Hennessy Lecture
Key Lecture by Baroness Sayeeda Warsi at Queen Mary University of London–
Muslims Don’t Matter, The Anatomy of Prejudice
04th February 2025
Check against delivery.
Delighted to be invited to deliver this lecture following in the footsteps of Neil Kinnock and Michael Heseltine.
In 2018 on his BBC program Reflections with Peter Hennessy – I spoke openly and candidly about my time in government- he had the ability to make one do that.
And to be featured in his book Reflections alongside John Major, Tony Blair, William Hague and Paddy Ashdown amongst others.
I recall Peter being introduced to the House of Lords in 2010 and the Times describing him as the political historian who once said the main attraction of becoming a peer was so that he could have lunch with his exhibits.
The Guardian described him as “the zoologist who went to live in the safari park”
I suppose it has been a privilege being an animal in Peters safari park and one of his exhibit’s.
Peter is away today and I know you will join me and wishing him well and good health.
Today once again I am offered the Hennessy spotlight to deliver this latest Hennesy Lecture.
And once more Ladies and Gentlemen I intend not to mince my words.
It’s also a privilege to follow last year’s Hennesey lecture by Sir Simon Schama – much of his reflections were triggered by the violence on the 7th of October and my reflections too are very much informed by that moment and the violence that followed.
The war in Gaza was an inflection point where we saw with burning clarity the politicisation and dismissal of concerns of so many including British Muslims.
From the language used by politicians to describe Pro Peace marchers, to the dehumanised descriptions used by media outlets to report the killing of Palestinian children and for the conflict to follow so soon after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and yet for our political response to be so markedly different.
From refugees’ programmes to military support, from condemnation of brutality and sanctions as well as political solidarity with the victims, we tangled ourselves in diplomatic and legal webs trying to justify a diametrically different stance in circumstances with many similarities
Muslims Don’t Matter- the title of this lecture, the title of my book was born midst the onslaught in Gaza.
The reason I wrote the book, triggered by the very personal moment when the conversations amongst family and friends became too loud and too often to ignore.
When too many successful and settled British Muslims were talking of Plan B’s and Exit routes.
Where a regular walk to Nostell Priory turned sinister and silent as I questioned whether we too should be buying a sanctuary home elsewhere,
It felt like a moment that was hopeless. For me it felt like heartbreak.
A moment that I felt at the least needed to be documented.
To document how British Muslims felt and explain why.
And how nearly 70 years on from my families in country relationship with Britain, that started a decade after the end of British rule in India and partition , how as the granddaughter of two men who served in the BIA , the daughter of parents who helped re build Britain and the mother of a child now back in uniform , in our armed forces serving our nation , I and others like me were being told we did not belong.
Muslims Don’t Matter is the anatomy of a prejudice, one I had been warning about for over two decades and the basis of one of my first interventions in Cabinet in 2011 when I said “Islamophobia has passed the dinner table test”
Much has been written about my dinner table reference, and I want to briefly recall the arguments.
First the bifurcation of Muslims into moderates and extremists, a clumsy and theologically unsound designation foisted upon a British Muslim community of 4 million and a worldwide community of nearly 2 billion. Since then, the language has changed, the talk is now of Islamist and non-Islamist, but the connotations are the same.
Islamist or Islamism are much like Sir Simon referred to last year as the words Zionism and Zionist – words with multiple potential meanings and whilst having a place in academic discussions also have the potential to make corrosive policy and are disingenuously used by some as a fig leaf in an attempt to disguise their bigotry.
Its why I try not to use either term without a full explanation of what I mean by its use.
Secondly, I was reflecting the discomfort around those who devoutly observe Islam as opposed to those who wear their faith lightly.
Thirdly was the leaking of Islamophobic discourse into mainstream politics and the media via think tanks journalists and politicians under the guise of challenging orthodoxies around institutionalised religion and protecting freedom of speech.
And finally, was the exceptionalising of Muslims to demarcate them as somehow different from other groups.
Post that intervention work was started within government to start building the structure to challenge this latest form of racism – the establishing of the cross government working group on anti-Muslim hatred, the Remembering Srebrenica programme, community initiatives like the Big Iftar and Sadaqa day- were all small steps but which post the Cameron era were over time undermined and defunded.
