MARYAM GHOLAMI
Shabana Mahmood MP has been appointed Home Secretary, one of the most powerful roles in the British Government. It is a post that carries the solemn duty of upholding the rule of law, safeguarding the justice system, and ensuring the same law applies equally to all, without fear or favour.
For many, the appointment was historic: a Muslim woman of Pakistani heritage taking one of the great offices of state. As a Muslim woman myself, born in Iran and having lived in the UK for three decades, I understand the symbolic resonance. Representation matters, but representation is not the same as qualification, nor is it a substitute for impartiality.
The Home Secretary does not serve “her community” or “her people.” She serves Britain. That includes every citizen — Christian, Muslim, Jew, atheist, black, white, Pakistani, Polish, and all in between. Her loyalty must be to the Crown and to the people as a whole. This is why, as I watched her sworn in, my pride was laced with deep concern.
In interviews, Shabana Mahmood has made no secret of how she sees herself. “My faith is the centrepoint of my life … it drives me to public service.” “The fundamental values … are shaped by the fact that I’m a Muslim.” These are not passing remarks. They are statements of core identity, repeated and intentional. She is entitled to her faith, as I am to mine. But the question for a minister of the Crown is not whether she has faith, it is whether that faith comes before duty.
The Ministerial Code is clear: ministers must act “solely in terms of the public interest.” I know that recently this is increasingly forgotten in our two-tier governance, but that is the appropriate standard, They must avoid even the very hint of bias. In the justice portfolio, this is not a guideline, it is of critical importance, for the state of the nation and our democracy.
When the person who must oversee some of the most sensitive and politically charged investigations in the country declares that her faith is the “centre point” of her life, the public is entitled to ask: will that centre point shift if the law demands she act against the perceived interests of her co-religionists?
If there is one issue that will test Mahmood’s impartiality it is the long-running scandal of group-based child sexual exploitation — what the press has long called “grooming gangs” primarily made up of her co-religionists of, like herself, Pakistani origin.
For decades, cases from Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford, and elsewhere have revealed the same harrowing patterns: gangs of predominantly Pakistani Muslim men targeting vulnerable girls, often white and working class. The failures to stop them have been documented in forensic detail. Police officers afraid of being branded racist or worse, complicit in the crimes, social workers hesitant to confront cultural realities, politicians unwilling to “give ammunition” to the mythical ‘far Right’.
Baroness Casey’s National Audit found that in Rotherham alone, nearly two-thirds of convicted offenders were of Pakistani heritage. In many cases nationwide, offender ethnicity was not even recorded — a deliberate omission, according to Casey, to avoid controversy. This is the context into which Mahmood steps as Home Secretary.
She has acknowledged that the scandal “faces a moment of reckoning” and called for “truth and reconciliation.” She has pledged to make grooming an aggravating factor in sentencing and to implement recommendations from Baroness Casey and Professor Jay. And yet, when pressed in January on whether she would commit to whole-life sentences for the most egregious grooming gang offenders, she refused. “We have a shared objective … we will legislate to make grooming an aggravating factor … victims get the justice they deserve.”
This is politician’s language — promising reform, but avoiding the firmest sanction available. To some, that’s pragmatism. To others, it’s a signal: reluctance to impose the ultimate penalty on offenders who are, disproportionately, from the same faith background as the minister herself.
Perception matters. The victims, many of whom have waited decades for justice, need more than careful phrases. They need to believe that the Home Secretary will pursue justice without fear of community backlash, political cost, or accusations of “betrayal.”
This is not the first time Mahmood’s political stance has overlapped with issues deeply tied to Muslim identity and geopolitics. She has been an outspoken critic of Indian policy in Kashmir (where here family originates), a stance that resonates strongly with British Pakistanis. She has participated in and supported pro-Palestinian events, aligning herself firmly with one side of one of the most contested international disputes.
There is nothing unlawful about such positions. MPs are elected to advocate. But these positions, taken together, paint a picture: on matters where Muslim-majority causes are involved, Mahmood has been an active champion. This pattern, combined with her own emphasis on faith as the “centrepoint” of her life, makes it reasonable for observers to ask: when a domestic issue implicates members of her own faith community in serious crime, will she be equally relentless in confronting them?
I left Iran at 12. I grew up under a regime where religion and politics were welded together, and where loyalty to the faith trumped loyalty to the people. In that world, justice was conditional. The rules bent for insiders, and outsiders were expendable. But the UK is different — or at least it is meant to be. Here, ministers swear an oath to the Crown, not to a creed. Their duty is to the people, not to the mosque, church, or synagogue.
This is why I bristle when a minister speaks of faith as her defining centre. I am a Muslim, but my public loyalty is to Britain. In my private life, my faith guides my values. In public service, my oath would guide my actions.
Mahmood says her faith calls her to public service. But what happens when faith calls in one direction, and justice calls in another? And in the grooming gang cases, that test will be brutal. Communities will push back. Religious leaders will plead for sensitivity. Activists will warn of Islamophobia. A Home Secretary must be deaf to all of it — except to the law and to the cries of the victims.
In politics, perception can be as damaging as reality. Even if Mahmood acts with absolute impartiality, if the public perceives her as conflicted, the credibility of the justice system – already at an all-time low – suffers. The grooming gang scandal is not just about punishing criminals, it’s about restoring public trust. That trust has been shredded by decades of political cowardice and bureaucratic cover-ups.
Appointing a Home Secretary who has openly declared her Muslim identity as her primary identity was always going to trigger questions in this specific policy area. Those questions are not Islamophobic, they are the product of bitter experience. They are born from the knowledge that institutions have already failed to act because of fear of offending Muslims.
If Mahmood wants to prove the doubters wrong, she must be more than impartial — she must be seen to be impartial. This is not a plea for Mahmood to renounce her faith. It is a demand for her to reaffirm, in deeds as well as words, that the law of the United Kingdom is her sole compass in public office. She must commit, unequivocally, to transparency on offender ethnicity, especially in grooming gang cases. She must commit to pursuing the severest penalties where justified by law. She must be ready to stand at the despatch box and face accusations from within her own community that she is a traitor, if that is the price of justice. The victims deserve nothing less. Britain deserves nothing less.
This article (Faith, Power, and the Ministerial Oath: Why Britain Deserves Clarity from Its New Justice Secretary) was created and published by Free Speech Backlash and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Maryam Gholami
Featured image: nius.de
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