As Ramadan begins, Muslims across Britain prepare for a month of fasting, reflection and charity. For most of us, it is a time of spiritual discipline and generosity. For too many of us, it is also a time when the drumbeat of anti-Muslim hatred grows louder.
I have never liked the word “Islamophobia”. It sounds abstract, almost clinical. What we are dealing with is not a vague fear. It is hostility. Suspicion. Discrimination. Abuse. So, I call it what it is, anti-Muslim hatred.
Not a day passes without some overt expression of it in our national life. A crime committed by one Muslim becomes an indictment of all Muslims. A cultural practice is wrenched from context and weaponised to provoke anxiety. A theological concept is distorted to imply threat. And on the streets, and increasingly online, it can turn into violence, intimidation or exclusion directed at anyone who “looks” Muslim.
I have lived this contradiction personally. No one calls me the Muslim chancellor of the University of Manchester. No one describes me as the Muslim chair of the Church of England’s safeguarding panel. When I am chair of The Lowry, my faith is rarely considered relevant.
But when I was chief prosecutor for north-west England, suddenly I became the “Muslim prosecutor”. When I took on grooming gangs and secured justice where others had failed, I was the “Muslim” decision-maker. I remember being introduced to the great and the good in New York by Niall Ferguson as “the Muslim prosecutor that prosecutes Muslims”. When far-right groups targeted me, my professional record did not matter. My religion did.
Why is my faith incidental when I succeed in civic leadership, but central when I exercise authority? Why is it invisible when Muslims contribute, yet glaring when Muslims are accused?
Britain’s Muslims contribute daily to our economy, our public services, our arts, our communities. We are doctors, teachers, entrepreneurs, soldiers, civil servants and care workers. Yet there remains a reflex, a readiness to see us first and foremost as “other”.
Let me be candid. Not every challenge facing Muslim communities is invented. Extremism exists. There are issues around integration in some areas. There is over-representation in prisons. Muslim communities are extraordinarily diverse: in London alone they trace their heritage to more than 60 countries, and that diversity brings complexity.
Confronting problems honestly is not a gift to bigots. It is a responsibility to ourselves. Bigots do not require evidence to hate; they require only a target. Silence does not protect us. It merely postpones the reckoning.
Still, what frustrates me is the absurdity of collective blame.
Some Muslims dislike dogs. I have had one for nine years and she is a joy in my life. When an individual Muslim demands that others not eat in front of him while he is fasting, he speaks for himself, not for 3.9 million British Muslims. When someone extols halal meat as a defining issue, they do not speak for a vegetarian like me. And when critics attack halal practices as uniquely cruel, they conveniently ignore that the vast majority of halal meat in Britain is pre-stunned, just like non-halal meat.
Then there are the moral panics: first-cousin marriage, honour-based abuse, female genital mutilation (FGM). I have worked on these issues for decades. I organised the first national conference on honour-based abuse 22 years ago and helped lead the UK’s response. These abuses are not rooted in Islam. They are rooted in misogyny and patriarchal cultures that have no place in any society.
I wrote about the dangers of first-cousin marriage from a health perspective years ago and about FGM nearly 20 years ago – while many of those supposedly angry about it now said nothing. Progress has been made, prevalence has reduced, but nuance rarely makes headlines.
And then there are the so-called “Muslim grooming gangs”. I led prosecutions that brought hundreds of offenders to justice. I have sat with victims. I have examined the evidence. I never once saw a religious motivation. What I saw were men exploiting vulnerable girls, and institutions that failed to listen. I will give evidence to the national inquiry and say more then. But let us be clear: evil actions do not become theological simply because the perpetrator has a Muslim name.
Our laws, too, offer uneven reassurance. Because Muslims are not a race in legal terms, victims of anti-Muslim hatred must rely on religious hate crime legislation, which sets a higher threshold for prosecution. I remember sitting across from a lawyer for the British National party who calmly told me they knew exactly where the legal line was, and pushed up to it every time.
Today, social media has blurred even that line. Anonymity, bots and stretched policing allow hatred to multiply at an industrial scale. The noise radicalises the vulnerable far-right extremist. At the same time, it fosters grievance among some young Muslims.
Yet I remain stubbornly hopeful. Britain’s greatest strength is not uniformity. It is our imperfect but remarkable tolerance. Our insistence, at our best, that citizenship is not conditional on conformity.
My faith does not define me. It refines me. It calls me to justice, to service, to compassion. It does not make me infallible, nor does it make me suspect. And let me say this plainly: anyone who claims to speak for “the Muslims” does not speak for me. We are too diverse, too opinionated, too embedded in every corner of British life to be reduced to a single voice or caricature.
This Ramadan, millions of us will fast quietly from dawn to dusk. We will feed our neighbours. We will give to charity – more than any other group. We will pray for a country we love.
The question is not what it is to be a Muslim today. The real question is whether Britain is prepared to see us as we truly are, not a headline, not a threat, not a stereotype, but fellow citizens.
