What does social cohesion have to do with Islamophobia in contemporary Britain? On 9 March 2026, the Labour government unveiled its new social cohesion strategy, Protecting What Matters, and on the same day, it also released its long-awaited definition of Islamophobia or what the government calls anti-Muslim hostility. Considered separately, each announcement may appear administrative. Taken together, however, they reveal a coherent political logic: racism against Muslims is conceptually narrowed at the very moment that the state expands the frameworks through which Muslim life is monitored and regulated.

What does ‘Left’ mean in a political sense? Egalitarianism, support for the (organised) working class, support for the nationalisation of industry, hostility to marks of hierarchy, opposition to nationalistic foreign or defence policy, etc. But in Kerala, it has acquired a special meaning: Islamophobic and accommodating Hindutva. Here, activists and scholars have coined terms like ‘Hindutva Marxism’; in Kerala, the Left often functions as the Right. This note is intended as one reflection on the extremely dangerous compromises made by the Left to maintain parliamentary power and the way these compromises are shaping Kerala’s social consciousness in an increasingly Islamophobic direction.

Can a game called Europa Universalis V be anything but Eurocentric? Does it really matter if such a game is Eurocentric? One could argue perhaps not… following Dabashi (2015: 33) we could say “of course Europeans are Eurocentric”. However, it is worth investigating Europa Universalis V and the wider Europa Universalis game series for the simple reason that it shows how we are still haunted by the Eurocentric, even after the decolonial has emerged and become established as a field of thought (though now undergoing a concerted attack in Western plutocracies).

University campuses have formed an epicenter of Palestine solidarity resistance since the onset of Israel’s genocide. In equal measure they have become sites of institutional repression where waves of encampments and protest have led to punitive disciplinary measures, even inspiring university policy research as a guide on how to best manage them. Such highly public interventions, aired by student activists themselves, have however, been accompanied by what can be seen as softer modes of quelling solidarity resistance; ‘Muslim-Jewish’ platforms, ‘interfaith’ and tackling anti-Islamophobia/antisemitism in university settings.

Far from being outdated modes of self/group identifications, both caste and religion continue to hold significant sway in the sociopolitical life of modern South Asia. This piece looks at how ‘Dalit Muslims’ or the ex-untouchable converts to Islam problematize dominant narratives of caste and religion in India.

Faisal Devji’s essay in the Open Magazine (August 2025) entitled ‘The End of Islam’ and subtitled ‘Is the religion’s journey as an agent of history over?’, introduces readers to his recently published volume, Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam. In his opening reflections, Devji explains his choice of title as an index of the book’s import. He states that the current title replaces the ‘provocative’ original, The End of Islam, which well-wishers feared could expose him to attacks from ‘irate Muslims’. Devji assents, but less from fear of reprisals than from concern that the original caption could ‘inadvertently win [him] readers among anti-Islam activists rather than those interested in the role of ideas in history’.