Posted on August 20, 2025

The Islam I Knew vs. The Islam I See in Britain

If I could return to any point in my life, it would not be the easy days—it would be the formative ones. The hot days. The strange days. The days when everything smelled of jet fuel, dust, and possibility.

It would be Saudi Arabia, from 1973 to 1984. A long way from Suffolk, but nowhere has ever felt more like home.

The Islam of My Childhood

As a boy, I grew up in Saudi Arabia and later Oman. My family were not Muslim. My father had a deep love of the Middle East and, out of respect for our host nations, he made sure we were schooled in Islamic religion and culture so that we could show proper understanding.

It was never about conversion; it was about respect.

Back then, Islam was not simply a religion observed at certain moments; it was the framework of life itself. The call to prayer rolled across the desert air, marking the rhythm of the day. Mosques stood not as political statements but as anchors of community.

At King Khalid Air Base near Khamis Mushait, close to the Yemeni border, we really were in what I would call old school Islam. Miles from the developed cities, Westerners were virtually unknown. To the local people, we may as well have stepped off a spaceship from Mars.

And yet, even as strangers in every possible sense, we were not only safe, we were welcomed like long-lost family.

Even the religious police, who visited our villa regularly to check we weren’t brewing alcohol or practising another religion, were never cruel or violent. They were respectful, polite, simply carrying out their duties. To a child, that didn’t feel oppressive; it felt normal—part of the order and discipline of society.

Life in Saudi and Oman was wonderful. I felt included, cared for, and protected. Islam was not loud or performative. It was lived quietly, with dignity and discipline.

Coming Home as a Soldier

At sixteen, I left for the British Army. I carried with me homesickness—not for Suffolk, but for the Middle East. Years later, when I returned to Saudi as a soldier deploying in the Gulf War, stepping off the plane felt like coming home.

That is how deeply those years had imprinted themselves on me.

The Islam I knew shaped me: respectful, structured, and all-encompassing. It wasn't about appearances or power; it was about a way of life.

The Islam I See in Britain

That is why Islam in Britain today feels so alien. What I see here is not the Islam of my childhood. Instead, it often looks like a distortion.

Here, Islam is frequently loud, politicised, and theatrical. Prayers performed in aeroplane aisles or blocking streets. Mosque networks used as platforms for political influence. Leaders positioning themselves as community gatekeepers, trading Muslim votes for political leverage.

This is not the discipline or hospitality of my memory. It is Islamism—political Islam—where religion is exploited for power, visibility, and control.

There is a bitter irony here. In Saudi Arabia, Oman, or the UAE, such performance Islam would never be tolerated. Prayer there is woven into the fabric of daily life—when the call sounds, you go to the mosque, or pray at home or work.

Discipline and humility guide the practice. If someone blocked a road or staged a prayer for attention, they would be reprimanded for disorder. Authorities in Riyadh, Muscat, or Cairo would act swiftly.

And yet, in Britain, this very behaviour is indulged. Public street prayers, confrontational displays, loud demands for accommodation—these are not about devotion, but about identity politics. They are about being seen rather than serving God. Islam becomes a performance, a marker of territory, a tool for political leverage.

The Western Naivety

This distortion did not happen by accident. In the 1990s and 2000s, successive Labour governments embraced multicultural policies that empowered Islamist gatekeepers.

Instead of encouraging integration, they channelled money and legitimacy into networks later linked by the Government’s own Muslim Brotherhood Review to transnational Islamist movements.

At the same time, Tony Blair’s foreign policy made things worse. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were meant to fight terrorism but instead destabilised whole regions, spawning groups like ISIS and providing radicals in Britain with the perfect propaganda: “The West is at war with Islam.”

The Chilcot Inquiry later concluded that Britain’s involvement in Iraq increased the terror threat at home, and former MI5 Director-General Eliza Manningham-Buller testified that the war had “radicalised” young men in the UK and made the country less safe.

The tragic result was that Islamist groups in Britain used both multicultural indulgence at home and war abroad as fuel. They grew louder, bolder, and more entrenched, while ordinary Muslims and the wider public were left to live with the fallout.

The cost has been profound. A 2022 YouGov poll found that 55% of Britons now have a negative view of Islam, while another found that 48% believe Islam is incompatible with British values.

This is not just a statistical problem; it is a human one.

Ordinary Muslims are trapped between two fires: Islamist networks that police their communities on one side, and anti-Muslim suspicion and hostility on the other.

Non-Muslims, meanwhile, no longer see the Islam of dignity, discipline, and hospitality that I grew up with. They see the Islam of spectacle and confrontation—and they respond with resentment.

And so the true Islam—the whole way of life I knew as a boy, which gave stability and belonging—is obscured by politics and performance.

Conclusion: Remembering What Islam Can Be

When I look back on my childhood, I do not remember fear or exclusion. I remember family friends who looked after us as if we were their own.

I remember the order and rhythm of life shaped by faith.

I remember safety, inclusion, and belonging—even as a Westerner in the middle of old school Islam.

That is why the Islam I see in Britain saddens me. Because I know what Islam can be when it is lived as a way of life, not wielded as a political tool.

I know its discipline, its dignity, its community.

And I know that both Muslims and non-Muslims are poorer, angrier, and more divided when the authentic faith is overshadowed by spectacle.