There is something about making and enacting a life decision as colossal as rerooting—a decision rooted in reckoning with your past and projecting into your future—that catapults you acutely into the present. For those 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 an arid, hostile territory for anyone constantly chasing tomorrow.
The present is a sensory plain. Like a predatory animal, your senses become languidly heightened, and you are 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. 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 feel unnervingly high. It forces you to address thoughts and feelings normally tucked away, left to be unpacked another day in the nebulous terrain of the future.
This hyper-awareness offers an opportunity to gauge the here and now as a barometer for the future you are planning—a moment that will inevitably pass into the oblivion of yesterday, demonstrating the fleeting nature of our temporary selves. It stands as the antithesis of time as we are conditioned to inhabit it: an illusory construct we invest in while remaining perennially remote and absent from it.
Being cognizant of this gap between past and future grants a strange spatial awareness. While we often overlook the structures that constitute our individual lives—the school, the office, the neighborhood—our very being is deeply invested in them. Dislodging from these environments and realizing you are a disposable component creates a necessary dwarfing effect. You suddenly feel small within the grander narrative of time and history. So much of human identity is tied to feeling part of a greater network, so to be broken off from it contextualizes your smallness in unsettling ways. We cling resolutely to concepts that define us, like stubborn barnacles floating into a planned future, tethered to the local high street or an old secondary school, shaping a constellation of familiarity that defines identity.
Geography as a Determiner of Identity
As humans, our nature is inherently tribal. We tether ourselves crudely to the material ground we inhabit, illustrating the futility of our material selves and the arbitrariness of national or cultural branding. 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 fragile, exclusionary, skin-headed nationalism to melodic, nostalgic folk cultures rooted in the soil. It sears a loyalty that can be belligerent and ugly, or deep and beautiful, yet ultimately senseless. It plays into the grand narratives we possessively cling to, feeling coded in them to the point of feeling bereft and formless without them.
"Home" is a word that embodies the wonderment of language. It is simultaneously universal and specific, immediately recognizable yet deeply personal in its implications. For such a short word, it carries the colossal job of tethering us completely to a concept and space. Its unassuming, monosyllabic structure is a flexible vehicle for personal contours and meanings, designed for efficient use. It is familiar and worn, much like the places we shape through our existence.
For Muslims watching the devastating reality of children being killed on an hourly basis—tragedies unfolding because of a shared identity and the nullifying concept of Muslim belonging—nothing once deemed natural can be taken for granted. Axioms carried unquestioningly in back pockets have disappeared overnight, leaving a cold, gaping void. We simply do not exist in the same world anymore and can no longer afford delusions. For British Muslims in particular, this sense of belonging, tribalism, and nationalism has long carried a strange and telling discomfort.
National rhetoric concerning belonging explicitly draws a line at the Muslim, a reality reinforced by recent events. Social anxiety is built entirely upon the identity of the Muslim on both micro and macro levels. Daily experiences on the street and relentless media headlines 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 over the embers of recent race riots affords a renewed sense of perspective. Hotels can be set alight with exits blocked simply because they house Muslims, suggesting that mere existence as a Muslim in the British Isles can carry extreme hostility. Beyond the lawlessness of the streets, the fact that Muslims participating in a basic civic right like voting can send the media into a total panic forces a deeper interrogation of the assumptions underpinning citizenship, legitimacy, and humanity. Evidently, there is a conspicuous, Muslim-shaped hole in these popular concepts.
A New Perspective on Migration and Transience
Conversations surrounding Muslim migration have taken on a sober, detached tone as many communities witness these predictable events with a weariness born from growing up in a hostile media climate. This hostility is becoming more than a mere footnote; it is now a relevant part of how British Muslims perceive themselves and their space on earth. It offers a glimpse of what it means to be a traveler, reminding us that life is fundamentally transitory.
While some social media spaces are dominated by financial influencers romanticizing moves to Muslim countries for material gain, and others express anxiety over liberal cultural influences, many are moving for affirmative religious purposes rather than purely reactionary ones. What unites these motivations is the fragile foundation of belonging for Muslims in the UK. This is not to say people do not or should not call it home, but rather that they are forced to acknowledge its precarious nature.
While much of the Muslim cultural canon has historically fixated on diaspora, the feeling of being the "other," and quaint narratives of heritage, the current historical moment demands a departure from this trope. For many in a position to act, it is an upturn of passive consequence and cultural stagnation. It is not about looking backward at distant motherlands, but recognizing the geographies known intimately—the streets grown up in, the concrete pavements that form part of sensory DNA—where individuals are made to feel like aliens. It is the realization of a chequered sense of being, delineated by tensions in how one sees oneself versus how society places you in the broader picture of belonging.
Leaving and the Reality of Transience
Leaving a place that delegitimizes your existence—despite it being the only environment you have ever known, the only language you have conceptualized yourself in, and the only cultural topography you have formed—is profoundly unnerving. It requires a divorce not just from a physical space, but from a specific moment in time and a network of social and connectedness.
Leaving forces an acknowledgment of the humbling spatial and temporal dimensions of existence. It commits an individual to the unknown, cutting ties with previous narratives of reassurance and Pigeonholing narratives of hate. It disorients because it contextualizes previously defining elements of life as transient mirages, ultimately revealing that the traditional concept of "belonging" may not be as vital as once believed.
Moving to a Muslim country and experiencing a direct, blunted kind of otherness—where one may not speak the language, understand customs, or feel naturally rooted—evokes empathy for the millions who navigate the fluidity of home. It forces a reconceptualization of the self and the discovery of internal resources.
For many Muslims, leaving is not a reactionary choice, nor is Islam the dark underbelly of Western liberalism; existence remains whole and independent of external narratives. Instead, the move is often an endeavor to seek betterment despite the comfort of familiarity. Like most faith-driven choices, it must be contextualized within its specific moment and intention.
While the heart is often viewed as the domain of faith, the brain frequently mediates our relationship with environment and belief. Personally, leaving a city as deeply loved as London—the grey, everyday backdrop of every rite of passage, relationship, and life experience—has been abjectly painful. London has long acted as a wise, non-judgmental friend, embedded in muscle memory and instinctive geographic knowledge.
Saying goodbye to that space and time has granted a new sense of awareness, historic context, and consciousness. It enables a more purposeful existence while navigating a new environment, driven by intentions renewed daily. While testing, it marks a new chapter approached with optimism and resolve.