Monthly Meetup in London

Monthly Meetups are held on the third Monday of every month, 7-8pm UK time in central London. Meetups are run by Ali Malik.

Gita Sahgal is a writer, journalist, film-maker and rights activist. She is a member of the editorial collective of the journal Feminist Dissent which examines gender, fundamentalism and secularism. She is a Spokesperson for One Law for All and Produced ‘Women Leaving Islam’ for the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain. She was a Founder of Centre for Secular Space which published ‘ The Muslim Right, the Anglo-American Left and Universal Human Rights’ by Meredith Tax. She was formerly Head of the Gender Unit at Amnesty International; she was suspended in 2010 after she was quoted criticising Amnesty for its high-profile associations with the Islamist Moazzam Begg, the director of a group called Cage Prisoners. For many years she served on the board of Southall Black Sisters and was a founder of Women Against Fundamentalism and Awaaz: South Asia Watch. With Nira Yival Davis, she edited ‘Refusing Holy Orders: Women and Fundamentalism in Britain’ (London, 1992). Among her articles are ‘Legislating Utopia? Violence Against Women, Identities and Interventions’ in ‘The Situated Politics of Belonging.’ During the 1980s, she worked for a Black current affairs programme called “Bandung File” on Channel 4 TV. She made two films about the Rushdie affair, ‘Hullaballoo Over Satanic Verses’ and ‘Struggle or Submission.’ She has also made two programmes for Dispatches Channel 4, ‘The Provoked Wife’ on the case of Kiranjit Ahluwalia and ‘The War Crimes File,’ an investigation into allegations of war crimes, committed by members of the Jamaat i Islami in Bangladesh in 1971.