Reflections after the University of Salford’s symposium on Islamophobia in Higher Education, 5 November 2026
Yesterday I travelled to Salford to give a keynote (with slides) at the University of Salford’s symposium on Islamophobia in Higher Education, held at the New Adelphi Theatre and convened by the University’s Pro Vice-Chancellor for Social Justice and Equity. It was an impressive event. The partnership between the university’s executive leadership, the Students’ Union and the NUS was evident throughout, and it showed what becomes possible when leaders, student representatives and staff sit in the same room and take a problem seriously. The audience brought together academics, professional services staff, students and community voices, and the questions that followed were among the best I have fielded in some time.
My talk, “Participation Without Progression: Islamophobia, Credentialism and the Structural Limits of British Higher Education”, set out a paradox I have been working on for some years. British Muslims now enter university in numbers that outpace their share of the population, yet those credentials do not convert into equivalent trust, progression or seniority, whether in the labour market or inside the academy itself. Muslim staff remain thin on the ground, particularly in senior roles and in the more prestigious institutions, and sector data on staff religion are too patchy to see the problem clearly. I wanted to show that Islamophobia in higher education is not only about incidents and attitudes. It is structural, and it sits within a hostile national climate and a sector under severe financial strain. What follows are some of the reflections the day left me with.
Marked as Muslim
For me, listening to the Muslim students, one distinct spine I felt running through the questions was what it means to be marked as Muslim. Being marked in this way invites attacks and incidents, but it also prompts a kind of self-realisation: the recognition that others see you as a Muslim, and in a particular way. That awareness can, in turn, lead to a certain self-actualisation. Some of it reflects resilience. Some of it speaks to a sense that a wider, global faith is under attack and must be defended. But there is also a psychological dynamic at play that I find fascinating, and one that deserves further research.
How much of this external Islamophobia do Muslims themselves internalise? I do not mean that they simply mirror, in some asymmetrical way, the racialisation, exclusion and marginalisation directed at them. Rather, internalising it can become a way of storing up and shoring up a sense of self in an environment that is perceived, or actually experienced, as hostile. That hostility has local, national and global features, and there is analysis to suggest that, in many instances, it has persisted.
We don’t trust you
The panellists’ presentations explored, among other things, what it is to be a Muslim woman in higher education and to be seen as Muslim. What does representation mean when you change the way you wear your hijab and people begin to treat you differently, including the very same people who treated you quite differently yesterday, when you wore it another way? And what does that do to a sense of self, and of belonging, within a higher education institution?
Other colleagues spoke about working on Islamophobia in the university as Muslim scholars who, arguably, experience Islamophobia as a lived reality in distinct and specific ways themselves, and about how they cope with the challenges of being a Muslim scholar working on sensitive issues and difficult conversations. Too often they meet resistance from senior leadership and management chains that query the ethics, the methodology, the sample size, the reliability, the generalisability and the apparent risks, and what it all means for the university itself. Senior managers ask: what would this do to our student numbers? How will this make us look to the wider community? Can we afford to be so honest about ourselves?
All of this takes a tremendous toll on scholars of Muslim background, who must navigate risk at every corner: the possibility of being labelled a problem at every juncture, and the genuine prospect of disciplinary action simply for asking difficult questions and holding to them. And, lo and behold, any person of colour who puts their name forward to help deliver EDI initiatives may find that, once the leadership behind those initiatives falls away, they themselves are seen as the problem, seemingly creating problems where there were none. These professionals of colour, some of whom are active, practising Muslims in their personal and private lives, have to sleep at night, get up the next morning and do it all over again. The question is often asked: who sits with them? Who supports them? Who nurtures them? And who gives them the comfort they need, as members of staff asking the tough questions and trying to do the right thing for the greater good, when they put themselves on the line every single day?
Here we are again
Another theme, voiced by Muslim scholars and students alike, was a weary sense of déjà vu. Here we are again, talking about Islamophobia. Nothing changes. We will be back this time next year. EDI does not work. When one leader moves aside and another arrives, we have to start all over again, with new initiatives, new targets and new tick-boxes. Part of this, I think, reflects the way national policy and practice towards minorities, multiculturalism and diversity oscillate between high-water and low-water marks. It is inevitable that institutional practices reflect those wider dynamics, which themselves have local, national and international dimensions.
