Veiled Threat: Visibly British Muslim women are not the threat but the threatened

Never has my existence as a mixed-race visibly Muslim British woman been conveyed so perfectly in a book as Nadeine Asbali's Veiled Threat. 

Published by Biteback Publishing in January 2024, the British Libyan journalist and secondary school teacher's latest book is a treatise on the multi-layered biases and challenges faced by British Muslim women today, exploring the intersections of gender, misogyny, race, economics, politics, feminism, motherhood, and education.

Of course, she also looks at the biggest challenge to visible British Muslim women of all — Islamophobia, and it's perhaps fitting that just before Nadeine finished Veiled Threat Israel's war on Gaza began, leading to ever-rising displays of anti-Muslim hate crimes throughout the UK.

"Nadeine went from being a white-passing teenager whom no one paid a second glance to an inaugurated member of the "extra security checks" club at the airport"

The chapters of Veiled Threat are peppered with Nadeine's memories as a mixed-race English Libyan child growing up in Northampton and her experiences as a secondary school teacher.

Through personal anecdotes, Nadeine demonstrates Islamophobia, classism, racism, and misogyny in theory and practice. For example, at the age of 14 when Nadeine started wearing the hijab, she explains how there was a seismic shift in how she was treated upon returning to the UK from her summer holidays in Libya. 

Nadeine went from being a white-passing teenager whom no one paid a second glance to an inaugurated member of the "extra security checks" club at the airport when British immigration officers pulled her into a side room and asked her to remove her hijab to have her bun searched.

Becoming a Muslim threat overnight

In Veiled Threat, Nadeine recalls how a girl she barely spoke at school told her that she could not look at her the same way anymore, and how her favourite teacher started calling her by the only other hijab-wearing pupil's name. Even other Muslim schoolgirls were dubious, asking her if it was a prank. 

It marked the beginning of what would be a lifelong sentence of isolation, judgement, and Islamophobia. And when Nadeine moved into the workplace, she was constantly undermined, underestimated, and misconceived as being oppressed and subjugated — the shared experience of many visibly Muslim women in Britain today. 

Many hijab-wearing British Muslim women — myself and Nadeine included — wanted to move past writing about the hijab — the West is just so obsessed with it. But as Nadeine explains in Veiled Threat, while British Muslim women try so hard not to be defined by their wearing of the hijab, Britain's treatment of us makes it incredibly hard not to feel defined by it. 

Nadeine argues that the world's most politically contested garment needs to be written about now more than ever, with double standards on the rise, anti-hijab laws dominating Europe, and proposed prayer bans in British schools. 

You're called elegant and chic if you wear a co-ord set or a long silk kimono if you're white in France. However, if you are a hijab-wearing teenage girl you face being turned away from your school gates. Veiled Threat illustrates how visibly Muslim women experience a unique, added layer of Islamophobia that non-hijab-wearing Muslim women and Muslim men do not. 

"I know not all Muslims will have that aspect of being mixed-race, but for Muslim women reading Veiled Threat, I hope it feels like they're finally seeing some of their thoughts on the page," Nadeine tells The New Arab.  

"For Muslim leaders who don't wear the hijab, I'd like them to realise that there is an actual difference in how we are viewed, we aren't a monolith and we don't experience Islamophobia in the same way," Nadeine explains.

"Sometimes when Muslims come up on TV, they'll invite a Muslim but not a visibly Muslim woman. There's this assumption that we all experience Islamophobia in the same way, but I want to show through Veiled Threat that there's a really specific way that visibly Muslim women experience it, and that's what I want to tell everyone.

"For non-Muslim women reading my book, I want them to feel uncomfortable and have to grapple with how they perceive Muslim women and realise the inherently Islamophobic way that they see us, even if they think they're feminists."

"We need to oppose the notion that it's not Britsh to be outwardly Muslim, fight the idea that it's not British to pray at lunchtime, and reject the belief that it's not British to wear the hijab"

Arguably the most relevant challenge faced by British Muslim women today is the intersection of Islamophobia and white feminism.

According to Veiled Threat, white feminism functions as a tool of imperialism and a major part of Britain's secular agenda. Nadeine argues that white feminism believes that British Muslim women lack agency because of their male British counterparts, yet at the same time takes agency away from British Muslim women, as white feminists determine what's best for them, rather than leaving it up to British Muslim women to decide for themselves.

