As a Muslim woman, born and bought up in the UK, I know no other culture as intimately as I know Britishness. I knew my British identity long before I embraced my Muslim one, and I’ve always been apart from my Kashmiri roots, as I only experienced them vicariously through my parents and family holidays for no longer than 4 weeks in the summer. In the process of unlearning the ‘facts’ that have been presented to us as ‘truths’ I’ve leaned into my identity as a Muslim, but it has never erased the British in me. In fact, learning more about Islam has only deepened my understanding of British values, as so many of them lean (or did so) on Islamic principles (cultural, justice, literary and civic). And yet, watching the news over the past weeks, I’ve seen myself, and others like me, completely deleted from the narrative and I can’t help but wonder what impact this has on our collective psychology.

Most of us are children of immigrants or second/third generation Britons. Many of us have also come from colonised lands, so a part of us, deep down, is grappling with generational trauma, the fear of not belonging, or not getting too comfortable in any given place as our genetics profoundly understand that nowhere is truly safe. Centuries ago, our villages were pillaged and people we trusted as our neighbours were suddenly our enemies. Divide et impera (divide and rule) was integral to British colonial policy. Our forefathers saw their communities decimated, they and their neighbours, turned on each other as a survival mechanism. The British needed local populations in their colonises to be in constant conflict with each other so as to not turn on them. It was both simple and evil, and it is something the diaspora knows intimately.

In my absolutely non-scientific but lived experience of meeting hundreds of people from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds (and white Irish people), there is a very common thread to most of our feelings. We don’t belong. As a 16-year-old cricket enthusiast, I was mocked by almost every other girl in my year for supporting England, they teased me (lovingly) and called me a coconut, but how and why would I support any other team? I was (am) English. How could I be Pakistani once every 4 years in a sport I only discovered in my only girls secondary school in East London? I had the same treatment from my extended family, who supported Liverpool and Arsenal in the Premier League and England in the World Cup (admittedly South Asian countries don’t fear well in football).

I was 18 when September the 11^th happened. I had lived in a fairly diverse part of East London and had friends from every continent. At the time I was in college in Angel and again, I knew people from all over London and of all different ages. I grew up with fearless parents (although my other was a worrier) and intelligent and curious siblings. I never felt the need to hide who I was, but back then I was English. Before I really knew about orientalism and micro aggressions, I thought it was endearing when people (mostly white men) asked me, “where are you really from?”, in fact I leaned into my ambiguous identity and played with a multitude of answers. I was Kashmiri, Turkish, Kenyan, Persian, Egyptian … all of these was acceptable other than English. And in return they told me about each country’s colonial legacy, to which I assume they wanted me to thank them. Of course, I never did. I was happy to play the good immigrant, but don’t push me.

I was introduced to the Palestinian liberation movement via friends at a London University and was lucky enough to do some voluntary work for the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) in 2002. That led me to attend the annual Al-Quds Day March almost every year since and the Palestinian struggle became one I was deeply connected to, especially as a Kashmiri, the parallels between our struggles continue to tie us together. Back then, Palestine was mostly about liberation not religion for me, and in many ways it still is today. However, since I’ve become more connected with my faith over the past decade, I can’t overlook the religious importance Palestine, and the land surrounding it, has on Muslims. However, unlike the Zionist Christians and Jews, we have no desire to bring on the apocalypse or for other religious groups to be persecuted for us to survive, we simply acknowledge that it was the sight of the first qibla (direction of prayer) and thus beloved to our beloved, the Prophet Muhammad (may Allah’s Peace and Blessings be upon him) and that it is scared land, honoured by previous prophets including the prophets of Christianity and Judaism, Jesus and David (peace be upon them both), who are incidentally also prophets of Islam.

Over the past quarter of a century, I have seen the insidious demonisation of Muslims across our media. From scaremongering about immigrants and theories of “the great replacement” and “invasion”, (giving Nazi Germany circa 1930’s) to absolutely ridiculous tales about “no go zones” in London and “halal” banknotes. Just last year the hate march that overtook London, organised by the petty criminal, man of many identities, and political prostitute Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon attracted the far right from the United States, France, Germany (but of course), Poland, the Netherlands and Canada. The worlds richest slave, Elon Musk, also addressed the crowd via a live video link with slogan “you either fight back or you die”.

Muslims make up 6.5% of the total UK population and yet a landmark report released in March 2026 by the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) found that 70% of UK news articles associate Muslims or Islam with negative behaviours or aspects. The UK media group analysed 40,000 articles before coming to this sobering conclusion, one that your average Muslim has to live with every single day as they step out of their home to go to work, take their children to school or go shopping. According to the latest data by the  Home Office  there were 115,990 recorded hate crimes in England and Wales for the year ending March 2025 (excluding Metropolitan Police data). . Given that up to 80% of Muslims don’t even report hate crimes the report showed that anti-Muslim crimes rose by 19% (to 3,199 offences), with a significant spike in August 2024 following the Southport murders and subsequent civil disorder.

All of this to set the scene for the news of the stabbing of two Jewish people in Golders Green on the 29^th of April 2026. The stabbing led to wall-to-wall coverage of the incident and an influx of opportunistic politicians descending upon a shocked and shaken population and an emergency COBRA meeting (an emergency council convened by the UK government to coordinate responses to major national or regional crises). Sir Kier Starmer, the UK Prime minster, who is facing a leadership challenge due to his epic failures and odiously loathsome personality, recently pledged a further £25 million emergency package to bolster security at Jewish synagogues and schools, and deploying specialist officers in Jewish neighbourhoods. This latest injection brought the total investment for Jewish community protection to a record £58 million for the current year. To be fair the Muslim community has also been allocated a record breaking £40 million for 2025-2027 but of courses theirs comes with conditions and eligibility criteria.

