There is something about making and enacting a life decision as colossal as rerooting—a choice deeply rooted in reckoning with your past and projecting into your future—that catapults you acutely into the present. For those of us with young families or demanding lives, accustomed to the constant grind and planning for one life event after another, the present is a strange and alien domain. It is an 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 grow acutely aware of the minutiae of your surroundings in a way that escapes you when you are preoccupied with meeting work deadlines or preparing the evening meal. 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 the thoughts and feelings you typically tuck away to unpack for another day in the nebulous terrain of the future.
This moment offers an opportunity to reflect upon and gauge the here and now as a barometer for the future you are planning. It serves as a moment that will inevitably pass into the oblivion of yesterday, demonstrating the fleeting nature of our imperfect and temporary selves. It stands as the antithesis of how we are supposed to inhabit time—the illusory part we are all apparently invested in, yet from which we are so perennially remote and absent.
Being conscious of your position in this gap between the past and the future, catching that blink-and-you’ll-miss-it step on the treadmill of the present, grants a strange spatial awareness. While you might not normally be conscious of the social structures you constitute as an individual—the school, the office, the neighbourhood, places where your very being is invested and contributory—becoming dislodged from them creates a necessary and humbling dwarfing effect. Understanding that you are ultimately a disposable component within these systems makes you feel small in the grander narrative of time and history.
So much of human identity is invested in feeling part of a greater network, shaping how we see ourselves. To be broken off from it contextualizes your smallness in ways that can be deeply unsettling. We tend to cling resolutely to these concepts to maintain a desired sense of self, remaining like quietly stubborn barnacles floating blissfully into a planned future trajectory. We see ourselves as part of a three-dimensional nexus between time and space, anchored near the local high street or an old secondary school—a constellation of the familiar that shapes our entire identity.
The Geography 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, tethering us crudely to the material ground we inhabit. This tendency 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 we feel closest to.
This dynamic encompasses everything from aggressive, exclusionary nationalism to melodic, terracotta folk culture that romanticizes the nostalgia of earth and soil. It sears a loyalty that can be belligerent and ugly, or deep and beautiful, yet ultimately senseless. It feeds into grand narratives that we possessively cling to, feeling coded by them to the point where we feel bereft and formless without them.
The word "home" embodies the wonder of language precisely because it is simultaneously universal and specific. We are immediately aware of it, yet largely unaware of the personal, nuanced implications it holds for each individual. For such a small, monosyllabic word, it carries the colossal burden of tethering us completely to a specific concept and space. Its unassuming structure serves as a perfect vehicle for deeply personal contours of meaning, designed economically for everyday use. It is familiar and worn, much like the places we shape through our own existence.
For Muslims watching the devastating realities of children being killed on an hourly basis—tragedies unfolding because of a shared identity and the nullifying concept of Muslim belonging—nothing previously deemed natural can be taken for granted. Those axioms we once carried unquestioningly in our back pockets have disappeared overnight, leaving a cold, gaping space in their wake. We simply do not exist in the same world anymore, and we can no longer afford to live under 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 sense of discomfort.
Navigating Social Anxiety and Exclusion
National rhetoric concerning belonging frequently draws a hard line at the Muslim community, a reality reinforced by recent events. Social anxiety is built entirely upon the identity of the Muslim on both micro and macro levels. The experiences we face 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 the hostility exposed by 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 the lawlessness of the streets, when Muslims merely exercising their civic right to cast a ballot is enough to trigger panic across the media industry, it forces a critical interrogation of the assumptions underpinning citizenship, legitimacy, and humanity. Evidently, there is a conspicuous, Muslim-shaped hole in these popular concepts.
Conversations surrounding Muslim migration have taken on a detached, sober tone as many witness these predictable events with a resignation born from growing up in the contemporary media climate. This hostility is evolving from a mere footnote into a defining factor of how British Muslims perceive themselves and their place on Earth. It fosters an acute awareness of what it means to be a traveller, reflecting the Islamic understanding that life is inherently transitory.
While humans are often emotionally blinded and distracted by the intoxicating immediate present, making a conscious decision to change one’s place and time requires anchoring oneself against everyday deflections. It involves grappling with the reality of our current state, serving as a catalyst for sobering reflection.
While a renewed acknowledgment of these motivating factors to leave has grown, social media over recent years has also been saturated with financial traders rhapsodising about moving to Muslim countries for material benefits. Yet, many Muslims are not chasing a capitalist dream. Some are relocating 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. This is not to say that we do not or should not call it home, but rather that we are occasionally forced to acknowledge the precarious nature of that home.
Moving Beyond Diaspora Tropes
Much of Muslim cultural discourse has historically fixated on the shared sentiment of diaspora, the feeling of being the "other," and the quaint, repetitive narratives that accompany it—such as henna-stained fingertips and eating with one’s hands. However, our current 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 represents an upturning of passive consequence and cultural stagnation.
This journey is not about looking backward at cultural spaces we feel a contradictory proximity to, despite our distance from the "motherland." Instead, it involves the geographies we know intimately—the streets we grew up in, the ubiquitous smell of concrete pavement that forms part of our sensory DNA, and the visceral connections we hold to places where we are increasingly made to feel like aliens. It is an acknowledgment of a fragmented sense of home, where you might feel connected to a house, a street, or a neighbourhood, but increasingly alienated from a wider national political climate. It is a decision that looks 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 known, the only language in which you have conceptualized yourself, and the only cultural topography you have formed—is unnervingly profound. It requires a divorce not only from a physical space but also from a specific moment in time and a network of social and cultural connectedness.
Leaving and reckoning with all the states of your being—who you were, what you are now, and what you want to be—forces an acknowledgment of the humbling spatial and temporal dimensions of belonging. It allows us to see ourselves within both our earthly environment and the broader story of time, committing to the unknown while acknowledging the ultimate futility of striving for fragile worldly acceptance.
Moving to a Muslim country introduces a direct, albeit blunted, kind of otherness. Finding yourself in a place where you may not speak the language, understand local customs, or feel inherently rooted forces a reconceptualization of the self and the discovery of new internal resources.
A Chapter Rooted in Purpose
For many Muslims, leaving is not a purely defiant or reactionary choice. Just as Islam is not the dark underbelly of Western liberalism, Muslim existence is whole, complete, and independent of external narratives. Leaving is often driven by an endeavour for something better, despite the comfort of familiarity. The measure of that improvement remains deeply personal, rooted in individual values and faith-driven intentions.
While the heart is often viewed as the domain of faith, the brain frequently mediates our relationship with Islam, recognizing when a particular environment is no longer right for us as believers. Personally, leaving a city as deeply loved as London—with its grey, everyday presence and role as the backdrop to every major rite of passage and life experience—proves abjectly painful. London has long stood like a tacit, wise old friend, bearing non-judgmental witness to the quirks of life without offering critical commentary. It is embedded in muscle memory and instinctive geographic knowledge.
Saying goodbye to that space and time grants a new sense of awareness, offering historic and geographic context that allows for a renewed consciousness. It enables a more deliberate approach to identity, utilizing new environmental resources to bolster personal purpose. It is a daily test, but it marks the beginning of a new chapter approached with intentionality and hope for the future.