It is almost as if a university is a boat on choppy waters, itself subject to shifts in forces far larger than it. The captain and crew, the leadership and its students, try to navigate. Sometimes the direction has to change because the water becomes too rough. Sometimes there is a mutiny, the captain is replaced by someone from within the ranks, and the voyage begins again, perhaps on an entirely new heading. There are so many shifting contours here that it is very difficult to pin everything down into a single strategy with a single outcome.
Whiteness and power
A further thread, raised in the questions and again in the discussions that followed, was whether the resistance lies at the level of whiteness itself, as represented in senior management and leadership. People often speak of “failing upwards” in the public sector. That is perhaps a little unfair, because there is undoubtedly talent that rises to the top. Nor is it simply a matter of people protecting their own inadequacies by surrounding themselves with others who share them, in order to hold on to their positions. That would suggest fundamental failures at every level. It is not impossible, and we have seen it happen from time to time, but it does not explain enough. So what is driving this?
Is it the privilege of whiteness itself? Is it a perceived threat from the differences that now enter institutions, through ethnic, racial and individual characteristics that are simply seen as too different, too diverse, and therefore as heralding a kind of displacement? That would be almost a soft form of the “great replacement” theory, undercut by loose ideas of racialisation and of racial hierarchy that remain stubbornly resistant. Perhaps that is part of it. But this is 2026. People read books. They travel. They eat diverse foods in ways they did not twenty, forty or sixty years ago. So what is it? Is it really just about power, and about maintaining power through an ideal built on a particular concentration of ethnic norms, skin tones, behaviours, cultural values and ideals?
Even that, I think, is too static a way of thinking. England is changing. Around 80 per cent of the population remains white, which hardly sounds like a takeover. Over the last seventy years there has been a gradual increase in diversity, simply through ordinary demographic change: first in population centres, particularly the older parts of our towns and cities, and now in smaller towns and rural areas too.
The neoliberal university
Finally, one of the things that most shapes how we perceive, relate to and support one another, or fail to, is that we are operating in a neoliberal higher education sector. Competition, the marketplace, customers and their satisfaction, and the idea that educators are service providers: this is the dominant paradigm, and it erodes critical thinking. It takes away the ability to ask tough questions and turns education into a formulaic exercise that functions more like a machine. With the added pressures of visa changes, many departments will have to merge, some universities may have to merge too, and pressure on the social sciences and humanities will continue to grow because employers, and even government, see them as less valuable. This is not about populist ideals. It is pragmatism in the face of restricted funding formulas and a market logic that treats education as a matter of supply and demand in the labour market.
Perhaps it is the romantic in me, but I still see the university as a place open to all who wish to pursue it: not simply to receive a technical education, but to improve one’s understanding of the rest of the world and to develop a mindset that is independent and critical. That makes for better citizenship. It creates minds that generate opportunities and become entrepreneurial, that build resilience, and that build narratives of national identity and cohesion, because diversity is a strength at every level. Or perhaps we are all being normalised into a framework that treats us as KPIs, indices and ranking models, producing outcomes that can be ordered, classified and therefore financialised. That is the neoliberal paradigm writ large, forty years in the making.
Not game over
And yet, it is not game over. There is still much to play for. Days like yesterday remain an inspiration, and a tremendous opportunity to work with smart, committed people, and universities are still a landscape of exactly that. Despite all our worries about Islamophobia, discrimination and alienation, the vast majority of people in society do get it, or can get it if there is enough engagement and opportunity for them to do so. It is only around 18 per cent of the country that holds hardened views, and those are much more difficult to shift. Ultimately, I have to believe, and I still hold firmly to the idea, that a mind can be shifted through awareness that is intellectual, but also through self-awareness. It is only right to show humility, dignity, respect and appreciation for each other, in a world that is inclusive, not exclusive; that is fair rather than unfair; and that is pulling together, rather than pulling apart.