not only make it about Aziz Foundation.

Second, our Islamic traditions warn against the corruption arising from proximity to power. And so, for anyone reading this who still believes our only strategy through fascist times ought to be a politics of acceptability and respectability, that is both ahistorical and delusional. True power comes from our shared solidarity and commitment to one another. And let’s be clear: this is an ethical issue as well. What Aziz Foundation and others do is not only problematic in terms of their strategy. It was unethical from an Islamic perspective, one in which they will be accountable for with the Most Just. And if we can't hold true to our values, and hold ourselves accountable to a higher standard, then we simply have nothing left to hold onto. Don’t forget this as Reform grows and racist fascism is increasingly more likely.

As to what we should do with Aziz Foundation, I leave that to Allah for accountability and for the community to decide. If you ask me, anyone working planning to work with Aziz Foundation should question their decision.

]]><![CDATA[My Rejection of Peter Neumann's "Apology": The Islamophobia of Centrists]]>Sat, 31 Oct 2020 16:47:03 GMThttps://www.tarekyounis.org/blog/my-rejection-of-peter-neumanns-apology-the-islamophobia-of-centrists

This is a full response to Peter Neumann’s “apology.” I’ll post it on my website for posterity but share the entire piece below. Here is the thread that drove him to write his “apology” in the first place: https://twitter.com/Tarek_Younis_/status/1322467138112815105

Peter Neumann, if you wanted to apologise, you should’ve done it last week when I flagged your first expression of Islamophobia and disrespect. That was your window. It closed the moment you disregarded the Islamophobia then, even while so many others pointed it out to you.

This isn’t about “tone.” Tone is saying “gimme apples” instead of “may I have apples, please.” This is a serious and unequivocal display of Islamophobia. Your “tone” isn’t off—you’ve displayed several serious acts of discrimination and harassment.

Your window of apology was long gone when you decided to pester me about Nice last night. You wanted my thoughts on the killings, using these tragic deaths for your own devices. If you read my wall, you would see I retweeted another’s outrage of the killings. Because all deaths of innocents get to me—doesn’t matter who.

You admit here I think the killing is heinous; it was never about the content of my tweet. Well, it it wasn’t about my thoughts on Nice, then it could only be about you. This is about power. You obviously hated being caught for your Islamophobia when I questioned you last week, and you decided last night to provoke a response.

You knew—wittingly or not—that I’m under additional scrutiny as a Muslim critical on matters of terrorism. You know about the field of egg shells Muslims must navigate on this subject and, with your power and privilege, you attempted to use this field against me. Maybe you were hoping for a wrong step. So you tagged me and my university all night. You needed me to say something—anything—about Nice. Because if I open my mouth, I make myself vulnerable.

Unlike you though, I keep my manners. I learned to thrive in the suffocation of my own silence. I take inspiration from the Prophet Mohammed (sas) who showed immense patience in the face of abuse. If a young Muslim academic acted like you did last night, even for an instant, they would never get hired.

Your only protection is your privilege. I doubt you’re sorry, I suspect you just hate being caught. You were so blinded by your privilege, you lost all sight of the lines you crossed. I live my life surrounded by lines you can’t even see when your eyes are open.

We need institutional changes, not performative apologies. You should not even be close to teaching anyone on hate/extremism, let alone anything related to racism (i.e. Far Right).

This message is for all the Muslims and minority academics who never get a fair shake with the likes of you—the man who was so quick to get me in trouble with my employer. This is against the racism endemic in counter-terrorism and everyone like you.

This message is for all the Muslim youth across the West vilified for the things they said but didn’t mean. They never get a chance to apologise. They can never delete their histories.

This message is against anyone like you who thinks their performative centrism (“oh I research/hate the Far-Right too”) is an immediate protection against accusations of racism.

I will file complaints and mobilise against your racism and Islamophobia. Kings must give a formal and satisfactorily institutional statement to your abuse. I want to see people like you stripped of the power to abuse Muslims like you did last night.

You’re not a colleague. You embody the racism of an alleged post-racial world. You’re everything wrong with counter-terrorism. You’re a walking poster-boy for the racism of liberal centrists.

