London Diary: UK's tryst with Islamophobia sparks alarm

It’s not just Muslims in India who say they no longer feel safe due to rising Islamophobia. Britain too is reported to be facing a ‘brain drain’ of middle-class Muslims amid an increasing sense of insecurity.

In the wake of recent race riots that saw their businesses, homes and mosques being attacked by far-right white supremacist gangs, the feeling of being treated as outsiders in their adopted country has grown, especially among the generation born and bred in Britain.

“I was born here, I was raised here. Seeing this, it just doesn’t feel like home. What happened has gotten me scared,” Abdulwase Sufian, a 20-year-old student, told Reuters.

The riots were sparked by a social media campaign of misinformation blaming a Muslim migrant for the fatal stabbing of three young girls during a music event in the English town of Southport. The real suspect has since been identified as Axel Rudakubana, a 17-year-old British citizen of Rwandan origin.

King Charles has been apprised of the Muslim community’s concerns. Harris Bokhari, who has advised the royal family and government on race relations, said recent rioting had fuelled Muslim fears that the UK was no longer a welcoming place for people from different cultures.

He also revealed that he had discussed leaving the UK with his family despite being “somebody who loves this country beyond anything”.

“The way I view it now is that we have a brain drain. So, from the Muslim community, we have really talented people who have left the country and more people [are thinking about] leaving,” he told the Times. They include doctors, nurses, accountants and healthcare workers.

Bokhari also said people were afraid to leave their homes after mosques were attacked. “Add all this up, what does that mean if you’re Muslim in this country? You can’t say this is welcoming anymore,” he added.

Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first-ever Muslim chief minister, said that he and his family were wondering whether they could stay on, while Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, said that “for the first time ever” his daughters were scared because of the colour of their skin.

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An enduring Indian connection

British actress Felicity Kendal — whose sister Jennifer married Shashi Kapoor and who herself co-starred with Kapoor in the 1965 Merchant-Ivory film Shakespeare Wallah — has said that she feels more at home in India than Britain.

In a recent interview, she said that her sense of British geography was pathetic. “I grew up in India. I know where Pune is, but I’m not sure about Weymouth,” she said on the Rosebud podcast. This disorientation nearly scuppered her early career when she confused the venue of her audition in London, where she lived, and ended up in a similarly named pub in Bristol.

Kendal still regards India, where she spent her formative years, as her first home. In her memoir White Cargo, she describes Shashi Kapoor as ‘this tall, beautiful Indian actor’ that her sister Jennifer had fallen in love with, ‘funny and glamorous, the most flirtatious man’.

After early years in Birmingham, Kendal moved to India at the age of seven. Her father, Geoffrey Kendal, was an English actor-manager who toured with his own repertory company, Shakespeareana, around India.

This itinerant life meant that Kendal attended six different convent schools in India. In a 2006 interview with the Daily Telegraph, she said her time in India was “sometimes very hard, sometimes very poor, sometimes ghastly, ghastly, ghastly in all sorts of ways”. But, she added, she did not regret it. It was an “amazing way of living”.

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Alberts versus Victorias

With British institutions in a scramble to correct the gender balance that is usually tilted against women, one of the country’s — indeed the world’s — most eminent institutions is struggling to recruit more men.

The iconic Victoria and Albert Museum, a ‘must-see’ on any tourist itinerary, has discovered that ‘there are too many Victorias and not enough Alberts’, as the Times put it.

The V&A has launched a drive to recruit men after a staff survey indicated “an over-representation of women in the organisation”. By April next year, it hopes that the proportion of men within its workforce will rise from 26 to 30 per cent. While the museum’s director Tristram Hunt and deputy director Tim Reeve are male, the other six members of its executive board are female.

Its neighbour, the Natural History Museum, is also dominated by women: 60 per cent female to 40 per cent male employees. But for how long?

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And, finally, a nugget of cricket history via the Times: ‘Cricket celebrated its 400th anniversary [this year]. On 28 August 1624, Horsted Keynes played West Hoathly in the first recorded match in the sport’s history, though it was recorded for an inauspicious reason: one of the players died. While attempting to hit the ball a second time to avoid being caught, Edward Tye instead hit fielder Jasper Vinall, who died from the blow.