But even what I would describe as the enlightened years during the coalition government it was challenging, and little would have been achieved in this area if the government was not a coalition with the Liberal Democrats and if colleagues like Dominic Grieve and Ken Clarke had not been around the Cabinet table.
How the state and those in power have exceptionalised, marginalised and held to standards different to others is a recurring theme over the last two decades and it has become progressively more overt and aggressive.
I want to talk today in some detail about specific areas.
The disengagement of British Muslims and the lack of agency afforded to them, the so called grooming gangs scandal the imbalance in treatment using the example of debanking and the weaponisation of fundamental values like freedom of speech.
Much of this as well as the corrosive effect of stereotyping and stigmatising Muslims in art , culture, sports , the double standards applied in law including the appalling injustice of citizenship stripping and the humiliation of British Muslims not even afforded the right to define and name their own racism is explored in the book which will be available at the end of the lecture – I do encourage you to buy a copy!
Let me start with British Muslims and the Disengagement process – an early example of the culture wars with which we are all now too familiar.
This policy began in 2007 under New Labour, continued in the coalition years and was supercharged by the Conservatives – with the encouragement of right- wing think tanks and newspapers, which took to task British Muslims in ways no other community was subjected to.
Through the disengagement policy vast sections of Muslim civil society, particularly institutions rooted in communities, have been systematically maligned and excluded by successive governments. Both Labour and Conservative politicians have over a period of seventeen years cherry- picked or created new interlocutors from Muslim communities who do not question or challenge government.
In the Blair years, the government championed now defunct groups like the Quilliam Foundation, and the Sufi Muslim Council.
The policy of disengagement also meant a concerted effort to freeze out and undermine the vibrant British Muslim charitable sector. The period between 2012 and 2018, when Sir William Shawcross was chair of the Charity Commission, saw a disproportionate focus on Muslim
charities. More than a quarter of the statutory investigations launched within the first two years of his tenure targeted Muslim organisations. In the seventeen months from December 2012 to May 2014, the commission labelled fifty- five charities with the issue code ‘extremism and radicalisation’ without their knowledge, meaning they were monitored as a potential concern. Disturbingly, no written criteria existed for applying or removing this label; it was described by critics as ‘non- evidence based’ targeting of Muslim groups.
To give some context, Shawcross is a neoconservative journalist who in 2006 warned that ‘We simply do not wish to face the fact that we really are threatened by a vast fifth column’ of extremist Muslims. He served as a director of the right- wing think tank the Henry Jackson Society from October 2011 to September 2012, shortly after it had merged with the Centre for Social Cohesion, a think tank run by journalist Douglas Murray. – who became infamous for declaring in his 2006 Pim Fortuyn speech that ‘conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board. Europe must look like a less attractive proposition.’
This policy of freezing out Muslims completely contrasted with the approach to other social groups: women, race groups, the LGBTQ+ community, Jewish communities and others. In all these cases, the government rightly made efforts to include a wide range of representation without interfering by favouring one set of interlocutors over another.
And yet in the case of Muslims, successive governments felt emboldened to determine the ‘acceptable Muslims’ – whether representative or not – based on whether they agreed with their often- biased policies towards Muslims and particularly their views on aspects of the UK’s foreign policy in the Middle East. They were subject to approval by certain think tanks and even organisations from other faiths something that horrified me in government.
The outsourcing of these decisions to institutions with vested interests led to serious problems.
For example In 2024, the taxpayer had to pay libel damages and costs on behalf of Michelle Donelan, then Secretary of State for Science,
Innovation and Technology, who, based on advice from Policy Exchange, falsely accused an academic of being an
extremist and supporting Hamas. Reports suggested that the legal advice and damages could cost the taxpayer up to £60,000.
Disengagement has meant that successive governments have stigmatised, isolated and, via a process of tenuous guilt by association, detached most mainstream British Muslim organisations and institutions from consultation and policymaking.
