Inside Britain’s most segregated city: Areas where nearly half the adults can’t speak English, restaurants with women eating behind curtains and deprived streets where imported religious warfare threatens to break-out… DAVID PATRIKARAKOS

His kofia, the flat cylindrical hat favoured by Somali Muslims, gleams white as he picks me up at the station. A flowing kameez tunic gathers in his lap beneath the steering wheel.

‘Welcome to Leicester, sharif [Sir]!’ says ‘Ahmed’ with a grin.

Originally from Somalia, Ahmed – he doesn’t want me to use his real name – is a publisher, amateur historian and part-time imam. He will be my guide to the city.

‘Are you a meat person?’ he asks. ‘Let’s go eat.’

We pull out of Leicester’s Victorian railway station. Its Grecian Revival architecture fades into the background, a reminder of a very different Britain.

Known down the centuries for its cathedral, ancient market and glove factories, Leicester – the once-prosperous capital of the East Midlands – is now among the first of our cities to have a majority non-white population, along with Birmingham. It is also, today, among the most divided places in the country.

Increasingly, the city’s large Muslim and Hindu communities are at each others’ throats. And, as India and Pakistan clash dangerously, threatening war, many fear that intra-community violence will spill on to British streets as it has done before.

Leicester can perhaps be seen as a parable of modern Britain. It is here that you find competing visions of our nation’s future.

The city’s Asian communities – mainly Bengali, Indian, Muslim and Sikh – are well-established, having first come to work in the city’s hosiery and textile factories after the war.

In the 1990s, they were joined by a very different population. Somalis from east Africa first came here following the onset of the civil war in their homeland. They have been arriving ever since and today number up to 15,000.

Ahmed takes me for lunch at Island Dishes in St Matthews, a district close to the city centre known colloquially as ‘Mashtown’, ‘Hell City’ and ‘Little Somalia’.

Statistically Leicester’s most deprived neighbourhood, this has, at times, been the poorest area in England. Crime is rampant in St Matthews. According to police statistics, 1,625 violent and sexual offences were recorded here in the past year alone.

All around me are Somalis in their long robes. Walking through the street. Getting in and out of cars, eating in takeaways and buying necessities.

Island Dishes offers ‘Swahili, Arabian & African Cuisine’. Next door is Suez Canal barbers. Next to that is another barbershop.

Around the corner is Amira Cafe, where I am told you get excellent coffee, although I see no women among the customers – or, indeed, anywhere on the streets outside.

The takeaway Baaba Shair offers pizzas, burgers and shawarma alongside yet another barbershop.

Island Dishes seems like a standard takeaway: a glass counter filled with meat and salads runs almost the length of the establishment. In an adjoining room, though, I see something I never have before: a section with a curtain that you can pull across once you enter.

This, I am told, is the ‘family booth’ where you can eat privately – that is with any female relatives you have brought with you.

There are no women to be seen, in or out of the booth. I must admit, it’s a disconcerting sight.

Over a meal of halal chicken, lamb and rice, we are joined by Ahmed’s two children, 13-year-old ‘Mohammad’ and ‘Mahmoud’, 11, (again, not their real names). Mohammad wears the cap and kameez like his father.

We discuss football – they support Liverpool and Leicester City – school, Formula 1 and video games.

Mohammad might dress differently, but there is little else to separate either of these cheerful, chatty boys from their fellow pupils at British schools.

According to the 2021 census – the most recent – Leicester is roughly split in two between white and Asian populations, with 43.4 per cent identifying as Asian and 40.9 per cent as white. Within that, 23.5 per cent of the population are Muslim and 17.9 per cent are Hindu.

But there is another striking trend.

Only 57 per cent of Leicester residents were born in England, down from 65 per cent in 2011. More recently, a mid-2023 estimate calculated that 3.6 per cent of the city’s total population had arrived from abroad in a single year.

Mass migration has not turned Leicester into the multicultural idyll of political fantasy. Rather – in scenes witnessed around the country – different communities siphon themselves off into different pockets, interacting only with their own groups.

Muslim families gravitate to the eastern parts of the city, such as the area around Evington Road, while Hindus tend to live near Belgrave Road further north.

Census data also reveal that in one crowded part of North Evington, close to the railway station and the cathedral, a full 43 per cent of the over-16s speak little or no English.

This is perhaps the most extreme example of the city’s ethnic communities failing to integrate, but North Evington is by no means an outlier.

Among 34 Leicester neighbourhoods, at least a fifth of the population can’t speak the language, according to census data. It is almost as if parts of this city now are British in name only.

The result is as depressing as it is predictable. While many migrants have brought huge cultural benefits to the UK, others have imported ideologies and political feuds – in particular from the Indian subcontinent – and, from time to time, the violence that goes with them.

In the months of August and September 2022, longstanding tensions between Leicester’s Hindus and Muslims over issues including the disputed region of Kashmir exploded following a cricket match between India and Pakistan.

Parts of the city erupted into protests and street fighting, fuelled and augmented by online propaganda.

Such divisions are now infecting British politics. In last year’s general election, the sitting Labour MP, Jonathan Ashworth, lost his thumping 22,000 majority to independent candidate Shockat Adam, who ran on a single issue: Gaza.