"As I wrote in my book, white feminism has replicated the role that men have in the patriarchy. Instead of men telling us, 'Oh, you can't do that', it's white women saying, 'You're not a proper feminist if you do that', and that's harder to stand up against because Britain views ideas of modesty and faith as regressive and outdated," Nadeine told The New Arab.

Double standards and forced values

In Veiled Threat, Nadeine Asbali explains that Muslims in Britain exist in a dichotomy: either as a "palatable Muslim" or an "unapologetic Muslim". 

The first type of Muslim succumbs to the pressures of proving that they are British. They speak perfect English, they forgo outward displays of Muslim-ness and overachieve by doing so. Conversely, the "unapologetic Muslim" is not the opposite but a British Muslim who leads a normal life without going out of their way to appease a society that views them as a threat. In addition, they refuse to shed their religious identity, beliefs, and practices.

"I do understand where it comes from because I saw my dad and friends behave like that. They needed to prove a point that they deserve to be here, and that they're not like the others," shares Nadeine.

"But for our generation, especially our children, I think that we should reject this notion of being palatable and proving our 'British excellence' because it feeds into this idea that we are other. Why should I have to do that? Another person who is white doesn't have to prove anything! As a mother of a young child, I want to instil in him that he doesn't need to prove to anyone that he belongs here or that he needs to earn his place here.

"We need to oppose the notion that it's not Britsh to be outwardly Muslim, fight the idea that it's not British to pray at lunchtime, and reject the belief that it's not British to wear the hijab."

"What we're experiencing as British Muslims with Gaza is linked: secularism in schools and criminalisation of protests. The British state is saying, 'we're going to legitimise your slaughter abroad, and you're going to watch it in silence.'"

As a secondary school English teacher, Nadeine is privy to the forced agenda of secularism at the school level. Being a visibly Muslim English teacher, Nadeine explains how her presence challenges the status quo. In some of the schools that Nadeine trained and worked at she was the first Muslim woman the schoolchildren had ever met. 

"Being an English teacher is challenging the status quo because from my experience most English departments tend to be quite white, even here in East London. There's a mentality among white teachers of thinking the local community has outdated views and that they need to push things like feminism and secularism. They still have this preconception that Muslim women might go to university, but afterwards will get married and will give up work and stay at home."

What does Palestine mean to British Muslims?

Nadine was in the final round of book edits when Israel's war on Gaza began. The British government's blatant support of Israel and the knock-on effect of rising Islamophobia against British Muslims has meant that Nadeine has seen many of her arguments play out in front of her. Because of this, Nadeine has included extra passages in her book about Gaza, Prevent, state surveillance and the effects of British foreign policy. 

"I had finished writing my book and it was in the publisher's hands. Then everything in Gaza started happening and I suddenly thought that my book was already out of date as what is happening now is so relevant to the book. I also didn't want to censor myself and not speak about Palestine because that's in complete opposition to what the book is about," Nadeine explains to The New Arab. 

"Palestine is integral to British Muslim identity," she adds. "I don't think the average white Brit understands why it's such a deep issue for us. There’s the religious side of it; Palestine is a special place for Muslims. But then there's just something on a whole other level that hits you differently when you see children, women and men who look like you and your children, not only being massacred but massacred by a Western ally and under the watch of the country you live in. It’s such a dystopian thing to be watching and such a disenfranchising feeling.”

"What we're experiencing as British Muslims with Gaza is linked: secularism in schools and criminalisation of protests. The British state is saying, 'we're going to legitimise your slaughter abroad, and you're going to watch it in silence'," Nadine explained.

“Our rights in the UK and the US are being slowly stripped away. I spoke about this in the book, but in the most recent review of Prevent they wrote that, ‘We haven't focused enough on Islamism, we need to focus even more on it.’ That goes hand in hand with Palestine. All this suggests that any outward support of Palestine is going to trigger Prevent and it’s going to be seen as extremism.”

Yousra Samir Imran is a British Egyptian writer and author who is based in Yorkshire. She is the author of Hijab and Red Lipstick, published by Hashtag Press

Follow her on Twitter: @UNDERYOURABAYA