Saima Razzaq is the first Queer Muslim woman to lead a Pride Parade in Britain and was recently appointed Head of Diversity and Inclusion by Birmingham Pride. An ex-BBC producer, Saima also runs her not-for-profit floating hotel; Boatel Birmingham with which she hopes to diversify the city’s waterways. In an exclusive interview with Asian Voice, she speaks about diversity and inclusion, the LGBTQ community and South Asian culture.
Q- How would you describe diversity and inclusion such that the brown community understands it?
Diversity and Inclusion policy ensures that those least privileged in society are equally represented and respected. This includes equality of race, gender, sexuality, disability and/or faith.
Q - Do you think blatant institutional racism and insensitive/under-informed remarks on the people of colour by white people in the UK is because they've not studied British colonial history in detail at school? What according to you should be the immediate measure to tackle this?
I think the institutional racism that exists across Britain is a direct result of ill-informed colonial mindsets that ultimately stems from the fact our education system does not educate young people on British Colonial History. Reform to decolonise the British curriculum is long overdue, however, I’m not sure what hope we have with a government that seems to put more importance on the teaching of Latin in a bid to level up than deal with real issues they need to be tackling in modern Britain.
Q - How can people of colour get through higher ranks, better-paid jobs and also equal chances in the creative community, withstanding that the change we need in terms of cultural tolerance is still a distant dream?
I think the only way for people of colour to succeed into higher ranks or what you may call better-paid jobs are to self organise and create our own paths - it was certainly the reason I decided to buy my floating hotel, Boatel Birmingham and to run it as a Social Enterprise. As a migrant community, we often find ourselves at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale so we have to get clever and there is power in numbers. There is a lot of funding out there for communities like ours up and down the country, it’s now time to rightfully claim what is ours so we can collectively and authentically rise as a community.
Q - As someone who runs a non-profit and helps people across sections to build confidence and skills, what is the biggest change you've observed during the pandemic?
Our communities have always been great self-organisers, whether that’s coming together to organise places of worship or to create essential amenities with little funds. The pandemic has highlighted this on a national scale where we’ve seen mosques and temples turned in vaccination facilities, while this government continually plays a game of Russian roulette for the sake of our most hard-hit communities. We collectively continue to mourn so many and I think it’s really important for those people that we’ve lost that we continue to fight for justice, united against our struggle against all the oppressions we face.
Q - How can the LGBTQ community be empowered and most importantly, where do we need to start in terms of creating a conducive atmosphere among people of colour to move over any kind of phobias and misinformation related to genders? I ask this because we're still far away from developing an attitude of acceptance and tolerance.
I think our communities are only a product of this heteronormative society we live in and it’s important that we have these conversations from within - with those who understand the nuances of our community. I never thought in my lifetime I’d see the words LGBT being mentioned across South Asian households, yet in Birmingham, the plague that was anti-LGBT protests outside some schools really helped open up this topic for discussion. As a community we face so much oppression because of the colour of our skin and/or faith, so we must understand that the struggle of oppression is united. Just as we fight for racism and Islamophobia, we must also stand up against homophobia and transphobia – there’s no pick an mix option to equality, equality is not a bag of farfar!
