20 years in the past, I used to be strolling thru central London with my historical past instructor when a bus exploded in the back of us. We have been in London for an awards rite at Westminster the place I used to be to pick out up the award for perfect opposition speaker within the Early life Parliament pageant.
We had arrived at Euston station and all native delivery were cancelled. At this level, we heard that there’d been a bomb scare.
We purchased a map on the station and prompt to stroll to Westminster when the quantity 30 bus exploded on Tavistock Sq.. It was once the loudest sound I’d ever heard. Other people have been operating and screaming. We ran too and took safe haven in a close-by park.
We later realized that 4 bombs were detonated on London’s delivery device. The assault, performed by way of British-born Islamist extremists on July 7 2005, claimed the lives of 52 folks and injured masses. My instructor and I have been a ways sufficient clear of the bus to be bodily unharmed.
4 years on from the assaults on 9/11, this was once a time when, within the minds of many, Muslims have been already related to terrorism. Regardless of going to a state faculty the place the pupils have been predominantly Muslim, we have been referred to as terrorists within the playground.
Within the aftermath of seven/7, there was once no area for Muslim survivors like me. No headlines about our worry, our trauma or our belonging – most effective suspicion. Whilst I used to be fortunate to stroll away bodily unscathed, I carried a distinct roughly wound: being a part of a group that was once handled with collective blame.
My educational analysis makes a speciality of ethnic minority balloting behaviour, political participation and illustration in Britain. The occasions of seven/7 marked a important second in how British Muslims are nonetheless considered as inherently suspect nowadays.
One stark instance was once the implementation of the Save you counter-terrorism programme after 7/7. Save you has contributed to larger surveillance and marginalisation of Muslim communities in the United Kingdom.
Contributors of the general public lay tributes close to Tavistock Sq..
Global Historical past Archive / Alamy Inventory Picture
Concern of Muslims and particularly “home-grown terrorists” has intended that Muslims are made to really feel that they will have to condemn terrorist acts. Although an vast majority of Muslims in the United Kingdom establish as British and are proud to be British voters, British Muslims regularly really feel they will have to turn out their “Britishness” and distance themselves from stereotypes of Muslims as terrorists or terrorist sympathisers.
In 2013, a tool exploded out of doors the mosque I attended as a kid, performed by way of an excessive right-wing white supremacist. In 2025, hate crimes towards Muslims have reached report ranges.
Stereotypes of Muslims in politics
20 years after the London bombings, there are extra Muslim voices in politics and media, and a better consciousness of Islamophobia. The concept that London may have a Muslim mayor, because it does nowadays with Sadiq Khan, could have been unthinkable within the quick aftermath of seven/7.
However the worry that gripped the rustic in 2005 by no means disappeared, it simply modified form. As of late it displays up in political assaults and will increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes within the context of the warfare in Gaza. It additionally displays up in assaults at the spiritual freedoms of British Muslims – like requires a burka ban – beneath the guise of “British values”.
Whilst there are extra Muslims in politics at each degree, they don’t seem to be exempt from stereotypes. In my analysis on ethnic minority native councillors, I’ve discovered Muslim ladies councillors have been regularly stereotyped as submissive and oppressed in white council areas.
A hijab-wearing Muslim girl councillor gained feedback that she wasn’t “westernised enough” and that she had to be “more modernised”. Any other Muslim girl councillor had a white male journalist commentary that she was once “very confident” in some way she felt was once derisive.
Running towards ingrained stereotypes of the way a Muslim girl would behave, those councillors regularly confronted a double burden: having to repeatedly turn out their “modernity” and competence whilst concurrently navigating accusations of being both too passive or too assertive – by no means slightly becoming the slim expectancies imposed upon them.
The 7/7 memorial in London’s Hyde Park.
Chris Dorney/Shutterstock
In analysis on ethnic minority balloting behaviour within the EU referendum, I discovered that marketing campaign teams for Brexit corresponding to Muslims for Britain drew on “good Muslim” narratives to buttress their claims to Britishness. As an example, they have got referred to the sacrifices Muslim infantrymen made for Britain within the two global wars, to place British Muslims – in particular the ones with south Asian heritage – as established and constant contributors of the country.
Whilst a survivor of terrorism, I – like many British Muslims – am repeatedly made to turn out my distance from it. I’ve in particular spotted this as a lady of Bangladeshi heritage, sharing a surname with Shamima Begum, who joined Islamic State as a teen and had her UK citizenship stripped.
Begum may be my mom’s title, my classmates’ title, and shared by way of many British Bengali ladies. It belongs to Nadiya Hussain (née Begum), winner of The Nice British Bake Off and Halima Begum, leader government of Oxfam. At the back of each headline are actual, advanced communities nonetheless hoping to be observed past the shadow of suspicion.