What the news media, prime minister and police officers failed to disclose after the incident and in the many hours of coverage following it, was that there had been a victim before the two Jewish people. Ishmail Hussein, a Muslim in Southwark. Mainstream media and the Metropolitan police didn’t acknowledge him until the 1^st of May. Even today, almost two weeks after the attack many in the media still refer to the “two Jewish people”. In another inconvenient plot twist, the suspect Essa Suleiman has a well-documented and long-standing history of serious mental health issues, which has become a central focus of the ongoing legal proceedings. In the UK justice system, the distinction between a “terrorist motive” and a “mental health-driven” attack is a critical legal threshold that determines how a suspect is investigated, charged, and sentenced. We have seen in the past how quickly “mental health” is thrown into the Intersection of crime and ethnicity when the perpetrator is on the paler side of the spectrum, yet when the suspect is Muslim, the dye is cast and the scales are tilted, at least in the right-wing press and the uncritical eyes that continue to pursue news through their blood soaked perspectives. The Metropolitan Police have also been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Not only for air brushing the Muslim victim to suit their narrative but also highlighting what Black and minority ethnic communities have been saying for decades, the Met police have a hierarchy of victims, or institutional bias (and institutional racism lest we forget Stephen Lawrence, Mina Smallman, and Chris Kaba).

This selective empathy is the modern face of Divide et Impera. By elevating the tragedy of one community while erasing the blood of another, the state and media do more than just report the news; they reinforce a hierarchy of belonging. It sends a chilling message to the diaspora: that our Britishness is a legal fact but not a social reality. As we grapple with this generational trauma, we are reminded that in a world that consistently seeks to delete us from its narrative, the simple act of claiming our place—as Muslims, as Britons, and as humans—remains our most vital form of resistance

What does it feel like for Muslims, to witness their complete eraser from the narrative? Or for the families (predominantly from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds) of the young people in London who are the victims of the majority of knife crimes across the capital, around 50%. Knife crime is most prevalent in the most income deprived boroughs across London, what about those families, has a COBRA meeting ever been called to tackle the violence of poverty? And what about mental health services? At a time when metal health services are in record demand, more than 2.2 million people were in contact with NHS mental health services as of January 2026—a national record, the NHS budget dedicated to mental health has declined for the third year in a row, with the Charity MIND suggesting that “mental health services are being set up to fail” Is it any wonder in this context of classic divide and rule politics, that the recent local election results saw a surge in Reform counsellors across both traditional Labour and Conservative areas. Reform even took the London borough of Havering from the Conservatives. I can’t help but wonder how the events of the past two weeks have left communities across the UK feeling about belonging. The UK has a non-white population of around 18%, and according to the 2021 census over half of the non-white population was born in the UK, people like me. Over 50% of the Muslim population was also born in the UK, it’s the only home we know.

When people consistently worry about feeling safe they often go into a state of hypervigilance, where the brain and body are in a permanent “survival mode”. I think of so many friends and family who have to exist in a constant state of code switching to appease the  (white) gaze of scrutiny upon them. Mothers whispering to their children “don’t talk about Palestine in school” or parents worrying about their daughter’s wearing Hijab in the so-called “free” West, where women are apparently allowed to dress however they wish. Or families worried about the walk to and from their local mosque, will they be spat at, called names, or will there be hate graffiti or a pigs head deposited in the prayer hall? (where are the animal rights squad when you need them, right?)  W.E.B. Du Bois, described this internal conflict of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of a society that views you with contempt or pity as a feeling of having two identities—one that is your true self and one that is shaped by how the white world perceives you. How many of us are still silently grappling with this and what might the long-term consequence of this “masking” be? Not only is it emotionally exhausting, but we know that the body keeps score. Psychological unsafety manifests physically through the constant release of cortisol and adrenaline which can lead to chronic fatigue, sleep disorders, weakened immune system, increased risk of cardiovascular issues and cancers. Why are we having to pay the highest price for simply trying to exist in a world that uses us for its own gain?

It is important to belong to communities that see us. Community is the antithesis of “divide and rule” and that’s why its subtle eraser continues here in the UK. It’s the only governance that the powerful in British politics know. We need to cultivate spaces where we feel safe to share our experiences and dissolve the shame and loneliness that can come with masking. In the local elections in May, boroughs like Waltham Forest and Hackney had higher than average turnout, and as a result they became majority Green councils. Our inclusion in the system is important  especially when the alternative is politics as usual, the two party system that is ultimately about one goal, to feed the insatiable appetite of the powerful.

It is a basic human need to feel like we belong. To be valued for who we are and to be known and accepted for our authentic self. We might not get this, yet, on a national level, but it is something we can all cultivate at a local level, even if it is with one other person to start with. Often divisions can seem starker than they really are. Deep down most of us want the same things, and getting to know people who aren’t like you can be an important first step in bridging that gap. In Islam for example, smiling is a Sunnah. So start small, smile at a stranger, say “good morning” to a neighbour, or a fellow commuter. Remember, it’s not about getting the perfect response, it’s about taking the first step. It is about our humanity, which is never a request for approval.