Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
25th March 2026
At first, I laughed at Nick Timothy and his online denunciation of the Ramadan prayer and food gathering in Trafalgar Square last week. It was open to all. Under London Mayor Sadiq Khan, this public square has become a place that joyously celebrates native and diverse traditions. Another Tory runaway, I thought, waiting to jump on to the bus to Reform.
Timothy, previously a special adviser to Theresa May, still defends the “hostile environment” policy which led to the Windrush scandal He quit after a terrible election result and went on to pen rabidly right-wing newspaper columns, and then got into Parliament. Nastiness gets you places. That tweet spread faster than a contagion. I laughed no more.
“Patriots” enlisted for another crusade against Muslim “infidels”. Racism is flooding our lives again. We are all labelled terrorists and the deadly enemy within.
From the time Salman Rushdie was targeted by the ayatollahs, through 9/11, the Iraq War, the London suicide bombers, now Gaza – which is nothing to do with Islam – to the small-boats crossings, we get it: from the powerful nativists and street xenophobes, to the subterranean social media guerrillas. It has never been easy to be a Muslim in the West. But it’s become much harder as the political establishment fragments and the game gets dirty.
Arousing anti-Muslim fervour is an easy way to gain influence and status. Innumerable Tory and Reform figures have become instant heroes after posting or speechifying about the “Islamic” peril. These guys are not only perniciously divisive, they are vacuous, totally ignorant of the long and often extraordinary relationship between Muslims and the British isles.
Last Saturday, Muslims marked Eid and most of us Shia Muslims also celebrated Navroz, the new year, which begins with the first day of Spring. My beloved mum died in March 2006, just before Navroz. I took narcissi to her grave in Brookwood cemetery, near Woking. It’s a vast and beautiful burial ground, with a special place reserved for Muslims who fought in the First World War, and various minorities in the mosaic that is Great Britain.
The mosque in Woking was enthusiastically backed by Queen Victoria who wanted her trusted Muslim male servants to have a place to pray. A number of distinguished Victorian Britons converted to Islam. Two of them, the fifth Baron Headley and novelist Marmaduke Pickthall, son of an Anglican churchman, are buried in Brookwood. In 1887, a convert, William Henry Quilliam, opened the first mosque in England, in Liverpool.
There’s more. Churchill and his war cabinet gifted the land in Regent’s Park for a mosque “as a tribute to the loyalty of the Muslims of the Empire”. He meant the two world wars. The foundation stone for the mosque I go to in Kensington was laid by the very aristocratic and snobby Nicholas Soames. It was inaugurated by Margaret Thatcher in 1984, the woman who complained about too many cultures swamping her country. Last Saturday, mixed race and mixed faith families were welcomed into the beautiful building. Men and women prayed together. Mr Timothy should go there – or perhaps not. His prejudices would soil the peace and openness of the architectural gem.
Worryingly, people in my community – almost wholly middle class, and many Tory voters – seem oblivious to the gathering clouds and normalised, anti-Muslim hostile environment. One very pompous and loaded entrepreneur tells me, “We are not like those uneducated Muslims. I personally know the Conservatives. They will protect us.” You can be among the top five per cent of wealthy people, and still be very, very stupid.
Too many ordinary Muslims are also clueless about the history above and the dangers we face. Some remain culturally inflexible and resist progressive values. We should be initiating difficult conversations about continuing misogyny in our families and communities, about whether young girls should have their bodies and hair covered, about unacceptable Imam power, about the disrespect some Muslims display towards white Britons and values, about the fixation on community rights, and about grooming gangs.
One more thing: Muslims who use Gaza’s unbearable suffering and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unrestrained violence in the region to threaten or hurt fellow Jewish citizens threaten us all. If these “activists” burnt ambulances belonging to a Jewish charity in London, they did so knowing it would result in a swell of anti-Muslim revulsion. They didn’t care.
This column will be pounced on by racists. Vile haters don’t matter. To ensure our survival, Muslims need to reform and modernise, with the support of white anti-racists. Unless good people of all backgrounds do what they must to stop these tides of hate, barbarism will blast all our futures.
Published in I Newspaper, March 2026