Adam made his priorities clear by dedicating his victory to ‘the people of Gaza’ while Ashworth claimed he suffered harassment and intimidation throughout the campaign. The Conservatives, meanwhile, won neighbouring Leicester East thanks in large part to the constituency’s substantial Hindu vote.

A source who spent many years working professionally with the tensions and divisions in Leicester, and has seen them at close hand, tells me: ‘The Hindu community tends to vote Conservative, largely as a reaction to the Muslim community’s Labour leanings and its strong links to the Labour political establishment here.

‘Hindus, as a result, have become more radicalised with younger, Right-wing elements emerging, especially from the growing Indian diaspora settling in Leicester, adding fuel to ongoing tensions.’

My source is deeply concerned about the failures of some in the Muslim community, also, saying: ‘Part of the problem is a permissive environment. When ISIS comes out and says throwing gay people off buildings is not wrong but obligatory, few people here speak out against it because they don’t disagree.

‘They are unlikely to go out and do it, but there is a failure from the Muslim community to tackle extremism head-on, partly due to currents of sympathy within it towards certain parts of extremist dogma.’

Back in the restaurant, we finish eating. ‘Come on,’ says Ahmed. ‘It’s time to pray.’

The City Retreat is a masjid – a community centre for Muslims – housed in a corporate-looking building a six-minute walk from the cathedral.

I’m here for Friday Prayers. The imam, Shafi Chowdhury, is highly charismatic.

‘When a fool speaks, don’t be concerned with how to respond to him,’ he preaches. ‘He’s hurling insults and he’s being abusive and offensive; I don’t want to bring myself to that level.’ An elderly man nods along in agreement.

‘If you actually look at what Islam teaches then it’s very different to the acts that people commit in his name,’ this worshipper later tells me. ‘And when it comes to those examples, your problem should be with the individuals not the faith.’

This seems entirely reasonable.

For decades, Leicester’s Asian communities have maintained their own very clear traditions, which in turn have created a hybrid western-Asian culture, rooted in music, film, and food.

By the 1990s, the Belgrave Road was drawing families from as far away as Sheffield for shopping and leisure. Leicester’s cinemas were among the first in the country to show Bollywood films.

Yet the differences between the groups have proved fertile soil for ethnic populists to exploit. And, as two older members of Leicester’s Muslim community tell me, these tensions have worsened with time.

Thanks to the growing influence of conservative Islam and a ‘preserve our culture at all costs’ attitude, segregation has increased even within Muslim communities.

This has grown with the spread of conservative Deobandi and strict Wahabi Islam, sometimes encouraged with financial backing from Saudi Arabia.

‘As a result we had less progressive notions about women’s roles in society, much less integration in wider society,’ says my source.

‘Parallel societies emerged. Some communities were so conservative that they had their own mosques, their own graveyards, even.’

Hindus, too, are facing radical change. Under strongman Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Indian politics has shifted away from a more inclusive identity to a nativist culture that rejects all non-Hindus. These beliefs were imported here to Leicester. Clashes were – and are – inevitable.

While earlier generations sought to avoid trouble, their successors are more strident in asserting their identities. ‘They feel entitled to their “rights” and will not accept being seen as a push-over or being victimised by other communities,’ the source tells me.

Some believe Leicester’s growing divisions have been made still worse because support schemes once provided by central and local government have been withdrawn.

The effect in this city is depressingly clear to see.

Rabbi Sam Lebens, who teaches philosophy at Haifa University in Israel, was born and grew up in the city.

‘Originally, Leicester’s multiculturalism was a beautiful thing,’ he told me. ‘But things began to change after the second Palestinian intifada in 2000.’

Following the uprising in Israel, there was ‘a tangible antisemitic climate’ among Leicester’s Muslims, says Rabbi Lebens.

‘One time we were followed to synagogue by a group of Somali Muslims joking about burning it down. And if these things happen to you frequently enough, you start to be less trusting. And that’s a real shame.’

After prayers, Ahmed takes me to the Nomad Cafe in St Matthews where the coffee, he promises, is superlative.

Once again, everyone is Somali. I ask Ahmed if he thinks there is a problem with integration here.

‘For an outsider looking in, that initial assessment might seem accurate,’ he concedes. ‘However, if you’re someone who lives here, and visits different neighbourhoods, you’d see that what looks like segregation on a map doesn’t reflect the full picture. All the different groups here mix.

‘Yes, the faces here are predominantly Somali. But you’ll also see English people. In every block of about 40 flats, there are around four or five English people living there.’ This strikes me as perhaps making a quite different point from the one he intends.

For Ahmed, ‘integration’ means retaining your ancestral cultural identity – especially your religion – and building on it, not working to assimilate.

There is much to think about.

In Leicester, there is a way forward for British Islam – in the erudition and tolerance of Imam Chowdhury, in the kind, scholarly Ahmed, and, most of all, in his smiling, cheeky children.

As we sat in Nomad, Ahmed talked about his eldest son, Iqbal.

‘He’s born in the hospital down the road,’ he said. ‘He is a Leicester boy, but is also of Somali heritage and a Muslim, and all this makes him what he is. Neither of these things can live without the other.’

But if we want this more positive vision of Leicester – and Britain – to emerge there can be nothing but zero tolerance for the currents of misogyny, homophobia, antisemitism and racism – not to mention the foetid extremism – that infects some of our communities.

Against those there can never be any retreat. For Britain, and all of its people, Hindus, Muslims and non-believers alike.