Your racism showed at the slightest provocation. Your insecurity and desperation made you dig your own hole.

***

This was the initial thread which prompted it all:
https://twitter.com/Tarek_Younis_/status/1320060180520947715

]]><![CDATA[Veiling Colonial Violence: The Last of Us Part II, Israel and the Erasure of Power]]>Mon, 24 Aug 2020 06:48:21 GMThttps://www.tarekyounis.org/blog/blurred-violence-the-last-of-us-part-ii-israel-and-the-erasure-of-power

Note: This article contains spoilers for The Last of Us and The Last of Us Part II. It is written for those familiar and unfamiliar with the story. Also, I had written this article before finding this fantastic piece by Emanuel Maiberg on Vice titled “The Not So Hidden Israeli Politics of 'The Last of Us Part II’, which provides an alternative take on the themes found below.

In the Washington Post, Neil Druckmann, the creative director of Last of Us (LoU) and Last of Us Part II (LoUII), shared the following as an inspiration for the sequel:

The formulation for Ellie’s turn toward darkness can be traced back to the year 2000. Then in his early 20s, Druckmann witnessed news footage of a crowd lynching two Israeli soldiers in the West Bank. “And then they cheered afterward,” Druckmann, who grew up in Israel, recalls. “It was the cheering that was really chilling to me. … In my mind, I thought, ‘Oh, man, if I could just push a button and kill all these people that committed this horrible act, I would make them feel the same pain that they inflicted on these people.’"
The feeling faded, though. Eventually, he looked back and felt “gross and guilty” for his intense feelings. With “The Last of Us Part II,” he wanted to explore that emotional tumult on a didactic level.

This post would not have been written had Neil Druckmann not made these comments and is dedicated to all artists who depoliticise conflicts through their craft.

The Last of Us (LoU) takes place in a zombie-apocalyptic world plagued by a contagious virus but, like others in the genre, personal tragedy takes centre-stage. Its story then is intimately human: profound loss and trauma; suffering of life as survival; and the search for some greater meaning in unconscionable tragedy, often exclusively in relationships. The first game follows Joel, whose teenage daughter was shot by a military convoy attempting to contain the outbreak. Joel then meets Ellie, a teenager who happens to be immune to the virus, and the two develop a rocky and predictably complicated relationship, each relating to the other through their own anxieties. The story begins many years following the outbreak, where survival has helped a disgruntled Joel escaping his loss. Through a string of circumstances, Joel becomes responsible for Ellie and, while initially intolerable, the relationship gives Joel a new lease on life. Joel comes to terms with his own loss through Ellie—but not the actuality of loss itself—which inversely sees Joel anxiously protective of the latter amidst the chaos of a post-apocalyptic world. The story culminates with Joel taking down a militarised hospital and its only surgery team to save Ellie from a fatal operation which might be humanity’s last hope at finding a cure for the zombie apocalypse.

The sequel Last of Us Part II (LoUII) takes Joel’s trivialised execution of the surgeon in the first game and explores the monumental consequences of this decision. The surgeon (viewed as torn in flashbacks for having to conduct a morally questionable operation: the life of an innocent girl for the salvation of humanity) has a teenage daughter, Abby. We follow Abby as she is consumed for her hatred of Joel, which provides the central theme of the sequel—the vicious circle of violence. In LoUII, Abby and her crew of sympathetic friends find and kill Joel, thus spurring Ellie to return the favour—violence begets violence, etc.

In its attempt to humanise violence, the story is essentially a confused spectacle of “there’s two sides to every conflict”. Worse, it seems to indicate that all conflicts can somehow be attributed to this obscure phantom called ‘trauma.’ This is not unsurprising: ‘trauma’ has resurfaced as a great explanatory model, well-situated within a neoliberal era of hyper-individualising social and political issues. The sequel signals a centrist position of conflict-as-personal-trauma—in line, unsurprisingly, with current neoliberal securitisation models. The games thus champions “everything is a matter of perspective,” as if all we’re really lacking for world peace is a better understanding of the other’s “trauma.” Cue racial, cultural and religious awareness trainings so we get to know one another better.

