Shabana Mahmood says her Muslim faith gives her sense of accountability
The home secretary discussed the role of Islam in her decision-making during an event hosted by the Tony Blair Institute at the 2026 Labour conference
The home secretary has described her faith as a “calling of my conscience” that gives her a sense of accountability as an MP.
Shabana Mahmood, the MP for Birmingham Ladywood, made the comments during an event hosted by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) during the Labour Party conference in Liverpool.
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In an interview with New Statesman editor-in-chief Tom McTague, Mahmood said she was guided by the Islamic principle that life is both a gift and a test. Explaining the concept to the audience, Mahmood said: “God has gifted you life. He has gifted you a set of circumstances that you’re born into. Your parents, family, maybe wealth, maybe not so, education, skill, whatever it might be, that is your gift.
“And through the course of your life, you are tested as to how you use things that God has given you, and whether you use them for good. As I apply that to myself, I think I have a really great privilege. But the purpose of life is not just to bank it and say: ‘I’m privileged, I’m great, God has chosen me for nice things.’ It’s a test of how you’re using it for good for other people.”
In a speech to the conference earlier on Monday, Mahmood hinted that she was rethinking controversial visa reforms, put forward in November 2025, that would increase the period for permanent residence for migrants from five years to up to 15 years. The changes would also apply retrospectively to people who arrived in the UK after 2021.
Mahmood also announced on Monday morning that the Home Office would reopen its resettlement scheme for refugees, which stopped taking new applicants in December 2024, saying the scheme would prioritise women and girls from Afghanistan, and Palestinian people.
She told McTague her faith gave her a sense of accountability as an MP. “I have a set of responsibilities,” she said. “I have a privilege and I have decisions I need to be accountable for, not just to parliament, but in the end to the God that has made me.”
Asked if her faith gives her solace, Mahmood said: “It’s not like a comfort blanket, it’s more than that. It’s a calling of my conscience. I’m always aware that God is everywhere. One of my earliest lessons my dad and mum taught me is that God is everywhere, so you are never alone, and God is always with you in good times and bad.”
Mahmood also shared her views on whether she thinks the UK is Islamophobic. She said that while public debate about Islam is polarised, she feels much more optimistic when speaking to ordinary people in her Birmingham constituency.
“Debate about Islam and Britain and Muslims in Britain has been very, very much couched in the national security, terrorism, extremism space. People think they’re engaging with what your beliefs are, but they’ve taken a verse [of the Qur’an] out of context and read in the most literal way by extremists who want to do bad things. In that context, it’s really difficult to say, hang on, this is what my faith really is.
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“But when they engage with you as a person, they come to understand a little bit about you and that can have huge power in reframing people’s perceptions. But I find that, with non-Muslims, certainly in Birmingham, it might start difficult but it’s a much easier conversation because people basically just want to engage with you as a person.”
Speaking at the TBI event, Mahmood acknowledged that some of her changes to the migration system had made her unpopular but, asked if this bothered her, she said: “No, it’s absolutely fine.
“I don’t draw my reason for doing things from stuff like that. I’m not the most popular member of the Labour cabinet, if you look at some poll rankings, but that’s fine.
“It’s all political argument and it’s not unusual for me to be a minority in a room or have a minority view in a room and also the Labour Party, as they always say, is a broad church or it’s nothing. We are a combination of different traditions of thought and we represent different communities.”
The TBI was founded in 2016 by the former Labour prime minister. Blair’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was said by his official biographer to have been influenced by his own Christian faith.