Whether it’s who British Muslims choose to represent them, who speaks for us, how we want to frame our issues, how we want to engage or how we are defined, when it comes to our relationship with power and decision- making, Muslims lack agency. We are not stakeholders. Policy is not something Muslims help to shape; it is weaponised as something done
to them.
They are increasingly denied participation and forced to protest to be heard.
This is in stark contrast to how other communities are treated.
Let me give another specific example. Marie van der Zyl, then president of the Board of Deputies for British Jews, wrote to the government in March 2024 about rumours circulating suggesting the imminent removal of Lord Mann, the government’s independent adviser on antisemitism. When talking about a potential replacement for Lord Mann, she said: ‘I trust that you will consult with the Jewish community’s democratic
representative leadership and look to appoint through an open and transparent process an equally outstanding and non- controversial figure who will command respect from the vast majority of our community.’
This kind of opportunity is not afforded to British Muslims. Instead, there is no consultation with Muslim leadership, no open or transparent process for appointments.
The people the government engages with, appoints or seeks advice from are most often controversial figures at the margins of British Muslim society, if a part of it at all. And unlike the Jewish community, British Muslims do not have the privilege of a government adviser on Islamophobia at all, never mind one that commands the respect of the vast majority of the country’s four million Muslims.
In the Conservative Party leadership race of 2022, triggered by Boris Johnson’s resignation, the Daily Mail even used Muslim engagement as a stick with which to beat one of the leadership hopefuls, Penny Mordaunt. They ran a story about a meeting held over a year earlier and already in
the public domain between Mordaunt, a government minister, and Zara Mohammed, the first woman to be elected secretary- general of the Muslim Council of Britain, one of the largest Muslim umbrella organisations in the UK.
The Mail chastised Mordaunt for her ‘dodgy judgment’, in contrast to Liz Truss, whom they welcomed with high praise running the front page ‘Cometh the hour, cometh the woman’.
The headline did no age well Ladies and Gentlemen- Forty- four days later, having crashed the markets,
Truss went down in history as the shortest- serving prime minister in UK history. Truss has since taken to sharing platforms in the US with Islamophobes and conspiracy theorists.
The state’s use of a counter- extremism lens through which to view all things Muslim has poisoned the government’s relationship with Muslims – including cultural events such as Eid receptions at Downing Street, invitations to which are only extended to those who acquiesce to a ‘state
sanctioned’ version of what Muslims should think.
This approach has resulted in flawed policymaking, stunted Muslim civil society development, left the best of the community out in the cold.
There is a particular irony to the tangle political leaders have got themselves in. On the one hand, the government insists on Muslims embracing ‘fundamental British values’ defined in the Prevent Strategy Document 2011 as ‘democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect
and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs’. But when Muslims challenge government on actions that detract from our commitment to the rule of law, for example torture or rendition; or challenge actions that undermine democracy, for example freedom of speech or freedom of association;
or challenge actions that undermine respect and tolerance such as institutional Islamophobia; or challenge actions that undermine individual liberty such as the right of women to wear what they want – when Muslims apply fundamental British values such as exercising their democratic right to
vote by electing MPs independent of party political constraints – they are demonised, marginalised, excluded from political arenas and treated as outcasts. Years of being told the community is segregationist takes on an even more Orwellian tone for those of us who chose participation (and encouraged others to do the same) and who are now faced with accusations of ‘entryism’.
During my time in Cabinet, I was accused of just such ‘entryism’. I detail much of this nonsensical and pernicious maligning in the book
The second issue I want to explore is an issue which in recent weeks has once again been weaponised – child sexual exploitation – the so called “Grooming gangs”
The debate about Muslim grooming gangs has as its central tenant that over a period of years Muslim men in northern towns targeted white girls for sexual exploitation and that this was somehow a behaviour rooted in their ethnic/ religious identity.
The Muslim grooming gangs’ issue is one that has been exploited by Stephen Yaxley Lennon also known as tommy Robinson himself a convicted fraudster and stalker who has served multiple prison sentences and is currently serving a prison sentence for contempt of court.
