Veiled Threat: On Being Visibly Muslim in Britain

Nadeine Asbali
Hardback, 288 pages
9781785908194

Nadeine Asbali would be the first to say that a scarf on a woman's head doesn't define her, but in her case, that's a lie. Nadeine's life changed overnight. As a mixed-race teenager, she had unknowingly been passing as white her entire life: until she decided to wear the hijab.

Then, in an instant, she went from being an unassuming white(ish) child to something sinister and threatening, perverse and foreign. Veiled Threat is a sharp and illuminating examination of what it is to be a visibly Muslim woman in modern Britain, a nation intent on forced assimilation and integration and one that views covered bodies as primitive and dangerous. From being bombarded by racist stereotypes to being subjected to structural inequalities on every level, Nadeine asks why Muslim women are forced to contend with the twin oppressions of state-sanctioned Islamophobia and the unrelenting misogyny that fuels our world, all whilst being told by white feminists that they need saving.

Combining a passionate argument with personal experience, Veiled Threat is an indictment of a divided Britain that dominates and systematically others Muslim women at every opportunity.