Sayeeda Warsi — a Bridge between Islam and the West
By Dr Akbar Ahmed
American University
Washington, DC

The life of Baroness Sayeeda Warsi has been full of drama. As if becoming a member of the House of Lords, the first Muslim female cabinet member, and co-chair of the Conservative Party was not enough, she created high drama when in 2014 she resigned from government in protest against the situation in Gaza. Her decision to publicly rebuke her own government earned her its wrath, but brought her respect and affection of the British Muslim community.
I saw the respect and affection the community has for her last year when she and her husband, IftikharAzam, invited us for breakfast at Zoya, the smart new Pakistani restaurant in Bradford. Customers, waiters, and owners were genuinely pleased to see her and several asked to be photographed with her. She is clearly a local hero.
What impressed my wife, Zeenat; my granddaughter, Mina; and myself, however, was her personal warmth and courtesy. She has a reputation for being standoffish but that is more to do with a shy nature than any put on airs. The high positions she has held and her fame have not changed her. She ordered the classic Pakistani breakfast insisting that we should try it as well. This was the full works -halwa-puri, siri-paye, and nihari with paratha, and to top it all sweetmeats that had come particularly recommended. Brimming with Pakistani hospitality, she also ordered a full-scale English breakfast in case we preferred a less spectacular meal. She need not have worried. We tackled the halwa-puri with relish.
The restaurant reflected the new Bradford with its squeaky clean and spotless appearance. It even had the confidence of hiring an Englishman to play the piano without a hint of postmodern irony. It was surreal, eating halwa-puri and listening to "As Time Goes By".
What makes her position remarkable is the fact that she does not owe her eminence to her father or uncle. Rather, she rose to prominence through hard work and support of her role models: middle-class parents. Warsi believes that she got her sense of determination and confidence from her father, who had arrived in the UK with mere £2.50 to work in a mill and as a bus driver. He is now the owner of two multi-million pound businesses.
Being raised a Pakistani Muslim in Britain meant that Warsi always knew that she was different from her peers, whether that meant being called names, such as "Paki", "Asian", "black", or "coloured"; being forbidden from watching TV shows that her peers enjoyed; or wearing pants beneath her school uniform's skirt. When she learned about the Crusades in school, she discovered that the school's narrative bore little resemblance to the Islamic history she had been taught as a child that emphasised compassion, generosity, and friendship. She reflected, "It was another example of how British Muslim kids can have two experiences in parallel, how they can be living two presents based on two pasts, where the two aren't brought into a shared narrative to create a single figure."
Warsi shot to fame when she was appointed to the House of Lords during the summer of 2007. Soon, she became a star of Britain's Pakistani community. With a twinkle in her eye, she recounted during our meeting that at age 36, she had found herself a member of an organisation whose average age was 69.
Her recently published book, The Enemy Within: A Tale of Muslim Britain, is creating waves in Britain. She has been scathing about the government's counter-terrorism policy called Prevent, calling it "toxic" and "broken". The Prevent strategy, which she originally supported as part of a battle between violence and democracy, became problematic for her when she observed it began to alienate British Muslim communities. Instead of working alongside Muslims to address community concerns and causes of violence, attention was paid to the idea that "ideology" was driving terrorists to violence. Warsi noted, "To discuss root causes was seen as an expression of disloyalty."
Naturally enough, her outspoken criticism, delivered with such confidence, has incurred the wrath of many in the media who have poured their scorn into scathing reviews of her book. "Much of the resulting text reads like poor cut-and-pastes from Wikipedia," sniffed The Times.
While her faith was of little concern to others in her youth, a light has been cast on her Muslim identity in the decade since the terrorist attack on 7/7. All around her, Muslims have been cast as a monolithic group whose Islamic values are seen as inherently contradictory to British values, but, Warsi observes, "Muslims are a far cry from a monolith, and British values have evolved drastically over the past two centuries and will continue to evolve." She remains optimistic that if the mistakes made in dealing with Muslims in the past decade are corrected, it is possible to create a shared and inclusive British identity.
She urges Muslims to critically engage with the holy texts and history to determine the best way to live their lives in Britain. Politicians need to stop basing policy on personal agendas and instead develop policy rooted in fact, with emphasis on problem-solving and not fear mongering. Both need to reach out to each other to get to know the "other".
Warsi is an authentic bridge between the communities. She needs to be heeded by both sides.
(The writer is an author, poet, filmmaker, playwright, and the IbnKhaldun Chair of Islamic Studies, American University in Washington, DC. He formerly served as the Pakistani High Commissioner to the UK and Ireland. He tweets @AskAkbar)