It’s an issue that has led to the death of 2 Muslims grandfathers in 2 different incidents by 2 different men on our streets, it was referenced by Brenton Tarrant the shooter who killed worshippers in mosques in Christchurch New Zealand, its an issue being exploited by Elon Musk to try and destabilise the democratically elected UK government and it’s an issue unashamedly being used opportunistically and politically by some of my colleagues who having been in power for 14 years have chosen their first year in opposition to concern themselves with these appalling crimes.
None are concerned either with the facts or the plight of victims.
Britain like most societies has a long history of child abuse, much of this again I document in the book.
Again, like most societies tragically this occurs most often in the home or within close family and social circles.
And yet this seems not to concern those that now seek to challenge child sexual abuse.
A 2022 report by the centre of expertise on child sexual abuse based on records of defendants prosecuted for child sexual abuse offences concluded that the vast majority of perpetrators were white, 89% while 6% were Asian and 3% were black.
Two years earlier the home officers group based child sexual exploitation characteristics of offending report found that based on the existing evidence it seems most likely that the ethnicity of group based CSE offenders is in line with CSA more generally with the majority of offenders being white.
The Home Office report makes very clear that there are no grounds for asserting that Muslim or Pakistani heritage men are disproportionately engaged in such crimes. It warned of potential for bias an in accuracies in the way that ethnicity data is collected with the possibility of greater attention being paid to certain types of offenders.
But here is the shocking part, this study was commissioned in 2018 by the then home secretary Sajid Javid who had tweeted about “Asian paedophiles” and no go areas and yet his own department’s report found there was no specific Asian paedophile problem nor were they any no go areas. Successive home secretaries refused to make the report public claiming that publishing would not be in the public interest and suggested that the report was for internal use only. A Freedom of Information request and a public petition of more than 130,000 people asking for the report to be released led to Priti Patel agreeing to publish. It however took a further seven months and yet another change of home secretary for the report to at last be made public.
These crimes were appalling.
Crimes which – I raised in 2012 at the insistence of my father , a Pakistani origin British Muslim.
Crimes for which the MCB and others held conferences and awareness training
Crimes and behaviour for which imams and other leaders fronted country wide Friday Khutbahs
Crimes for which British Pakistani Muslim Chief Prosecutor Nazir Afzal was at the forefront of investigating and bringing perpetrators to account
Crimes for which the Muslim Women’s Network and Shaista, now Baroness Gohir highlighted , campaigned and sought government support to no avail.
Yet these interventions , this leadership is neither acknowledged nor referenced by those seeking now to raise this as an issue because it doesn’t support the anti Muslim narrative nor the pernicious culture wars being fought off the back of victims.
Reni Eddo Lodge asks the crucial question -why when we discuss grooming gangs we “don’t think that their white male actions are because of the deviancy of white men when white men target babies children and teenagers for sexual gratification we don’t ask for a deep reflection of these actions from the white male community” and yet “men of colours crimes are held up as evidence of the savagery of their race”
Let me move onto another area , the imbalance of treatment between different citizens in this country.
In 2023 Couts a private bank owned by NatWest group closed Farage’s account claiming that he failed to meet the financial eligibility criteria and instead offered him a NatWest account.
It subsequently came to light that in an internal Couts dossier Farage was described as a disingenuous grifter who was xenophobic and pandering to racism. When the story broke some British Muslims were not altogether surprised by the bank’s summary action a closure of bank accounts is a phenomena that has blighted British Muslim organisations and individuals for a decade with reports of High Street banks such as HSBC closing accounts as far back as 2014.
Over the years I have had numerous contacts with individuals, organisations and banks on this issue. Both people and institutions have had services arbitrarily withdrawn and been left without any banking facilities, often not being able to function as a business or charity or even manage day- to- day living.
Some have spoken publicly about this discrimination; others have not, fearing damage to their reputations and the impact it would have on their livelihoods- not having the privilege, platform or political support to mount the kind of campaign we saw on behalf of Farage.
According to Financial Conduct Authority data for 2022, the group most likely to be unbanked are Muslims; they are also most likely to be debanked.
