Nadiya Hussain: I worried I was Bake Off's token Muslim | Television & radio

Nadiya Hussain: I worried I was Bake Off's token Muslim | Television & radio

Nadiya Hussain has said she worried she was the “token Muslim” when she took part in The Great British Bake Off.

Hussain, who won the series in 2015, said she had given no thought to the role of her faith when she entered as a contestant and had been taken aback at how it came to define her.

She told the Radio Times she had “struggled at the beginning, because I thought, ‘Am I the token Muslim?’ I’d never, in all my years, been labelled like that. I heard it constantly, ‘Oh, she’s the Muslim, she’s the Muslim’.

“I certainly didn’t enter a baking show in the hope of representing anyone,” she said. “Being a Muslim for me was incidental, but from the day the show was launched, I was ‘the 30-year-old Muslim’ and that became my identity.”

“I was so shocked by the amount of negative comments I got,” said Hussain, 32, a second-generation British Bangladeshi. She began wearing the hijab at 14, but said neither her mother nor her sisters were particularly religious, and none wore a headscarf when she was growing up.

Yet Hussain was also adamant that the negative comments she received were not representative of the general British public, who were “lovely”.

“We are so much more accepting than that,” she said of the prejudice that had been directed her way. “I never realised Britain had such open arms.”

It is not the first time Hussain has addressed the aggressive anti-Islamic sentiment she has experienced in her day-to-day life and as a public figure.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs last year, she said: “It sounds really silly [but] it feels like that’s become a part of my life now â€" I expect it. I expect to be shoved or pushed or verbally abused, because it happens, it’s happened for years.”

Hussain has also spoken of her surprise to be cast as a role model. “When I went into Bake Off, I never imagined I’d come out the other end elevated and a role model â€" for Bangladeshis, bakers, Muslims, women and all; I didn’t expect any of it,” she said. “If I am a role model, in a positive manner for anyone, I’m very happy to bear the burden.”

The final episode of the 2015 series of Bake Off, in which Hussain won the trophy, was the most-watched television show of the year. Her win has led to a successful culinary, literary and TV career.

As well as publishing a bestselling cookery book, a series of children’s books and a novel, she has presented a two-part series for the BBC called The Chronicles of Nadiya, in which she travelled from her birthplace of Luton to her family village in Bangladesh. She also made the Queen’s 90th birthday cake and this year is set to launch another BBC show, Nadiya’s British Food Adventure.

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