Resource type: Podcast
This episode of Five Minutes With… features Zara Mohammed, Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain.
Zara talks about British Muslim identity, her experience as a young leader, and how we can create a more optimistic society for young people today.
Recorded in May 2024, it offers a message of hope and a reminder of the importance of giving young voices a seat at the table.
Read a message from our Chief Executive in response to the August 2024 UK race riots.
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00:00 – 00:25
Christina Ogwang (CO)
What are the most important conversations we need to be having today, and how can young people contribute to these conversations? These are the questions we ask our guests to answer in Five Minutes With… In this episode, we speak to faith leader Zara Mohammed. She currently serves as the Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain, and is the first woman to lead the organisation.
00:25 – 00:34
CO
Zara explores her experience with the British Muslim identity, being a young leader, and how we can create a more optimistic society for young British people today.
00:34 – 00:54
Zara Mohammed (ZM)
I think there’s so much on the horizons, for Britons all over the UK today, lots of concerns. But I think what’s really important is around the kind of society that we want. With so many topical issues, from Rwanda, to the cost of living, to simply how can we create a prosperous and optimistic future for young Brits today?
00:54 – 01:13
ZM
I think it’s all to play for. And I think often, being a young leader myself, young people are not at the table but we’re always talking about them. So I think there’s a real need and an urgency to have diverse young views shaping the policy, because guess what? They’re the future workforce, and they’re the ones that really count.
01:13 – 01:21
Ed Newell (EN)
And I guess from a Muslim perspective, how do you see British society and the conversations around Islam within British society?
01:21 – 01:40
ZM
Yeah. So for those of you who may not know me, I was elected as the first female Secretary General. It’s a Scottish accent, yes. The first one from Glasgow, the first female, and the youngest ever in its now 27-year history. And that was a real breakthrough moment in 2021 because no one could believe it. And the British media couldn’t believe it.
01:40 – 02:05
ZM
British politics couldn’t believe it. But the reason I share that is because I’m part of a changing and shaping story of Islam in Britain. And we have this uniquely and very confident British Muslim identity, as a third-generation British Muslim myself, that we’re no longer talking about whether we fit in or not, but how we can actually help make society better and you see that Ramadan is a fixture in the calendar and Eid receptions.
02:05 – 02:22
ZM
You can see that in the diversity of our workforce and even in our politics. But also, I think there’s this that, you know, for us Muslims, you know, Britain is our home. And when we go abroad, everyone gets annoyed at us because we talk about queues and organisation. And, you know, we’re as distinctly British and quite annoying I think, at that.
02:22 – 02:53
ZM
And but for me, I think from a community point of view it’s very positive. There isn’t a church, synagogue, temple where you don’t see food bank or poverty relief. You know, you saw that with Covid, the strength of interfaith work, the challenges of media misrepresentation and politics, which unfortunately is still difficult and challenging. And for many Muslims today who are seeing so much international conflict in the world, are feeling quite upset and distressed around their representation in politics, the rise of hate crime, plenty of negative things.
02:53 – 03:10
ZM
But I am, I’m an optimist and I think that it’s a positive story. And, you know, we’re grateful for King Charles, who’s such a great ambassador of all faiths and, you know, a defender of the faith and he’s been a great friend of Islam and Muslim communities. And I think a really good voice, actually, to say that, no, actually, Britain’s home to a lot of diversity.
03:10 – 03:18
ZM
So as the young Secretary General from Scotland, I hope to do my best to make sure that the story is, despite its turbulence, a good one.
03:18 – 03:23
EN
So how can we involve young people in the important conversations we should, you think we should be having?
03:24 – 03:43
ZM
Yeah, I think so. I mean, often, taking off my kind of Muslim hat there, I’m often the youngest person in the room, in the parliament or in, you know, big corporate meeting or whatever it is, diversity and inclusion seminar. And so I really experience first-hand things around, you know, I’ve been doing this for 35 years. What do you know?
03:43 – 04:01
ZM
Or, you know, literally sitting there thinking, how come nobody’s understanding what I’m saying? How come nobody gets that? In order to get young people engaged, we have to go to where they are. We have to communicate on the platforms they’re on: TikTok, social media, Instagram. I’m not saying that everything is going to work for that. So I think it’s around accessibility and inclusion.
04:01 – 04:20
ZM
But I think our politics are still very much away from the reality that young people face. And for those neighbourhoods in which young people haven’t got a lot going on, there isn’t a lot of jobs, maybe they’re in cycles of deprivation. They really need heroes to come to them. They need people who have achieved success to tell them how they can do it, too.
04:20 – 04:44
ZM
And they also need, I think, brand ambassadors, young people who can also feed into that and say, well, we can do it, and why not? And part of my journey being a first of many, for me it was I had never seen anyone like me in a leadership position in a positive way. What I learned was, number one, focus on the difference that you could make, because everybody’s got these God given abilities and gifts and the world’s just waiting for us to share them.
04:44 – 05:01
ZM
So for me, it was around that compassion and care and consideration that actually I didn’t want to be misrepresented anymore. And that actually I thought being British was a good thing. And we’re not all the same. And my anomaly of leadership, even in this session that we’re in today, shows people that, you just can’t quite box this guy.
05:01 – 05:25
ZM
So my final advice to you all is love who you are and that journey of finding yourself. Surround yourself with good people that cheer you on and push you ever so slightly over the edge to do something you’d never do before, but keep the faith that actually good days are always coming, even amidst the bad ones. Because as long as there are good people to do good work, we’ll get there in the end.
05:25 – 05:40
CO
You can keep up to date with all the work of Cumberland Lodge on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, X, and Facebook @CumberlandLodge or on our website cumberlandlodge.ac.uk. Thank you again to Zara for joining us and thank you for listening.