Banks are not obliged to provide reasons for closure and there has been little recourse for those whose lives and livelihoods have been devastated by these actions. In February 2015, Peter Oborne resigned as the Telegraph’s chief political
commentator. He had been reporting on HSBC closing British Muslims’ bank accounts, a story which the paper failed to publish, despite, says Oborne, ‘lawyers [being] unaware
of any difficulty’ in doing so. Oborne’s piece, which was eventually published on the openDemocracy website in December 2014, details how Muslims as young as twelve had their accounts cancelled.
His investigations also found that World- Check, the database used by banks to justify their debanking decisions, flagged certain Muslim account holders as posing a ‘terrorism’ risk. World- Check, owned by Thomson Reuters, is used by forty- nine out of fifty of the world’s biggest banks.
Oborne found that it utilises sources of a dubious nature including state- sponsored news agencies in populating entries in its database. (World- Check insists the decisions to close accounts lies with the banks alone.)
Finsbury Park Mosque was one of the institutions that had an account cancelled and launched a successful legal challenge to get themselves removed from the World- Check database, securing an apology and damages from Thomson Reuters.
Some Muslim charities were given less than three months’ notice before their accounts were closed, with no explanation. The debanked charities were registered with the Charity Commission, which did not have any concerns about them.
Islamic Relief is one of the largest and longest- standing Muslim charities in the country and is a member of the UK
Disasters Emergency Committee. In 2016, HSBC closed its account, hindering the delivery of crucial aid in response to the Nepal earthquake.
Another charity, Ummah Welfare Trust, was threatened with bank closure during Ramadan, the month when Muslims make the most donations to charity. At a meeting with Antonio Simoes, HSBC’s then UK chief executive, the charity, which at the time turned over more than £20 million annually with HSBC, was told that ‘pressure from the UK and US governments’ may have led to the bank’s action.
In 2016, the Co- op Bank closed an account belonging to Friends of Al- Aqsa, a British non- governmental organisation supporting Palestine. This, as reported in the Independent, followed the closure of the accounts of ‘as many as twenty- five other Palestinian affiliated organisations including the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign’.
I accept banks are commercial organisations; they take decisions based on risk. But what shocks me is the hypocrisy and unequal treatment. When Nigel Farage had one of his bank accounts closed and was offered another, the Telegraph complained of a ‘pernicious culture [that] has seeped through the City and needs to be challenged now, not batted away into a long- grass inquiry’. Yet when Muslims were having all their bank accounts closed, the paper wanted to kill the story.
Senior media commentators including Andrew Neil and Piers Morgan piled in to defend Farage. Ministers raised the issue in Parliament. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said it was ‘not right’ to deprive people of banking services because of their political views. The Chancellor of the Exchequer
demanded an inquiry. The regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, intervened. British banks were placed under the spotlight. Senior executives lost their jobs.
Yet when the Muslim debanking scandal unfolded, there were no ministerial statements about the injustice inflicted on our fellow British citizens, no calls for an inquiry into the banks’ decisions, no support from high- profile politicians and commentators, no calls for resignations, no change of policy – because, unlike Nigel Farage, in the eyes of the powerful Muslims Don’t Matter.
Only last week a report found that 68% of Muslim charities reported difficulties opening an account and 42% experienced a complete withdrawal of services.
Let me move on-
Freedom of speech- the principle regularly quoted at Muslims as a reason why Islam can be ridiculed, and why the most incendiary statements about Muslims are fair game.
Allow me to unpick the rank hypocrisy and double standards where free speech is sometimes considered a fundamental right and sometimes a privilege.
An example that seems apt in the University setting of this lecture.
In 2018, Toby Young was appointed to the Office for Students, the independent regulator for higher education in England. By way of background Young is an associate editor at the Spectator, a friend of Michael Gove’s and during Michaels time in government was funded by the taxpayer to establish a free school in west London. Young’s appointment, later described by the Guardian as ‘flawed and rife with political interference’, caused a backlash because of his history of homophobic, misogynistic and other offensive comments.
Young, who made many of these comments on Twitter, was alleged to have deleted forty thousand tweets, including offensive posts such as ‘Fuck you, Penis breath’ and ‘smoking hot women . . . there should be an award for Best Baps’ in relation to women attending the Emmys, and offensive
comments about the cleavage of a female parliamentarian at Prime Minister’s Questions. In the past, Young had also said working- class boys studying at the University of Oxford were ‘universally unattractive’ and ‘small, vaguely deformed’. (Interestingly his statements on Islam, including ‘few people can be in any doubt that Islam is a deeply misogynistic religion’, were not the basis of the outrage against him.
