Your Muslimness is a Risk Factor’ – Islam, Race and the UK Maternity Crisis

For many of us, when we think about pregnancy and having a baby, we feel a rush of conflicting emotions. Alongside the happiness, excitement and anticipation of a new chapter, there’s a real sense of fear, worry and deep curiosity over what the next nine months will hold — and, of course, giving birth itself.

What should be understood as a divine gift from Allah ﷻ — a sacred process of bringing a child into this world — has, in modern society, been stripped of its meaning. Within Islam, birth has always been understood differently — pregnancy and giving birth are seen as an act of ibadah, held within the mercy of Allah — in fact, the Arabic word for womb, rahm, comes from the name of Allah (Ar-Raheem), the most merciful. The beauty of Islam is that our faith holds space, acknowledges and validates the fact that childbirth is painful and that having fear around childbirth is valid. Even Maryam AS, in the depths of her labour pains, cried out in anguish (Surah Maryam 19:23) — and yet Allah responded with tenderness, comfort and care, telling her to shake the palm tree, eat dates and take comfort in the spring of water that emerged beneath her feet (Surah Maryam 19:24-25). 

At the same time, Allah also validates the fact that birth is an immense sacrifice that a woman goes through to bring life into this world, which cannot be rewarded by or repaid to her by any other human being. 

According to a hadith, Abdullah Ibn ‘Umar saw a man circling the Kabah while carrying his mother on his back. The man said to Abdullah, “I have carried her more than she carried me. Do you think I have paid her back, O Ibn ‘Umar?” Abdullah Ibn ‘Umar replied, “No, not even for one groan!’(Al-Adab Al Mufrad,11). We also know that the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ described a woman who dies in childbirth as a martyr (Sunan Ibn Majah, 2803) – thus placing the act of giving birth within the most honoured categories of sacrifice in Islam. 

This holistic understanding of pregnancy, birth and the impact it has on a woman has always existed within our faith, yet that understanding has been rendered less visible by a capitalist culture that took away the sanctity and sacredness of childbirth, rendering women’s bodies disposable tools. 

We see this in current media depictions of pregnancy and labour — birth is portrayed both inaccurately and in a way that strips the mother of her agency. From waters breaking and a baby emerging immediately, to images of a woman pushing on her back in a room full of strangers staring at her, the process of birth has been done a profound injustice. Even within our own communities, conversations around pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period focus mostly on the idea of getting pregnant, with conversations around childbirth being hushed and seen to be immodest. Many of us know the invisible pain and anguish of getting married and being constantly asked why we haven’t had children yet, with very little empathy for the fact that falling pregnant is not an easy path for everyone, or that some women are simply choosing not to. And for those who do have children, the questions don’t stop: when are you having more? Why haven’t you tried again?

This culture of invasively questioning women about their reproductive choices renders the mother herself absent. Her body exists solely for others, not for herself. Rather than being honest with our daughters, cousins and nieces about what pregnancy and motherhood actually involve — and I don’t mean trauma dumping — we send women into this journey without preparing or holding them through one of the most vulnerable periods of their lives. The mental, physical and emotional toll of pregnancy, birth and the postpartum period gets quietly brushed under the carpet — filed under shame, dismissed as just another part of the status quo.

‘Mothers are the unsung heroes,’ they say. ‘Everyone goes through this.’ But that silence is not neutral. It is dangerous, especially when it meets a maternity system in the UK that is already broken.

The evidence of that brokenness is extensive. From the Ockenden Report to the recent interim report by the Independent Maternity and Neonatal Investigation Team, chaired by Baroness Amos, a consistent pattern emerges: maternity care in the UK continues to fall short for Black and brown women. The most recent MBRRACE-UK data shows that Black women are almost three times more likely to die during pregnancy or within six weeks of giving birth than white women; Asian women face almost twice that risk.

Women in the most deprived areas are twice as likely to die, and given that 50% of Muslims in the UK live below the poverty line, the implications for Muslim women are stark.

