Yakoub Islam
Yunus Yakoub Islam is a UK-based Muslim, blogger, poet, and cyber-activist. Born Julian Hoare in 1963, he changed his name to Julian Anderson in 1982 prior to marrying his then girlfriend, Julie Harte. He discovered anarchism in the 1980s through the works of the punk band Crass, but later distanced himself from the anti-religious punk scene to explore academic learning, eventually converting to Islam in 1991. He now describes his politics as "postcolonial anarcho-pacifist" and is the author of the Muslim Anarchist Charter.
Yakoub has written for the Muslim World Book Review, Q-News, Alt.Muslim and Muslim Wake Up. He is an erratic correspondent to national newspapers, and his letters have been published in The Times, Guardian and Sunday Telegraph. He campaigns against Islamophobia in both traditional and contemporary medias, and is the author of "The Voyage in: Second Life Islamophobia", in S Sayyid & Abdoolkarim Vakil (Editors) Thinking Through Islamophobia: Global Perspectives (Hurst and Co, 2010).
Yakoub's son and youngest child was diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder in 1995. In 2002, Yakoub resigned his post as an SEN Teacher (autism) in order to become his son's primary care-giver. He is currently writing a series of Muslim Steampunk short stories, most imagined around Muslim geographer Al-Idrisi’s (1100–1166) alleged journey to England in the 12th century.
Since 2004, Yakoub Islam has owned and managed a multi-purpose website called The Tasneem Project. From 2006, the Tasneem Project has incorporated a microsite devoted to raising awareness about Islamophobia in the media, called The Daily Terror. In March 2010, research carried out by David Stevens of Nottingham University on behalf of the Home Office Research Information and Communications Unit (RICU) identified The Daily Terror as one of the top 10 "pro-Islamic" British blogs - despite the fact The Daily Terror is not regarded as a blog anywhere outside of David Steven's research.