Senior political figures stepped forward to defend Young.
His former editor at the Spectator, Boris Johnson, tweeted: ‘Ridiculous outcry over Toby Young. He will bring independence, rigour and caustic wit. Ideal man for job’.
Michael Gove agreed, tweeting ‘how many of Toby Young’s critics have worked night and day to provide great state schools for children of every background’.
Unlike the Trojan Horse affair, where Gove led the charge against the unsavoury views of governors who presided over schools rated outstanding
by Ofsted, it seems in this case he was prepared to overlook Young’s unsavoury views.
Jo Johnson, younger brother of Boris Johnson and Universities Minister at the time, was reported to have personally encouraged Young to apply. When Young’s tweets came to light, he dismissed suggestions that government departments should have waded through tweets ‘made years – in some cases, decades – ago’.
Yet the government has for years maintained an Extremism Analysis Unit (now called Home Office Security Analysis and Insights) which does exactly this before any Muslim is allowed to engage with government, let alone be appointed in a formal role.
Young gave a robust defence of his past conduct: ‘Given that defending free speech will be one of the Office for Students’ priorities, there’s a certain irony in people saying I’m “unfit” to serve on its board because of politically incorrect things I’ve said in the past. Some of those things have
been sophomoric and silly – and I regret those – but some have been deliberately misinterpreted to try and paint me as a caricature of a heartless Tory toff.’
And yet Such a defence is not a privilege afforded to British Muslims: they are not permitted to reject their past conduct as ‘silly’. In fact, many British Muslims have been deliberately misinterpreted and caricatured as ‘extremists’ for their youthful posts by the very publications Young writes for. I watch with amazement the indignation at ‘cancel culture’ when applied to well- connected white male rightwing writers as contrasted to the enthusiastic application of it to Muslims. There is one rule for others and another higher standard for Muslims.
After pressure from the Labour Party and others, Toby Young stepped down, but he continued to enjoy the support
of some of the most senior people in government and the media. When the appointment was investigated by the
Commissioner for Public Appointments, he found evidence that ‘demonstrated a lack of consistency in the approach to due diligence throughout this competition – it did not delve back extensively into his [Young’s] social media, yet the social media activity of the initially preferred candidate for the student experience role was extensively examined’.
In fact, the Commissioner’s report says one of the candidates was rejected because ‘Ministers concluded that it would undermine the intended policy goals of the new regulator to appoint student representatives who publicly opposed the Prevent duty’.
So, one candidate was denied appointment because of their opposition to Prevent, a policy that stifles free speech.
But the defence of free speech justified Young’s appointment, with his declared caveat that offensive comments he had made in the past was ‘sophomoric and silly’.
In 2023, the government announced the appointment of a ‘free speech champion’ to keep an eye on university campuses.
It also continued to enforce the Prevent duty, which, since the Shawcross review, magnified Muslim ‘extremists’ as its main target rather than all forms of extremism.
So Ladies and Gentlemen we are now in a place where we champion free speech – just not for Muslims. The right to debate, disagree and dissent is a privilege afforded to the likes of Toby Young, who went on to set up the Free Speech Union, designed to defend victims of ‘cancel culture’. It’s an organisation that eventually found among its members the Islamophobe Tommy Robinson. And in the New Years honours list the Conservative Party nominated Young for a peerage, he now joins us in the Lords as Peter would say as another exhibit.
Ladies and Gentlemen – Politics and the landscape for British Muslims has changed dramatically since that warm day in 2010 when I confidently walked down Downing Street to my first Cabinet meeting in a pink shalwar kameez
As the then only non white member of the Cabinet we could argue that since then much progress has been made.
Almost every senior office of State including Prime Minister has over the last decade been occupied by a person of colour.
And yet despite my warnings in 2017 in my book The Enemy Within the landscape today is far more hostile for Muslims in public life and far more dangerous.
