The Islamification of Britain By Joanna Williams

City Journal : In Britain, March meant Ramadan. My local supermarket advised me to “Make this holy month meaningful” and offered “everything you need for Iftar, Suhoor, and beyond,” including a range of halal foods. At televised Premiership football matches, play stopped to allow Muslim players to break their fast.

Days before Eid, Muslims gathered in London’s Trafalgar Square to pray in public. The Mayor of London, Sir Sadiq Khan, hailed the “power of being Muslim” as he addressed thousands at the “biggest Iftar in the Western world.”

It’s not that Britons have undergone mass conversion to Islam or, for the most part, have a deep interest in religious practices. Indeed, a leading politician sparked debate by condemning London’s mass public prayer gathering, and boos rang out around the stadium when a big screen announced that the match between Leeds and Manchester City would pause at sunset to allow Muslim players to break their fasts.   

Rather, a growing Muslim population has become more confident in asserting its identity, while Britain’s political and cultural elite increasingly insists upon respect for Islam as a show of support for the supposedly progressive values of diversity, multiculturalism, and anti-racism. The result is not just tolerance of Muslims but an extending Islamification of all aspects of British society.

Photo by Justin Setterfield/Getty Images

The education system plays an important role in normalizing Islamic religious practices among all children. Thousands of schools have changed their uniform policies to let Muslim girls as young as five wear a hijab in the classroom or to ban all girls from wearing skirts, in compliance with Islam’s modesty rules. 

Halal meat is served in school dinners, often without parents being informed. Government guidance to teachers in areas with large Muslim communities warns that art produced by children, as well as music and dancing lessons, may be considered blasphemous or even “idolatrous” under Sharia law. Other advice to schools introduces double standards: one London council urged teachers not to punish Muslim pupils with after-school detentions during Ramadan so they can return home in time to break their fast.

One reason for these developments is, obviously, a growing Muslim population. According to the most recent national census, carried out in 2021, 3.9 million people, or 6.5 percent of the population, describe themselves as Muslim—up from 2.7 million, or 4.9 percent, in 2011. 

But these statistics don’t capture how recent migrants and second- and third-generation citizens from predominantly Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan tend to concentrate in certain towns and cities, particularly in the north of England. For example, the 2021 census found that the Asian or British-Asian population of Bradford stood at 32.1 percent, while Birmingham is home to 195,102 Pakistanis, or 17.2 percent of the city’s population. 

A recent election in the Manchester constituency of Gorton and Denton highlighted the extent of ethnic and religious segregation, even within small geographical areas.

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