#atceur2015

[nprontheroad]

Behind the scenes of our special series on 'Muslim Identity in Europe'  

9 days, 3 countries, 4 cities, and countless makeshift studios & dining tables later, it's officially a wrap.

Thanks for listening and joining us...

-Bilal, Greg, and Audie

[nprontheroad]

Audie speaks with members of Dresden’s small Muslim community at the Marwa El-Sherbini mosque about the PEGIDA demonstrations, the future of Germany and the painful story behind their mosque’s name - the brutal murder of Egyptian-born Marwa El-Sherbini in a Dresden courtroom

-Bilal

[nprontheroad]

Khaldun Al-Saadi’s mother is German and his father is from Yemen. He’s 24, hyper articulate, and passionate about the ‘discourse’ about German Islam. He speaks with Audie in Dresden about the massive anti-Muslim PEGIDA marches that broke out of his home city.

-Bilal

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It's in German, of course, but it's worth it just to see the costumes. The folks behind Hate Poetry tonight are all German journalists of "migrant backgrounds." They read their hate mail out loud.

We spoke to one of the co-founders Mely Kiyak. She's in the early part of the clip.

She told us at first the audience reacts with shock, then laughter, then quiet. "After hours they get tired of this hate speech," she said. "We are tired of it too."

-Audie

[nprontheroad]

As we picked up the second issue of Charlie Hebdo published since the attack, the legacy of that day was still palpable across central Paris… in signs and in our conversations.

- Bilal Qureshi

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Our Paris-based guide Jehan gets into it with author Andrew Hussey after our interview about black and Arab muslim minorities in France. Behind them, the Eurostar platform at the Gare du Nord station. It was the scene of an anti-police riot in 2007. Andrew Hussey calls the station a “frontier” between two sides of Paris—well-to-do travelers hopping international trains and poorer commuters arriving from the suburbs. It was the inspiration for Hussey's book "The French Intifada: The Long War between France and its Arabs." - Audie

[nprontheroad]

Pictured above: Salman Farsi, social media guru of the East London Mosque and Aleem Tayyab, co-owner of Tayyabs restaurant.

Forget about the "authentic" South Asian restaurants on Brick Lane, Tayyab says. After our interview at the East London mosque we ducked out the backdoor into the rain and down the block to visit Tayyabs. It used to be a tiny shop selling burgers alongside fluffy piles of naan and mixed grill meat.

Today it's a hot to trot restaurant with two floors and a waiting list every night. "We still sell the hamburgers though!" Tayyab tells us.

- Audie

[nprontheroad]

Zia Haider Rahman (like Ramen, he said) says he's "homeless" right now. He holds passports from Britain and Bangladesh (where he was born). He's lived in the U.S. and worked on Wall Street. His breakthrough novel In The Light of What We Know features two characters that—in a way—represent different aspects of his own experience dealing with class in both the U.S. and Britain.

We spoke to him at one of his favorite hangouts: the British Library. He told us "How is it that I feel more at home in the United States than I do anywhere in the world? How is that possible a Bangladeshi boy.. how is that possible that such a person can feel most at home as he comes into JFK airport? And it's because American is a welcoming nation and open nation."

"And you don't feel that at Heathrow?" I asked.

"Never."

- Audie 

LISTEN: Britain's Muslims Still Feel The Need To Explain Themselves