10 years ago, the King’s Fund published a report which showed, for the first time, that Muslim healthcare workers were far more likely to experience discrimination compared to healthcare workers from any other religion. Exactly four years ago, the report Excluded on the Frontline: Discrimination, Racism and Islamophobia in the NHS by the MDA (Muslim Doctors Association) and The Grey Area exposed the breadth and depth of the bias that shadows Muslim healthcare professionals throughout their careers.

Nearly 80% of Muslim staff reported facing negative assumptions or stereotypes about their faith at work, including enduring verbal abuse from colleagues. There was a widespread pattern of microaggressions and ‘othering’ preventing Muslim staff from being their authentic selves at work – resulting in poor mental health, stress and workplace attrition.

Many reported feeling pressured to hide aspects of their faith, compromise their religious practice at work, and two-thirds did not feel comfortable raising concerns, contributing to moral injury and distress. MDA’s research has also shown that these experiences are intersectional, with compounding effects on women, internationally trained doctors and visibly Muslim professionals.

BIMA (British Islamic Medical Association) has reported similar patterns in successive surveys, including Islamophobia, as early as medical school and a spike in hostility after the 2024 riots with increased anxiety around personal safety and a sense of institutional neglect. These have been exacerbated by ongoing challenges around censorship and fitness to practise threats for Palestine advocacy faced by Muslim doctors since the Gaza war.

My current research with colleagues working on racism and free speech in higher education highlights how Islamophobia operates through denial and deflection. Muslim doctors who legitimately speak out about ethical or humanitarian crises risk being labelled as ‘divisive’ and a ‘concern to public safety’ without clear standards or objective evidence. This is a form of institutional control which creates a hierarchy of racism.

This is not only a workforce issue. Islamophobia is also a public health issue as Muslims face barriers in accessing care, report lower satisfaction, and real and perceived prejudice. Chronic exposure to Islamophobia contributes to ‘minority stress’, which has well-documented effects on cardiovascular, metabolic, maternal and mental health. These inequities feed the very conditions – diabetes, cardiovascular disease, depression among others – that Muslims are already at higher risk of developing.

We now have a plethora of concordant data that Islamophobia in healthcare is real, patterned and predictable. However, as the UK’s political landscape swings further towards far-right ethnonationalism, there are increasing concerns about worsening Islamophobia.

Ironically, at the same time, a national argument is currently unfolding about whether we are even ‘allowed’ to call it Islamophobia. Since at least 2019, successive governments have declined to adopt the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims’ definition (‘Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness’) and have preferred the narrower term ‘anti-Muslim hatred’.

This matters for healthcare because language drives policy. ‘Anti-Muslim hatred’ is a hate crime focused on individual acts. That is essential – we are seeing record levels of hate crime against Muslims.

However, Islamophobia equips us with a sociological lens to name and examine structural and institutional origins and patterns beyond individual acts relevant to us as healthcare professionals: blocked progression, higher scrutiny of hijabs/beards, ‘having to work harder to prove competency’, fewer leadership opportunities, silencing on international issues, PPE or uniform policies that ignore faith, and the pathologising of Muslim patients.

This is not about semantics – if you drop the word ‘Islamophobia’, you erase the ability to describe, address and hold to account these systemic harms and therefore perpetuate hermeneutical injustice.

Islamophobia Awareness Month 2025 is a call to action for the medical community. It requires us to reaffirm our commitment to tackling Islamophobia and confront the uncomfortable truth that Islamophobia is woven into our institutional fabric, which we must restitch thread by thread. The good news is Muslim doctors and allies have charted the path forward, from exposing the problem to proposing solutions such as MDA’s 12-point action plan.

It is now on NHS institutions, the BMA, and all of us in healthcare to embrace those solutions with urgency. By implementing robust monitoring, fair and inclusive policies, culturally humble and safe environments, and an unapologetic stance against Islamophobia, we can ensure that no doctor or medical student is ‘excluded on the frontline’ ever again.

So, this November, flipping the script means reclaiming the language that tells the full story with justice. It means that instead of Muslim professionals adapting to a biased system, the system must transform to uphold the ideals of equity and care for all. If medicine can model that honesty by naming the structure – not just the sentiment – we will have written a truer, braver script for our virtuous profession; one that recognises its Muslim workforce and patients as partners in healing a system that aspires to serve all.

Hina Shahid is a GP, medical educator and chair of the Muslim Doctors Association; Allied Health Professionals CIC. She is also the regional chair elect for the BMA's forum for racial and ethnic equality in London