The sequel is not altogether effective at showcasing the moral regression of a beloved character, Ellie, whose loss of innocence was the true tragedy of the first game. Like the Punisher, she tortures and kills for emotional retribution of a loved one which, to be frank, in a post-9/11 world only works with a racialised White woman in the driver’s seat without pandering to a myriad of moral panics. Imagine the political reaction if the protagonist was an Iraqi refugee who shared Ellie's exact pursuit of vengeance--to find and torture those responsible for their family’s death. The significance of White innocence in the dramatisation of revenge cannot be understated, but is beside the point here.

In its exploration of violence, LoUII would work better as a book than a game. On the one hand, the writing and performances are stellar, and easily overshadows other works of fiction. On the other, as a game the LoUII completely disregards the medium’s unique ability to explore player agency, something books and movies cannot afford. I will return to this, especially as it relates to violence. The LoUII is thus a quintessential example of ‘post-apocalyptic’ as a ‘post-imperial world’—thereby erasing race, class, etc.—of survival painted entirely through the thin brush of Western existentialism (“what is the meaning of life in tragedy?”). There are two dramatic issues with Neil Druckmann’s drawing on a political scenario to “educate” us about violence: the commodification of violence and the erasure of power.

Clearly the lynching impressed enough of an image on Neil Druckmann to explore the cycle of violence, but not enough to appreciate the commodification of violence as delivered endlessly through our screens. In LoUII, players are continuously forced to engage in violence to draw the narrative towards its uncertain end, not unlike the War on Terror. For example, there is a particularly disgusting scenario where the player is forced to “press a button” to torture and extract information from Black woman—this is an actual set-piece in the game. The irony here is striking: one of the highest-selling Playstation games of this generation, whose sale of violence benefits the wider military-industrial complex primarily, seeks to “educate” players about the nature of violence. The LoUII thus traps players as producers and consumers of violence—running contrary to the very message of humanity it purports to hold—while lacking the sort of self-awareness found in other games like Spec Ops: The Line.

But this isn’t about the game’s violence, but the morality of violence which guides the entire game. The player is not simply a passive, pornographic voyeur in violence (as one might be watching a movie), but actually complicit in re-enacting these acts of violence themselves. In this sense, Neil Druckmann’s hope of “education” fails spectacularly, conjuring the exact opposite: having depoliticised the player, they are simply ‘following Neil Druckmann’s orders’ to engage in violence. This point of depoliticisation goes further. In life, the cycle of violence (revenge, etc.) does not exist in a vacuum until “someone forgives.” Rather, even at its most basic understanding, violence is the purview of power—often defined by Nation-States, especially colonial superpowers.

What Neil Druckmann saw in the lynching of two Israeli soldiers is artificially fragmented outside of its context, where Israel—the superpower—has allowance to colonise, pillage and otherwise eradicate Palestinian life and land. Neil Druckmann, in his post-apocalyptic vision, not only dismisses the significance of power but erases it altogether. Instead of interrogating “why some violence is considered legitimate, and other violence is not?”, Neil Druckmann simply leaves us with the question “why would someone lynch another?” It is the former which underlines the significance of justice in its interrogation of violence, the latter erases all but the individual.

And so, if Neil Druckmann just said, “well I made this hyper-violent game because I wanted to explore how we're all equally liable to violence”, I would disagree with his approach, but would leave it at that. But if he justifies his direction based on a (violent) act of anticolonial resistance, then he’s tragically enacting a much more real form of violence by erasing the significance of power hierarchies in a (real apocalyptic) world where certain forms (State) violence are given free-pass and others are not.

Neil Druckmann, there are powers who, as you so eagerly desired at one point, not only “push a button and kill all these people that committed this horrible act” every day but take many more innocent lives in the process. As Gaza faces its 9th consecutive day of bombing, life’s true wonder is how modern purveyors of violence get away it, while painting themselves as victims. A game like LoUII, and its director’s inability to truly interrogate colonial violence, provides some clarity. Post-apocalyptic visions provide us an opportunity to question existing power structures, especially as they relate to the global military-industrial complex. To simply reproduce or dismiss them is not a missed opportunity—it’s playing a part in the problem.

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