Utopian Studies

Author Rizwaan Sabir, as a then-MA student at Nottingham University, became known as one-half of the “Nottingham Two” following his arrest along with Hicham Yezza in May 2008. They were detained for six days without charge on suspicion of terrorism for the possession of a document titled the Al Qaeda Training Manual, which was freely available on the internet and from bookstores. Sabir had downloaded it from a US government website for use as primary source material in his proposed PhD research on armed Muslim groups. But Sabir’s arrest, detention, interrogation, and release without charge takes up only about one-fifth of the pages; the remainder covers subsequent events revealing the extent of the surveillance to which he was subject, and his increasing awareness of information held about him not only by the police but by a dizzying array of interconnected authorities. These events include several stop-and-searches by the roadside (each a frightening and infuriating story in its own right), detentions at the border, and an attempt by the UK military to recruit him into their psychological warfare unit. These events occurred more than seven years after the 9/11 attacks that haunt the book, forming a backdrop of ever-increasing securitization against the everyday lives of Muslims in the West. These historical conditions and their political, social and psychological consequences are the subject of the book, as we witness the development of Sabir’s complex trauma and psychological distress.

A gripping read from start to finish, the book is a standalone must-read; moreover, The Suspect is not just relevant but indeed essential reading for any scholar of utopia. The book contains a foreword by Hicham Yezza, arrested alongside Sabir, who commends the work for its skillful delineation of “the contours of the intricate lattice of personal, institutional, political, [End Page 132] and ideological forces that led to our absurd, preposterous arrests on our university campus for suspected terrorism, and their long-drawn aftermath” (xi). The afterword by lawyer Aamer Anwar situates Sabir’s story in his broader experience of working with Muslims in the British legal system, arguing that while Sabir’s story is well told, it is by no means an isolated case: “it does not matter how educated or integrated we are into British society. . . . When a police officer or agent of the state wants to racially profile and investigate you in the post 9/11 world, they can act with almost total impunity” (195).

At first glance, The Suspect is not self-evidently an academic book because it takes the form of a first-person account, broken into readable short chapters (33 chapters of around 5–10 pages each), which helps the reader digest sometimes disturbing material. It is written with a sense of humor: for example, detecting racial profiling when questioned by a border guard claiming to recognize Sabir’s face: “‘Have you been on any aid convoys to Syria?’” Sabir responds, “I have an extremely common face that is often mistaken for somebody else” (123). The bizarre story of the attempted recruitment of Sabir into the British military is also comedic. Major Hussein insists the military do not go around “tapping people on the shoulder” when we can see this is precisely what is happening (125–29). It could comfortably be read by a politically interested nonacademic readership. Nevertheless, as the book develops, it is clearly an intricately thought-out work of social theory whose form is complementary with its function. Although written as a first-person personal narrative, this is skillfully interwoven with analyses of historical events (particularly 9/11), social structures (racism, Islamophobia), and government policies (Prevent, CONTEST), and how these impacted on Sabir’s embodied experience.

The book shares the function of consciousness-raising with many utopian books and movements, beginning from embodied experience of oppression before building a structural account.¹ It is incredibly well researched; drawing on a range of primary materials including police interview transcripts...