How despite the perceived progress on diversity and inclusion from those early days in 2010 as increasingly British Muslims are sanitising their Muslimness in politics and particularly within the Conservative Party.
Where tragically ethnicity and race are being weaponised by politicians of colour to pander to racism and punch down on minorities and migrants because it pays political dividends.
This is not new, black political figures have throughout history disagreed on the right approach to achieving equality.
The debate over the differences in approach by black leaders in the US in the 19th Century is an interesting study.
Leaders such as the likes of author , educator, campaigner and Republican Booker T. Washington, himself born into slavery and author, academic, civil rights activist and socialist William E B Du Bois, born into a small free black community
Both highly accomplished leaders but had very different notions of equality and the approach to achieving it.
Washington was seen as encouraging African Americans to start with low-level jobs and gradually work their way up in society. Many thought this reinforced the idea that African Americans should accept subservient roles and delay the fight for equality and dignity.
2.) ‘Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom, we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands.’:
He emphasised manual labour and vocational skills over intellectual pursuits. Critics argued that this limited African Americans’ potential for ambition, suggesting that philosophical and political empowerment was less important than physical labour.
3.) ‘The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly.’:
Pursuing social equality was not a priority, and that agitation for civil rights he felt was counterproductive. This was seen as undermining the fight for racial justice and equality, aligning with the interests of White conservatives rather than African American aspirations.White businessmen, philanthropists, and business leaders supported Washington’s ideas.
Du Bois was one of the most vocal critics of Washington. He advocated for political equality, higher education, and full civil rights for African Americans. He believed that Washington’s acceptance of segregation and lack of focus on political activism were limiting.
Ida B. Wells was an African American journalist who too criticised Washington for failing to address the urgent need for civil rights and for his tendency to avoid directly challenging the system
In the UK we saw the early representatives from minority backgrounds in Mancherjee Bhownaggree the Conservative MP for Bethnal Green between 1895 -1906 and Dadabhai Naorji’s who had been elected as the Liberal Party MP for Finsbury Central in 1892.
Both Indian origins born in British ruled India and yet both adopted a very different approach to achieving equlity.
Bhownaggree aligned with British imperialism, supporting the Boer War. He distanced himself from the Indian National Congress and its leaders, and opposed demands for self-rule
He was perceived as a tool for British imperialism to counteract Indian self-governance.
Although he raised some Indian issues in Parliament, critics argued that his advocacy was superficial, limited and just symbolic gestures.
Dababhai Naoroji, on the other hand actively criticised the British exploitation of India, and was a founding member of the Indian National Congress and an early campaigner for the independence movement. He also interestingly advocated for Irish home rule.
I raise these examples because the interplay of identities, heritage and citizenship provide a complex cocktail and make for interesting politics especially in a multi racial multi faith democracy such as ours.
A diversity of opinions and political allegiances amongst politicians of minority backgrounds is an important part of our political landscape. It is positive to see for example British Muslims making their mark in both the right and left of politics.
And whilst we may disagree on the best way to achieve equality, what we should all be able to agree on is the danger of minority ethnic politicians doing the bidding of the extreme anti minority brigade.
When minority politicians find themselves advocating , promoting and sharing platforms with those that malign , marginalise or propose two tier approaches to policy making for Muslims then they are not merely expressing a different approach to achieving equality but are pandering to racism and punching down against a community.
There are many socio political or psychological reasoning proposed for this behaviour.
Some cite unconscious internalised oppression the likes of which have been discussed in publications explaining that internalised racism is a critical component of systematic racial oppression where people of colour adopt a negative belief about their worth and abilities.
When internally oppressed individuals become leaders, they can unconsciously perpetuate the very stereotypes that oppress minority communities.
Others cite a desire for acceptance and validation where individuals can internalise norms of the dominant culture, sometimes even at the expense of one’s own identity, hoping to gain access to its privileges. Studies have shown that cultural minorities can exhibit higher levels of commitment to an organisation than dominant cultural members, which is thought to be a strategy to gain acceptance and validation within the dominant group.
Others argue that the individuals are a tokenistic, superficial or symbolic effort to include individuals from underrepresented groups to create an appearance of diversity without implementing meaningful inclusion.
