There is something about making and enacting a life decision as colossal as rerooting—a decision inextricably bound up with reckoning with your past and projecting into your future—that catapults you so acutely into the present. For those of us with young families or demanding lives, accustomed to the constant grind of planning for one life event after another, the present is a strange and alien domain. It is arid and hostile territory for those constantly chasing tomorrow.
The present is a sensory plain. Like a predatory animal, your senses are languidly heightened, making you acutely aware of the minutiae of your surroundings in a way you rarely are when preoccupied with meeting work deadlines or preparing the evening meal. You suddenly hear the small, echoing drips of a leaking tap or notice a discerning crack in the wall. The present gives you pause in a discomforting way because the stakes are unnervingly high. It forces you to address the thoughts and feelings we typically tuck away, leaving them to be unpacked at some nebulous future date. It offers an opportunity to gauge the here and now as a barometer for a future you are planning, recognizing that the current moment will itself pass into the oblivion of yesterday, demonstrating the fleeting nature of our temporary selves. It is the antithesis of the time we are supposed to inhabit—the illusory part of life we are ostensibly invested in yet perpetually remote and absent from.
Being cognizant of this gap between the past and the future, this blink-and-you’ll-miss-it step on the treadmill of "now," grants a strange spatial awareness. Where we might not ordinarily be conscious of the structures that define us as individuals—the school, the office, the neighborhood—our very being is invested in them. Becoming dislodged from these environments, and realizing one is a disposable component, creates a necessary kind of dwarfing. You suddenly feel small in the grander narrative of time and history. So much of our identity is invested in feeling part of a greater network, so much of it constitutes how we see ourselves, that being broken off contextualizes our smallness in unsettling ways. We are resolutely attached to the concepts that give us a sense of self, like quietly stubborn barnacles floating blissfully into a future planned as a tidy trajectory near the local high street and our old secondary school.
Geography and the Architecture of Identity
Geography remains one of the key determiners in how we identify and situate ourselves in the world. As humans, our very nature is tribalist, and we tether ourselves crudely to the material ground we inhabit. This territorial attachment exemplifies the futility of our material selves and highlights how arbitrary and superficial national or cultural branding can be. We identify with or against the flag we sit under, the postcode we live in, or the football team nearest to our proximity.
This encompasses everything from the angry, skin-headed nationalism that is fragile and exclusionary to the melodic folk culture focused on the nostalgia of the earth and soil. It sears a loyalty that can be both belligerent and ugly, or deep and beautiful, yet fundamentally senseless. It plays into grand narratives that we possessively cling to, feeling coded by them to the point of feeling bereft and formless without them.
"Home" is one of those words that embodies the wonderment of language perfectly. It is simultaneously universal and specific; we are immediately aware of it, yet largely unaware of the personal implications it holds for each individual. For such a short word, it carries the colossal responsibility of tethering us completely to a single concept and space. Its unassuming, monosyllabic structure serves as an efficient vehicle for the contours of its meaning, worn and familiar like the places we shape through our existence.
The Fracturing of Belonging for British Muslims
For Muslims witnessing the devastating reality of children being killed on an hourly basis on account of a shared identity, and facing this nullifying concept of Muslim belonging, nothing deemed natural can be taken for granted anymore. Axioms carried unquestioningly in back pockets have disappeared without warning overnight, leaving a cold, gaping void. We simply do not exist in the same world and can no longer afford to harbor illusions. British Muslims, in particular, have known for quite some time that this sense of belonging, tribalism, and nationalism comes with a strange and telling discomfort.
National rhetoric concerning belonging draws a hard line at the Muslim, a reality reinforced by recent events. Social anxiety is built entirely upon the identity of the Muslim on both a micro and macro level. Daily experiences on the street and the headlines we read day in and day out convey a clear message: to belong is to not be Muslim, and to be Muslim is to not belong.
Witnessing the state of public discourse and feeling surrounding Muslims in the wake of recent race riots provides a renewed sense of perspective. Hotels can be targeted and exits blocked simply for housing Muslims; existing as a Muslim can feel like a crime punishable by peril. Outside the lawlessness of the streets, when Muslims merely make a mark on a ballot paper—an absolute civic right—it is enough to send the media industry into a frenzy. This demands an interrogation of the assumptions upon which citizenship, legitimacy, and humanity are based. A conspicuous, Muslim-shaped hole exists in these popular concepts.
