There is something about making and enacting a life decision as colossal as rerooting—a choice that requires an intense reckoning with your past and a deliberate projection into your future—that catapults you acutely into the present. For those juggling young families and the relentless grind of busy lives, the present is a strange and alien domain. Accustomed to being preoccupied with constant planning and jumping from one life event to the next, the present feels like arid and hostile territory for those constantly chasing tomorrow.
The present is a sensory plain. Like a predatory animal, your senses become languidly heightened, and you are made acutely aware of the minutiae of your surroundings in a way that escapes you when you are merely rushing to meet a work deadline or preparing evening meals. Suddenly, you 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 thoughts and feelings normally tucked away, left to be unpacked somewhere in the nebulous terrain of the future. It offers an opportunity to gauge the here and now as a barometer for a life yet planned—a moment that will inevitably pass into the oblivion of yesterday, demonstrating the fleeting nature of our temporary selves. It is the antithesis of how we are supposed to inhabit time, breaking free from the illusory schedule we are supposedly invested in yet perennially absent from.
Being conscious of this gap between past and future, this blink-and-you-miss-it step on the treadmill of the present, also grants a strange spatial awareness. When dislodged from the structures that constitute individual identity—the school, the office, the neighbourhood—you realize how disposable you are as a component of those systems. It creates a necessary, humbling dwarfing effect. So much of human identity is invested in feeling part of a greater network, dictating how we see ourselves. To be broken off from that context exposes our smallness in unsettling ways. People are resolutely stuck to the concepts that grant them a desired self-image, floating like stubborn barnacles into a planned future, anchored within a three-dimensional nexus near the familiar local high street or secondary school.
And geography is one of the key determiners in the way we identify and situate ourselves in this world.
Human nature remains fundamentally tribalist, tethering individuals crudely to the material ground they inhabit. This dynamic highlights the arbitrariness of national and cultural branding. People identify with or against the flag they sit under, the postcode they reside in, or the football team nearest to their proximity. This tribalism encompasses everything from an angry, fragile, and exclusionary skin-headed nationalism to an achingly melodic folk culture rooted in the nostalgia of earth and soil. It sears a loyalty that can be belligerent and ugly, or deep and beautiful, yet fundamentally senseless. It plays into grand narratives that people possessively cling to, feeling coded within them to the point of feeling formless and bereft without them.
"Home" remains a word that embodies the wonderment of language. It is simultaneously universal and specific, immediately understood yet harbouring deeply personal implications for every individual. For such a small word, it carries the colossal weight of tethering human existence to a specific concept and space. Its unassuming, monosyllabic structure serves as an economic vehicle for a wide array of personal meanings, worn and familiar like the places shaped by human existence.
For British Muslims watching the harrowing realities of violence abroad—where children lose their lives on an hourly basis due to a shared identity—the concept of Muslim belonging has fundamentally shifted. Nothing taken for granted as natural can be assumed anymore. Unquestioned axioms carried in back pockets have vanished overnight, leaving a cold, gaping space. The realization sets in that they simply do not exist in the same world as others, and they can no longer afford comforting delusions. British Muslims, in particular, have known for quite some time that this sense of belonging, tribalism, and nationalism comes with a distinct and telling discomfort.
National rhetoric concerning belonging explicitly draws a line at the Muslim identity, a reality reinforced by recent events. Social anxiety is built into the Muslim experience on both micro and macro levels. Daily street interactions and relentless media headlines send a clear message: to belong is to not be Muslim, and to be Muslim is to not belong.
Witnessing the state of public discourse over the embers of recent race riots affords a renewed sense of perspective. When hotels housing Muslims can be targeted and exits blocked, simply existing as a Muslim can feel perilous. Beyond street-level hostility, when the mere act of casting a ballot—an absolute civic right—sends the media into a frenzy, it forces a hard interrogation of the assumptions underlying citizenship, legitimacy, and humanity. Evidently, a conspicuous, Muslim-shaped hole exists within these popular concepts.
Conversations surrounding Muslim migration have taken on a detached, sober tone. Many Muslims witness predictable events with a resignation born from growing up in a hostile media climate. This hostility is moving beyond a mere footnote in contemporary discourse; it is becoming a relevant part of how British Muslims perceive themselves and their place on earth. It forces a realization of what it means to be a traveller. Life is inherently transitory, yet humans remain emotionally blinded by the intoxicating distractions of the everyday. Making a conscious decision to change one’s place and time on earth requires an effort anchored in breaking through everyday deflections and grappling with the current state of society.
While motivations to leave vary, social media has frequently highlighted Forex traders rhapsodising about moving to Muslim countries for material benefits, though many Muslims are not chasing a capitalist dream. Others have moved for affirmative religious purposes rather than reactionary ones. What unites these strands is the sometimes fragile foundation of belonging for Muslims in the UK—not to suggest they don’t or shouldn’t call it home, but rather an acknowledgment of its precarious nature.
Much of Muslim cultural canon has historically fixated on diaspora sentiment, the feeling of being the "other," and quaint narratives of cultural nostalgia. However, the current historical moment demands a departure from this diaspora twee. For many in a position to do so, it is an upturn of passive consequence and cultural stagnation. It is not about looking backward to a romanticized "motherland," but acknowledging the streets grown up in, the concrete pavements that form part of sensory DNA, and the visceral connection to spaces where one is ultimately made to feel alien. It is an understanding of belonging to a house, a street, or a neighbourhood, but less so to a nation-state that continuously questions one’s place.
Leaving, so finally, a place that delegitimises your existence, despite it being the only place you’ve existed in so completely, the only language you’ve conceptualised yourself in, and the only cultural topography you’ve formed, is unnervingly deep.
Leaving is a divorce from a physical space, a moment in time, and a network of social and cultural connectedness. It forces an acknowledgment of the humbling spatial and temporal dimensions of existing, committing to the total unknown while shedding reassuring narratives and external projections of hate. It disorients by contextualizing previously defining aspects of life as a mirage, ultimately revealing that the yearning for "belonging" may not be as paramount as once believed.
Relocating to a Muslim country introduces a different, blunted kind of otherness—navigating a place where one may not speak the language, understand local customs, or feel naturally rooted. Yet, this mirrors the fluidity of home experienced by millions worldwide, forcing a reconceptualization of the self.
For many Muslims, leaving is not a defiant or reactionary choice, just as Islam is not merely a counterpoint to Western liberalism. Muslim existence remains whole and independent of external meaning-making. The pursuit of something better, driven by personal values and faith, happens in spite of the comfort of familiarity.
While the heart is often viewed as the domain of faith, the brain mediates the practical realities of being a believer. Leaving a beloved city like London—the grey backdrop of every life experience, rite of passage, and personal relationship—is profoundly painful. London has long been a tacit, non-judgmental witness to personal histories, embedded in muscle memory. Yet, saying goodbye to that geography grants a new historic and geographic context, enabling a more purposeful consciousness. It is a testing daily reality, but it marks a new chapter undertaken with renewed intention.