Words by an anonymous writer
I have pretty much always felt guilty for being Muslim. And, until recently, I could never directly say that I was one.
The stories that come with growing up with a multicultural background are not new and their nuances are told by many. I am sure that they have been, or will be, told much more eloquently than mine. But I’ll give it a go.
On the school run at seven years old, I was asked by my friend, “Are you Sunni or are you Shia?”. I didn’t understand and replied that “I’m a Muslim”. She continued, pressing that I had to be one or the other, or I wasn’t a proper Muslim.
After telling my Dad what had happened, he told me that I was “just a Muslim”. He’d been raised to not differentiate between denominations, nor see race as divisive; ‘O humankind! We have created you male and female, and have made you nations and tribes that you may know one another. The noblest of you, in the sight of Allah, is the best in conduct (the most pious). Allah is All-Knowing, All-Aware.’ (Qur’an – Surah Al Hujurat – Verse 13). I was taught that our many cultures were something to bring us closer, to learn and to raise each other up. If you said and acted as a Muslim, then you were one (I am not referring to extremists who justify abhorrent acts in the name of religion).
Being mixed-race, I have grown up in a beautiful, culturally rich environment. I’d never questioned my race or religion. Yet, at seven, I still pushed my Dad to tell me what I must be. I felt as though I had to be part of a group, or where did I belong?
I have had countless experiences in which I have been reprimanded for my religion. In school, one girl told my best friend about how she had had to stab me and another Muslim girl in my year to death in a dream. We were carrying bombs, intending to blow something up. Being the ‘hero’ that she was, she saved the school by killing us both.
Retrospectively, I can see now how ludicrous this sounds. But at sixteen, it was damaging. It’s something I still talk about in therapy. I lived in a fairly privileged area where people loved to spiel about how accepting and inclusive they were. Yet, this area had raised someone who thought it was okay to think this way, and even spread it. Surrounded by girls who would gossip, I became more paranoid about what my friends thought of me. I believed that something was wrong with me, that I had to change, and that it was my fault that she was saying these things. She wasn’t accountable, it was me.
Whilst taking my GCSEs, I was one of two Muslims in my RS class. Our teacher often looked to us to give examples and offer our experiences when we were taught about religious practices like fasting and what women wear. It wasn’t her intention to single me out but, each time that I was asked to speak, I’d feel embarrassed. My friends and classmates didn’t see me as Muslim; I didn’t wear the hijab that they had been taught was what would identify me as one, or I seemed ‘too moderate’ in comparison to the westernised depiction of a Muslim that the media offered. I felt marked when she asked me to share my thoughts, as others turned in slight disbelief. On occasions where I said that I didn’t know more than had been explained by the teacher, I was met with “But aren’t you a Muslim?”, as though I should know every minute detail about my faith. The contradiction in conflicting approaches from the same people was confusing and unsettling.
You’d think that perhaps, in these scenarios, I and my Muslim friend would have been able to confide in one another. Wrong. When she found out I was Muslim, but saw that I didn’t wear the hijab and that my Mum was from the UK, I was declared a “half-Muslim”. Similarly, in the same RS class that we shared – and the one in which I believed my peers saw me as “not Muslim enough” – my teacher soon turned to her as the authority on all things Islam. I was also told that I should be wearing the hijab. It felt as though she was silently declared as being more of a Muslim than me. I fell into my place, thinking of myself as inferior, and unaccepted by either side of the classroom.
When I began researching whether I should wear the hijab or not, it was out of feeling pressure from those around me, as though it would ‘prove’ my worth as a Muslim. That in itself was wrong – if I ever choose to wear it, then that is something that should come from myself. The irony is laughable; I lived in a society that was so sure of itself as being one of freedom and choice, yet felt as though I was being forced into wearing something by those around me. It also strikes me that the hijab is often still associated with oppression in the West, whereas to several of my friends and I, it is a symbol of liberation. It can free women of society’s objectification and expectations of what a woman should look like and challenge people to realise that a woman is so much more than her physical form. I might one day choose to wear the hijab, but that is not how I currently exercise my faith – something which is between Allah and I.
It’s painful to reflect on the many more stories of anti-Muslim rhetoric and racism that I have endured – how on my first day of college, when someone asked me where I came from and if I was a Muslim after seeing my name, the people around me actually shifted backwards in their seats; how an ex-boyfriend said I would be ‘disowned’ for being in a relationship and saw my family as some anti-female tyranny; how bigotry within my own family has caused rifts; how I have been exoticised in clubs and sexually harassed by men for being Middle Eastern; or how many times I have been labelled a ‘terrorist’, ‘bomber’, a ‘member of ISIS’ and ‘radical’, even by self-professed ‘woke’ millennials at university. It’s also sad to think that these stories are probably tame compared to others.
While last year’s BLM movement finally made me and several others realise how wrong these kinds of stories were, and how they shouldn’t be accepted, I have still chosen to write this anonymously. I am not ashamed of my background, in fact far from it. My friends would be the first to say how I don’t stop going on about wanting to shift bias in the Western media and how proud I am of the women I have descended from, who excelled academically and who would most certainly not be pushed around (trust me, never try and tell a woman in my family that they are oppressed). However, religion is, unfortunately, such a contested and disputed topic. It is often conflated with race, which is then exploited to feed peoples’ prejudice about religion. This is then open to misrepresentation, misuse and manipulation, as has been proven on too many occasions.
What I can say, though, is that others’ bigotry is a reflection on them and not me. Religion and tolerance have been woven together in my life with more of an emphasis on what people do, rather than what they look like or what they say. And honestly, at this point, I shouldn’t and do not care if others think that I am not Muslim enough for them. If I see myself and behave as a Muslim, then that is enough.
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