Conversation surrounding Muslim migration has taken on a detached, sober tone. Many Muslims witness these entirely predictable events with a resignation born from growing up in the prevailing media climate. This animosity is becoming more than a mere footnote; it is now an active part of how British Muslims perceive themselves and their space on earth. It fosters a genuine understanding of what it means to be a traveler, reinforcing the absolute Islamic truth that life is transitory. Making a conscious decision to change one’s place and time on earth, when privileged with the choice, requires an effort anchored in the daily reality we often shroud in deflection. These recent events have served as a catalyst for sobering reflection.
While there is a renewed acknowledgment of these motivating factors, social media has increasingly been dominated by financial commentators and traders rhapsodising about moving to Muslim countries for material benefits, even as many Muslims are not chasing a capitalist dream. Despite anxieties regarding the perceived liberal ruination of the Muslim child, others have moved for affirmative religious purposes rather than reactionary ones. What unites these diverse motivations is the sometimes fragile foundation of belonging for Muslims in the UK—not to deny that it is or should be called home, but to acknowledge its precarious nature.
Moving Beyond Diaspora Twee
While much of the Muslim cultural canon has fixated on the shared sentiment of diaspora, the feeling of being the "other," and the repetitive, quaint narratives of henna-tainted fingertips and eating with hands, our historical moment demands a departure from this diaspora twee. In fact, it requires inverting that story. For many in a position to do so, it is an upturn of passive consequence and cultural stagnation crystallized in poetic sentiments.
This departure is not about looking backward at cultural spaces where we feel a contradictory proximity despite physical distance—the "motherland." Rather, it confronts the geographies we know intimately: the streets we grew up on, the ubiquitous smell of concrete pavement that forms part of our sensory DNA, and the visceral connections to places where we are made to feel like aliens. It is an acknowledgment of a lack of a traditional maternal homeland, an understanding that you belong to a house, a street, maybe a neighborhood, but less so to a hostile nation-state. It is a decision looking forward into what could possibly be, rather than what has passed.
Leaving a place that delegitimizes your existence—despite it being the only place you have lived, the only language in which you have conceptualized yourself, and the only cultural topography you have formed—is unnervingly profound. It involves divorcing oneself from a physical space, a moment in time, and a network of social and cultural connections.
Leaving forces us to acknowledge the humbling spatial and temporal dimensions of belonging and existing, allowing us to see ourselves within both the geography of the earth and the story of time. It is a commitment to the unknown, an excommunication from a fractured sense of belonging, and an acknowledgment of the futility of trying to fit narratives of reassurance or hate. It is disorienting because it renders everything previously invested in as ephemeral as a mirage. Ultimately, leaving makes you realize that what you yearned for as "belonging" may not be as critical as you once believed.
A New Chapter
Moving to a Muslim country, and experiencing a direct kind of otherness in an environment where the language, etiquettes, and customs are unfamiliar, prompts reflection on the millions who navigate the spatial and temporal fluidity of home. It forces a reconceptualization of the self, drawing on different parts of one’s character and discovering new internal resources.
Despite recent events, leaving for many Muslims is not a defiant or reactionary choice. Just as Islam is not defined by Western liberalism, individual existence remains whole and independent of external meaning-making. Leaving is an endeavor for the better, pursued despite the comfort of familiarity. The measure of that improvement remains personal, rooted in individual values, choices, and faith.
While the heart is often viewed as the domain of faith, the brain frequently mediates our relationship with Islam. We may long for environments that cerebral analysis tells us are not right for believers. Personally, leaving a city as deeply loved as London—with its grey, everyday presence and its role as the silent, non-judgmental backdrop to every rite of passage and life experience—has been abjectly painful. London has mediated relationships and personal development, forming a geography known instinctively through muscle memory.
Saying goodbye to that space and time has granted a new sense of awareness, geographic context, and consciousness. It enables a more purposeful existence while navigating new environmental resources, with the sincere hope that these steps are pleasing and accepted. While testing on a daily basis, it marks a new chapter approached with optimism and renewed intention.