“They do mean me.” As anti-Muslim rhetoric grows louder on Britain’s streets, I can’t help but reflect on fear, belonging, identity and the unsettling feeling that the country I once called home is turning against people like me.
The slogans and shouts from the so-called Unite the Kingdom rally this weekend have left me feeling very uneasy.
If it were about injustice, widening inequality, governmental incompetency, or the anger of ordinary people constantly being misled by a self-serving elite taking the public for a ride, then I’d be right there alongside you comrades.
But despite repeated insistence that it was not a racist right-wing rally, and while I have no doubt that many in attendance genuinely believe that to be true, much of the messaging emanating from it has been overtly and brazenly bigoted, prejudiced and openly hostile towards minorities.
Most of all, it felt not merely tinged with Islamophobia, but like a wholesale battle cry against Muslims. And in that, it felt deeply personal. I have South Asian heritage, I am Muslim and, most visibly of all, I am brown.
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