The silence was deafening

It was on an otherwise unremarkable afternoon this summer, while I was walking along Chatham High Street, when I became the victim of Islamophobia .

I’d been running errands when a group of children, no older than 10, walked by me and shouted: ‘Got a bomb under your mop?’.

I was stunned by their blatant, unashamed racism – and yet I didn’t do or say anything in my defence.

Partly because I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of a reaction, but also because I know that when you’re a visibly Muslim woman, a comeback can be filled with risk.

So instead of responding, I kept going about my day as if nothing had happened.

People around me were oblivious as they walked past.

I wondered had we reached a point where incidents like this have made people desensitised?

This wasn’t the first time I’d heard such abuse – sadly it’s part of daily life for Muslim women in Britain – but I fear such slurs are only becoming more visible, more brazen.

That’s why, as another Islamophobia Awareness Month draws to a close, I urge people not to stand by in silence when you witness racially motivated abuse.

When you do nothing, this type of behaviour becomes even more entrenched in our society, a tacit endorsement that ensures it’s passed down from one generation to the next.

Instead, call it out.

Stand up for people who are being attacked.

We need to create an environment where individuals feel they can speak up when they’re the victims of racism without feeling like they’re risking their personal safety.

So they don’t have to tolerate it in silence, like I did that day.

So that we can look forward to a time where this mindset is recognised for what it is: ignorant and unacceptable.

Islamophobia Awareness Month takes place every November in the United Kingdom.

It is a nationwide campaign aimed at raising awareness about Islamophobia and celebrating the contributions of the British Muslim community.

The campaign involves a variety of events and activities, including discussions, lectures, exhibitions, and more, which are designed to educate the public about Islamophobia and its impacts on society.

IAM is supported by organizations like Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND), which plays an active role in organizing and promoting the campaign.

Islamophobia is rooted in a form of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or even the perception of it.

For me, my first encounter with it happened when I was eight.

Standing beside my mother, her sari pulled over her head, in a supermarket queue, we were perplexed when the cashier lifted a packet of pork sausages from our basket.

We couldn’t understand how they’d got mixed up with our groceries – after all, we didn’t eat pork.

And the staff knew us well enough to know that.

Then the shop assistant, who’d been stacking shelves, wandered over.

Immediately, the two of them started sniggering as they looked at us.

This was no mistake.

It was a message.

A shop assistant slipped it in.

We didn’t belong, and they wanted us to feel it.

Once I understood that me and my family were seen as ‘other’, the racism became even more apparent.

I was just 14 when, during the time that Margaret Thatcher had allowed US planes to use British airspace to bomb Libya in retaliation for the deaths of two US servicemen, a bus driver closed the doors in my face and told me to ‘Go back to Libya’.

Almost automatically I said, ‘I’m not from Libya’, as though that might change something.

It didn’t.

The bus pulled away and someone else at the bus stop shouted: ‘Kick her a bomb’ – which doesn’t even make sense.

Another time, I was sitting opposite two young men on a train in London who started muttering, but still loud enough that I could hear, about ‘f***ing Islamists’.

‘They’re taking over,’ one of them said, while looking directly at my hijab.

I wanted to snap back, but I bit my tongue.

The worst part in both those experiences was that nobody around us said anything.

No one intervened or came to my defence.

A few passengers looked on awkwardly, but most pretended they didn’t hear.

So I was forced to sit quietly, waiting to get off at the next stop.

There is a pattern to this abuse, and each spike I’ve experienced has coincided with moments when Muslim women are treated as a topic of debate rather than people standing in front of them.

According to official 2024 data for England and Wales, 45% of all recorded religious hate crime was directed at Muslims.

Of those targeted, around 85% were Muslim women in public spaces – on trains, in shops, on university campuses .

I for one can’t see those numbers getting better any time soon.

My daughter, who works in the NHS, frequently deals with members of the public who cannot hide their prejudice .

She often tells me how patients come up to the reception desk, look her over, smirk, and walk away, asking to speak to someone else instead.

My teenage niece has also told me how a classmate had tried to ‘protect’ her by telling someone else she ‘wasn’t really Muslim’.

Defiantly, my niece said: ‘But I am a Muslim.’ And while I felt deep pride in her standing up for who she is, I was also frustrated that her friend saw her identity as something to hide.

I felt like I’d come back to a very different Britain.

Far-right protests were spreading across the country and the streets were lined with Union Jacks and St George’s flags.

It broke my heart to see a symbol of unity being used to signal a hostility that had been simmering for years.

It made my mother so nervous that, while out one weekend in Kent, she held my hand so tightly – something she doesn’t usually do – I thought she might never let go.

As we walked beneath rows of those flags, I gently reminded her that it was ‘our flag too’.

But at times it’s easy to forget that.

I didn’t tell anyone about that incident on Chatham High Street.

Not my family, nor my friends.

But I was affected by the words and even more affected by who this Islamaphobic comment came from.

The fact that they were children was the most depressing part of the whole encounter.

That’s why Islamophobia Awareness Month matters: because the perpetuating of racist, discriminatory ideology is unacceptable, and we all have a role to play in stamping it out.

Because it’s not just individuals who are responsible for enacting change.

I went to London’s last remaining Tube station pub — it was almost perfect
The media must stop treating Muslimness as shorthand for danger.

Schools need to take Islamophobia as seriously as any other form of bullying.

Public transport must have policies that actually mean something when abuse happens.

And workplaces must look at who is constantly overlooked, interrupted, or passed over and why that is.

If we continue ignoring the strangers shouting slurs, allowing institutions to turn away quietly , the message will always be the same: our presence is a problem, when really it’s nothing of the sort.

Originally published November 29, 2025
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