This Ramadan will be one of the hardest I’ve ever experienced as a Muslim

The al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem (Photo: Ammar Awad/Reuters)

The Ramadan lights may now be on in central London and the supermarket shelves might be stacked with dates, rice and mango juice but things feel different this time. Many Muslims, like myself, are preoccupied with the plight of the people of Gaza where the death toll has now exceeded 30,000.

Like most Muslims, Ramadan is by far my favourite time of year. It is a 30-day boot camp designed to boost our connection with God and the Quran, to work on our characters and ultimately re-centre our existence – to remind us that we were not created for the 9-5 grind and that we exist to worship God. Yet, despite desperately needing the spiritual grounding and healing that a month spent in worship provides, I can’t help but feel an overriding sense of guilt and numbness this year.

While we open our fasts on home-cooked meals, queue up to buy whatever our fasting stomachs crave and rush to perform nighttime taraweeh prayers in masjids (mosques) here in the UK, our Gazan counterparts are dying of starvation.

According to Unicef, 90 per cent of children in Gaza are experiencing “severe food poverty” and humanitarian organisations have warned that Gaza has the highest proportion of people living with food deprivation anywhere in the world.

Those who have tried to receive aid are no safer. Just weeks ago, more then 100 people were killed in what has been dubbed the “flour massacre”, where Israeli troops opened fire on hungry Palestinians queuing up to receive aid.

As Muslims up and down the country take part in this month of spiritual devotion, personal sacrifice and community, I know that our minds will be haunted by pictures of rows of worshippers kneeling down in the rubble that was once their homes to perform Friday prayers, or the thousand or more Gazan mosques that have been destroyed since October.

Against the ever-rising death toll, the blood-soaked burial cloths and parents cradling the bodies of their children, a terrible shadow will hang over us all in gatherings with our loved ones. I will smile with children running around me in the mosque, but I’ll be thinking also of the 10 children who lose a limb every day in Gaza, of the more than 12,000 killed in the conflict since October and of the “babies slowly perishing under the world’s gaze” as put by Unicef.

At the same time as feeling the mental and emotional strain of watching in real-time people who look, sound and live like you do experience slaughter, the threat of being Muslim in Britain feels more pronounced than ever.

Incidents of anti-Muslim crime have risen 335 per cent since October. Muslims across the UK have been the victim of horrific Islamophobic abuse such as a pig’s head being thrown through a residential window in Blackburn and two hijab-wearing women being mowed down by a car in east London. But what has made the experience of being visibly Muslim in Britain all the more viscerally threatening lately is the Islamophobic rhetoric being shared and normalised by those in our political class.

From Paul Scully peddling the racist conspiracy theory that Muslim-majority areas such as Tower Hamlets are “no-go” zones (which he has since apologised for) to former home secretary Suella Braverman’s spurious claim that Islamists (which seems to be any Muslim with a political opinion) are in charge of Britain, there is an atmosphere at the moment that makes it feel actively unsafe to be Muslim in public.

The Prime Minister’s speech last week, essentially equating pro-ceasefire marches with extremism, has added to this sense of criminalisation and attack that many British Muslims like me are feeling right now.

What politicians say has a real effect on our lived experiences. This is amplified during Ramadan, when we are likely to be travelling home in the dark after nighttime prayers at the masjid, and possibly dressed in a more typically “Muslim” way than at other times of the year. Masjids often become targets during Ramadan too, as people are aware that thousands of Muslims are bound to be inside for a number of hours, making us vulnerable to attacks from those with Islamophobic agendas. In the three years leading up to 2022, a study found that just under half of all UK mosques had been the victim of a religiously motivated attack. If mosques often bear the brunt of discriminatory attitudes towards Muslims, then this year that threat seems more intense than ever.

No doubt, the start of Ramadan will inspire a host of “Ramadan Mubarak” messages from companies and institutions, like that posted by Number 10 every year. But given the deafening silence of many of these entities on the plight of the innocent people of Gaza (especially compared to their outpouring of support for the victims of other conflicts like Ukraine), for me, these Ramadan messages will fall flatter than ever this year. The Israeli bombardment of Gaza and the West’s unwavering support for Israel has opened my eyes to how meaningless much of what counts for Muslim inclusion in our society really is and celebrating Ramadan with us means nothing if you are unmoved by war crimes committed against our sisters and brothers abroad.

My conflicted feelings about Ramadan are heightened by the fact that it is well-documented that every year, Israel renews its assault on Palestinians at the start of the holy month. Weeks ago, Israeli officials explicitly warned of their intent to begin their military campaign in Rafah as Ramadan begins. Ramadan is such a special month that Muslims actively pray to be able to reach the next one in order to reap its blessings. Unfortunately, the people of Gaza are likely to have one that is defined by yet more violence, starvation and a brutal military occupation while the world looks on, and the hearts of Muslims in Britain remain with them.

Nadeine Asbali is a secondary school teacher in London and the author of Veiled Threat: On being visibly Muslim in Britain