Britain struggles with its portrayal of Muslim citizens

HA Hellyer asks why Britons are concerned about the "Britishness" of a cook who wears a headscarf

Mariah Idrissi modelled for fashion retailer H&M. Courtesy H&M

This week at the conference of Britain's ruling party, the Conservatives, prime minister David Cameron raised the issues of extremism and integration in Muslim British communities. Last week, the "Britishness" of one of the Muslim contestants in The Great British Bake Off, a television cooking show, was queried, and a Muslim woman who models for H&M found herself at the centre of a similar experience. The Muslim cook in a headscarf, Nadiya Hussain, won the contest to wide acclaim. But in 2015, the issue of "Muslims and Britain" still does not seem to have been resolved, even though it has been discussed for quite some time.

When Mariah Idrissi accepted an offer to model for fashion retailer H&M while wearing her headscarf, she probably expected some opposition from mainstream society. Yet, few could have quite predicted the barrage that came from some quarters. An otherwise reasonable conservative English commentator, Peter Hitchens, took the opportunity to raise the alarm. He suggested that it wouldn’t be long before Britain had “veiled Muslim Cabinet ministers, TV newsreaders and judges” and that this was “all part of a slow but unstoppable adaptation of this country to Islam”. As a result, non-Muslim women would eventually be pressured to “conform” by disappearing “beneath scarves and shrouds”.

It was a rather peculiar claim. Britain is a tolerant democracy, with a special role for the Anglican Church. All of that ensures that faith is generally respected within the confines of the rule of law. Already, there are Muslim women with headscarves who serve the United Kingdom as civil servants and lawyers – why would Cabinet ministers or judges prove to be some kind of dreaded milestone? The excellent journalist Fatima Manji is already a popular face on TV screens via her work on Channel 4. Has that, somehow, led to undue pressure on even her colleagues to wear headscarves, let alone the rest of the British population? Obviously not.

But Hitchens is hitting at a particular issue, as is Mr Cameron, and others, albeit from a variety of angles. The issue remains: is it possible for Muslims to be discussed in public discourse simply as British citizens, rather than problematic in some way?

When Mr Cameron raised the issue of extremism, he was obviously speaking about a very real topic – one that has led to some young British Muslims departing the UK and joining ISIL. Despite the somewhat dubious connections he made between madrassas and ISIL recruitment – there are other problems with madrasas, but that’s not one of them. The point is: how often do British politicians, or other public figures, bring up Muslims in public discourse simply as British citizens? Typically, unless they are addressing specifically Muslim audiences at events, they don’t.

Why is that? Is it because there are no good stories to tell about Muslim Britons? That is patently not the case. Is it because politicians like Mr Cameron are intrinsically anti-Muslim? Considering he raised the issue of anti-Muslim bigotry specifically in his speech, that’s not particularly likely either. The question is, perhaps, a deeper one.

Essentially, it is: does British society view Muslim Britons as quintessentially British, or are they somehow different?

Commentators such as Hitchens may retort that they are free to raise these issues in an open society. Indeed, they are, and they ought to continue to feel empowered to do precisely that. But as they do, it remains important to raise the fact that they do not do so in a vacuum. Rather, the implicit and explicit querying of Islam’s and Muslim Britons’ connections to the UK happens against the backdrop of disturbing actions.

Anti-Muslim sentiment has resulted in attacks on mosques and on Muslims up and down the country. That is a matter of public record, and remains a concern for the police. The far right continues to be an issue of concern for the British government – and the far-right thrives precisely on such sentiment. It was not without good reason that the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, recently declared that fear of Muslims was dividing British society.

The political elite is not grappling terribly well with the challenge of recognising Muslims and their religion as essentially British in the same way that Judaism and Christianity are. Rather than express fears about Muslim women wearing the hijab in visible and public arenas, like an H&M advertisement, surely we all ought to be thankful that Muslim British women feel empowered to be comfortable about their faith. Is that not a testament to the openness and resilience of British society? Would the UK be more successful if Idrissi had felt that she had to take the hijab off in order to be in that photo? Would that make it more of a tolerant society? For some, it appears, bizarrely, that would be the case. The contradiction endemic in such an approach is not only nonsensical, it menaces British democracy.

Dr HA Hellyer is an associate fellow in international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London, and the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC

On Twitter: @hahellyer