I think most often it is simply naked political ambition, where in Britain 2025 anti Muslim racism can prove to be career enhancing.
Where today in some political spaces to be a racist carry’s less consequences than calling out racism and where calling out anti Muslim racism almost in any political party has career ending consequences.
Where disturbingly offshore prejudices are being played out on shore
Where Modism and the rise of far right Hindutva ideology in South Asia found its way onto the streets of Leicester.
Where Settler extremism and the rise of Israeli anti Muslim and anti-Arab racism plays out in newspapers in the form of fictionalised stories , untrue reporting and headlines about Muslims that read like historic tropes of blood libel – the tropes Sir Schama referred to in last year’s Hennessey lecture.
And where political leaders make disparaging statements about communities with sub cultures.
It is time to call out the worst culture wars of foreign places- they should have no place in our democracy and our system should not be corrupted to play out foreign tribal animosities creating division in our nation.
People of colour and other minorities should not be given a free pass when it comes to challenging anti muslim racism.
And so I come to the Conclusion
In my 2017 book The Enemy Within I argued that Muslims were the canaries in the coalmine. The racist riots of last summer were the most stark and most violent manifestation of my fears.
The simmering prejudice being fed by those in power, deliberately poisoning the political discourse had found its way onto our streets.
Debates on multiculturalism had over time become solely focused on Muslims, and refugees and migrants became synonyms for the same.
In 2017 I explored the position of Islam in modern Britain – and analysed the changing space for British Muslims in public life.
Much has changed since then and the direction of travel have been dangerously wrong.
The last 15 months particularly have seen an unprecedented silencing of British Muslims, with a sharp rise in GMC referrals of British Muslim Drs, Muslim lawyers , judges and other legal professionals being subjected to lawfare, politicians being demonized and treated as suspect.
The complexities and super diversity of the British Muslim Identity being reduced to tropes, a community stigmatised and stereotyped – as I detail in my book – through arts, culture, literature, drama and even comedy
Made to question their sense of place in Britain and their right to belong and matter.
Finding themselves at the bottom of a hierarchy of racism – prevalent sadly in the right and left of politics.
So, my ask is for us to remake the case for why multiculturalism has succeeded even though many wish it had not.
For us to pushback against the deliberate othering of our fellow citizens .
For allies to step up
I have great faith in my country and its people.
Once the poisonous tap of culture wars is switched off, once those in leadership stop feeding hate the ordinary Brit embraces and has embraced British Muslims.
Whether it’s our Cake Queen Nadiya Hussain, World cup winning cricketer Moeen Ali , the Egyptian King in Liverpool Mo Salah , our multiple gold winning medallist Sir Mo Farah, Saliha Mahmood Ahmed the Dr and MasterChef winner, rhythm personified Hamza Yassin (Strictly Come Dancing winner 2022), or Asmaa AlAlak the surgeon and seamstress extraordinaire that won Sewing Bee our national life is enriched by Muslims and I take pride that Muslims are embraced as national heroes in our society.
But for many Muslims, the harsh reality of prejudice, stunted aspirations, and blocked pathways is becoming the norm The fear in communities is deep, the Plan Bs exit routes are being prepared.
The paralysis and feeling of being silenced is stifling And these anxious , fearful , hushed conversations have gone on for too long behind closed doors- that fear had to be vocalised. It’s what I have tried to do in Muslims Don’t Matter- I am sounding the sirens, our approach must change.
Nearly 70 years after my families in country relationship with Britain started and five generations later I refuse to accept that my country may not be home to my grandchildren and their children My grandfathers fought Hitlers armies as part of the British Indian effort, they did not give their blood and sweat for their descendants to be stereotyped , stigmatised and silenced.
They did not make sacrifices for the freedoms we enjoy today to see their future generations deprived of those very liberties.
They fought for Britain , helped build Britain’s industries and infrastructure , added colour, sounds and wonderful flavours to the rich tapestry of its culture and as a young and growing community will once again provide the workforce , entrepreneurs and international networks to , if I may repurpose a phrase for better use Make Britain Great Again.
Thank You