The 2025 CQC report found that two-thirds of maternity services have been rated inadequate or requiring improvement. These are not isolated failures. This is a system in crisis, and it is disproportionately failing Black and brown women.

And yet even within these statistics, there is a dimension that has barely entered the conversation: religion. Race is part of the picture. Deprivation is part of the picture. But faith — and the specific ways that religious identity shapes a woman’s experience of maternity care — has not been meaningfully captured in national data. The Muslim Women’s Network UK’s 2022 report ‘Invisible’, which drew on the experiences of over 1,000 Muslim women across the UK, is the most significant study of its kind to date — but its findings are not yet reflected in how national data is collected. There are no figures telling us what Muslim women’s outcomes look like. Not because the question is unimportant, but because it hasn’t yet been asked.

There is a clear double penalty that Muslim women face when they enter NHS maternity services. For Black Muslim women, it is a triple one. Through my work as a doula (a non-medically trained professional who helps women make informed decisions regarding their care and provides continuous emotional and physical support throughout pregnancy, labour and postpartum) and as someone who has recently given birth and spoken to many women navigating the same system — it’s evident that the ‘Muslimness’ of our identities is perceived before we’ve even had a chance to open our mouths. A hijab, niqab or jilbab is treated with such a sense of otherness that the bias of healthcare professionals often creeps in before they’ve even asked us our names. From something small as a mispronounced name on a chart, to assuming your husband is your cousin and ‘speaks on your behalf,’ from the presumption that you live with your in-laws, to the idea that you surely must claim benefits.

That sense of otherness, and the stereotypes and dismissiveness it activates, is enough to shape the quality of care we receive — whether the prejudice is conscious or not.

Much of that discrimination operates through assumption: that we don’t speak English, that we don’t understand what’s happening, that a desire for modesty during labour or for a female-only clinical team is an inconvenience borne of outdated patriarchal attitudes rather than our right as a patient. It operates through the stereotype of the ‘docile and submissive’ Muslim woman — the assumption that consent doesn’t need to be properly sought because we won’t push back. This is a historical pattern. A Maternity Alliance report from 2003 found that poor care for Muslim women was already being linked to professionals holding stereotypical and racist views, with a fundamental failure to understand how faith shapes maternity experiences: maintaining modest dress, being seen by a female doctor, being able to pray, having dietary needs met. A 2020 systematic review found Muslim women consistently linked insensitive care to discrimination. The Baroness Amos investigation found Muslim families describing feeling discriminated against based on their religion, afraid that raising concerns would lead to worse care for their babies. One parent listening to Qur’anic recitation in their hospital room was told by a nurse to “turn it down; I don’t want to hear it.”

Alongside this, one of the most persistent stereotypes Black and brown women face is the idea that we exaggerate pain — for South Asian women, this is known as ‘bibi-itis’ or ‘Begum syndrome.’ The Amos investigation found that Asian women had been described by staff as ‘princesses,’ with one member of staff reportedly telling trainee clinicians that “the bloody Asian ones just go on and on and on.” For Black women, the myth takes a different but more dangerous form: that they feel less pain due to having ‘thicker skin.’ This is not an abstract cultural bias — it has a specific history. In the 1840s, physician J. Marion Sims performed repeated surgical experiments on enslaved Black women and girls without anaesthesia. Among them was a teenager named Anarcha, who was subjected to thirteen procedures. Sims was later celebrated as the ‘father of modern gynaecology.’ The dehumanising premise underlying his work was never corrected. It calcified into a medical assumption, and it travelled. Nearly 200 years on, it continues to determine who receives adequate pain relief and who is told they are managing fine when they are not.

For Muslim women navigating this system, Islamophobia does not exist in isolation. It compounds with this structural racism in ways the data has not yet begun to fully capture. So what do we do with this? That question is harder than it sounds — because individual action alone is not the answer.

Telling Muslim women to simply know their rights and speak up places the burden of a structural failure onto the individual woman. That is what this system has always done.

And we’ve seen how, according to the 2022 report published by the Muslim Women’s Network UK, even educated, professional women who arrived ready to advocate were still dismissed.

