They tilt their heads when I say my name,
as if the syllables carry contraband;
they touch my vowels like checkpoints.
Just because I am Muslim.
They weigh my loyalty as if it were coin
“UK or…?” they trail off,
as though a heart can only hold one horizon,
as though my second oath were ever to a border,
when it is to a prayer that outlives borders.
Just because I am Muslim.
At the stadium turnstile they smile too wide:
“Do you even cheer for England?”
My throat is a brass section when the anthem climbs;
my breath can braid three lions to the wind.
I love the green pitch and the red buses and the wet light of November
love is not a contraband item.
Just because I am Muslim.
And still, “randomly,” the rope parts, the queue splits,
and I am singled out by the mathematics of suspicion.
A wand hovers above my ribs,
a palm grazes a pocket where there is only lint and a folded verse.
Just because I am Muslim.
They clink glasses and watch mine hold water like a quiet moon.
I don’t drink, don’t gamble, don’t womanise
and suddenly restraint becomes a rumor,
virtue stands trial before a jury of winks.
Just because I am Muslim.
I am not part of the gang
not the banter at two a.m., not the boast at dawn.
Jobs float past like lanterns I’m not offered a flame for;
rooms dim my microphone just when truth clears its throat.
Just because I am Muslim.
But listen, history walks behind me with a steady lamp.
Sailors with salt-lashed beards once stitched the oceans to these docks,
lascar hands pulling rope through rain,
their sujūd pressed into the planks between watches, unseen,
their names rubbed thin by manifest and mist
and still they prayed.
Just because they were Muslim.
Khaki jackets, crescent names on tags,
marched through mud where poppies now remember;
some of our dead lie under English yew,
the Qur’an recited low where larks rise high.
We bled into the same soil,
our silence added to the nation’s solemn hymnal.
Just because we were Muslim.
Before that, lamps of Córdoba,
script loosening the night around learning;
paper sails crossing from Baghdad’s House of Wisdom,
al-Jabr bending numbers into bridges,
astrolabes measuring the mercy of the stars.
Ink made paths where empire made walls.
Just because we were Muslim.
A green dome in Surrey called the rain to witness,
prayers braided into English weather long before your grandad’s birth;
Brick by brick, we became one of the small, stubborn sentences
this island says about itself.
Just because we were Muslim.
So when you ask who I am, know this:
I carry a compass that refuses to spin for fashion,
a North stapled to the Name,
a conscience tuned to frequencies profit can’t jam.
Just because I am Muslim.
I bow to none but the Almighty;
my spine is leased to no king but mercy.
You will not buy my “yes” with a corner office
or frighten my “no” with a cold shoulder.
Just because I am Muslim.
I stand where the wage is shaved,
where the hands are cheapened,
where the river is poisoned until it forgets its own reflection.
I stand there and make the small, untelevised repairs
return the coin, return the time, return the respect
the everyday carpentry of justice.
Just because I am Muslim.
I am not afraid, of the smear, the queue, the raised eyebrow’s little empire.
I fear only failing the trust:
the neighbour’s right over my convenience,
the orphan’s hunger over my comfort,
the truth’s straight line over my clever curve.
Just because I am Muslim.
When the market shouts, I keep my word.
When power crowds the table, I make room for the uninvited.
When cruelty dresses as banter, I step between laughter and its target.
Just because I am Muslim.
Fasting taught my body the grammar of need;
charity turned my palm into a bridge;
prayer braided my days to the wide sky’s patience.
I learned that strength is gentleness with a backbone,
that hope wears work boots,
that beauty is obedience to what is Good.
Just because I am Muslim.
Call me unpopular; I will count my angels, not my likes.
Call me other; I will make the other my brother.
Call me rigid; I will bend only where truth bends
and it does not bend.
Just because I am Muslim.
I stand for the poor and the dispossessed,
for the widow whose window looks out on no one,
for the worker who leaves before dawn and returns after dark
with a silence heavy as a toolbox.
Their names are a trust I must not drop.
Just because I am Muslim.
So test my name and test my love
you will find them both unbroken,
stitched with early rising and late returning,
with apologies made promptly and debts paid gladly.
Just because I am Muslim.
And if you ask what hope looks like in this century of friction,
it looks like a hand steady at the plough,
a tongue that refuses to sell the story short,
a spine that doesn’t bow for gold,
a heart that opens its door before the knock.
Just because I am Muslim.
I am not here to be a shadow or a suspect;
I am here to be a servant
and that is the bravest thing a citizen can be.
I am, God willing, the saviour and the hope of any street I walk
not by thunder but by rain, not by slogan but by service
and if you need me, I am already knocking.
Just because I am Muslim.