Yes, we need to be informed about our rights during pregnancy and childbirth. But more importantly, we need the people around us to be informed too — the men and women in our lives. Because what changes things is not a better-informed individual navigating the same broken system alone. It is having people who know what you’re up against and can advocate for you in the moments when you can’t do it yourself.

Whilst we put in the work to ensure the system catches up, sisterhood proves ever more important in bridging the gap. Older women who had been through it, aunties who knew what to ask, sisters and friends who stayed with us during birth and the ever so vulnerable postpartum phase. The faith that holds us, the women who sit beside us, the communities that quietly pass down knowledge across generations: that has never fully disappeared. It has simply been waiting to be named and rebuilt. Because birth, in many of our cultures, was never meant to be something a woman moved through in isolation, surrounded by strangers. What has happened — through medicalisation, migration, and the gradual erosion of intergenerational community structures — is that the collective care which once held women through this experience has been stripped away. What remains is a system not built for us and a very strong expectation that we navigate it alone and should just ‘figure it out.’

Rebuilding that community care — in whatever form it takes — is both a practical and political act.

It might look like seeking out birth workers from within your community who can navigate the system and advocate alongside you. For Muslim women looking for culturally informed support, there are numerous doula training providers and networks with directories to help you find a doula for you. Black Doulas UK do some fantastic work, as well as The Original Birth Connection, who place an emphasis on ensuring their doulas are as culturally and racially informed as possible. A free maternity rights guide for Muslim women is also available via The Muslim Motherhood, who will soon be launching a dedicated Muslim doula directory. At the moment, the most reliable way to find a Muslim doula is through community recommendation — asking in Muslim women’s groups, parenting spaces and on social media using hashtags such as #MuslimDoula and #MuslimBirthWorker to find birth workers whose practice is rooted in Muslim women’s specific experiences. It might also look like finding spaces where Muslim women share their experiences honestly — not the sanitised version, but the truth — without shame or the filter of what we’re supposed to say. In a system that reads you as a problem before you’ve said a word, being held by someone who already sees you fully is an act of resistance.

But community alone is not enough. The systemic change this crisis demands will not come from individual actions – it has to be pushed for collectively. That means speaking to your MP directly about what you have experienced or witnessed, and adding your voice to the growing public pressure around maternity care. Louise Thompson’s campaign for an independent Maternity Commissioner — which gathered over 153,000 signatures and triggered a parliamentary debate in April 2026 — has brought maternity care into mainstream political conversation in a way it has never been before. Muslim women’s experiences need to be part of that conversation, not a footnote to it. It means joining your local Maternity and Neonatal Voices Partnership (MNVP) board — the official NHS structure through which women and families shape local maternity services — and actively engaging hospital management when care falls short. These are real seats at real tables, and they should not be occupied only by women whose experiences the system already recognises.

It also means being honest about the limits of the workforce conversation. England currently has a shortage of around 2,500 full-time midwives, with 87% of midwives reporting their units are not safely staffed — and yet 31% of newly qualified midwives cannot find posts due to NHS recruitment freezes. More midwives matter. But more midwives without addressing the racial and religious bias embedded in the culture of that workforce will not fix what Muslim women face. The numbers and the culture both have to change.

Community support and birth workers should not have to compensate for an NHS that is failing Black and brown Muslim women. The failures described here require systemic answers: data disaggregated by religion so that Muslim women’s outcomes can finally be measured and addressed; genuine accountability for staff who provide discriminatory care; and lobbying NHS Trusts to mandate meaningful cultural and religious competency training. Until that changes, Muslim women will continue to be failed.

But we are not there yet. And while we fight for that system — and we should be fighting for it — we also have to survive the one we’re in. Refusing isolation, building community, seeking out people who understand who you are: these are not small acts. They are a declaration that your life, and the life of your baby, matter — even when the system has consistently suggested otherwise.

The most radical thing a Muslim woman can do in a maternity system that renders her invisible is to refuse to be.