Roots or Relevance: Does Heritage Still Matter?

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Growing up, I never quite belonged anywhere. Childhood was mostly White English friends. Secondary school brought a few Asian faces but I was never really part of their group. Teens and early adulthood were spent mainly around Black friends although it wasn’t until college that I finally found my first proper close-knit Asian circle. (We say Asian for Desi in the UK, just to clarify.) But even then, something always felt slightly off. I wasn’t Asian enough for the Asian crowd, not white enough for the others. I was just sort of… there. Friendly to everyone, fully belonging to no one.

Looking back, I think I lost myself somewhere along the way. I had such a deep love for Black culture and music that I absorbed it wholeheartedly, without realising I was quietly drifting from my own identity in the process. Who was I? Honestly, I still don’t have a clean answer to that.

The school group I ended up with was a mix of White, Black and one other Asian girl who was Sikh. And while we got on, our lives were quite different beneath the surface. She could eat what the others ate, drink what they drank, have boyfriends and navigate western social life in ways I simply couldn’t. And even within that group, I wasn’t truly at ease. My heritage and my faith were occasionally the punchline, always dressed up as a joke, but the kind that lingers. We lost touch after school, as you do. I’m not that same whitewashed version of myself anymore, but I won’t pretend I have it all figured out either.

Even my Asian college friends, who I genuinely loved spending time with, had upbringings different enough to mine that I couldn’t always fully relate. There was always something, a gap I couldn’t quite bridge.

What I can say with certainty now is that my faith feels solid. More grounded than it ever has. My love for it is deeper, my understanding richer. Culture though? That’s a more complicated thing to hold, and it takes me all the way back to where I started.

I grew up in a fiercely cultural household. My dad was deeply proud of Bangladesh, passionately so, and he made sure we knew it. He and others in the community organised Bangladeshi cultural events at the local community centre, teaching the children poetry, the national anthem, traditional games. There was genuine fun in it, though if I’m honest, what I remember most is the anxiety of getting the words wrong. It felt forced at the time. But I understand it now. This was a generation of parents who had no roadmap, no language around child psychology, just a very real fear of watching their children disappear into western culture. So they held on the only way they knew how.

My dad had a portrait of Sheikh Mujeeb, the founding father of Bangladesh, hanging in his front room alongside a flag and a decorative map. I rolled my eyes at all of it back then. Culture was being pushed through the front door while school was pulling us in the opposite direction, and the cool thing, the normal thing, felt very far from anything I came from.

He was far from perfect, and there are probably things he would do differently now. But what he built in that community? A real sense of togetherness, events that actually brought people together, a time when everyone knew everyone? Not many have managed to replicate that since. So, complicated as it was, there is gratitude there too.

The good old days were not always so good. But our parents got more right than we sometimes give them credit for.

Fast forward to now and something has quietly shifted across the generations. Third and fourth generation British Bangladeshis carry far less of the culture than those who came before. Fashion, lifestyle, values, all have moved in directions that would have been unrecognisable to our parents. And it isn’t just culture that has faded. For many, faith has gone with it. I know that those of us who are practising can live in something of a bubble, surrounded by others on a similar journey, which makes it easy to forget just how many people have drifted far from both their roots and their religion.

So which loss is greater? And can we actually hold onto our culture without compromising our faith? I think we can. I really do. The problem is that most of us were never shown how, and there is no single version of what holding on is supposed to look like. Everyone is figuring it out differently.

In the eternal sense, as a believer, I know that if our true purpose is to obey Allah and seek Jannah, then perhaps the rest of it is noise. But in the everyday reality of raising three children and building a home with meaning? It is not noise at all. It matters deeply.

And here is the thing. Allah does not ask us to shed our culture to become more practising. We don’t have to adopt an ‘Arab’ culture to be a good Muslim. If anything, we are encouraged to travel the earth and get to know one another. Why would that be the guidance if we were all meant to be the same? Culture is not the enemy of faith. Heritage is not a distraction. They can sit side by side, and they always could. (Fun Fact: the Bangladesh ’fanjabi’ and lungi is very similar to one of the clothing items the Prophet peace be upon him wore.)

Being in a mixed heritage marriage has made that clearer to me than anything else. With Bangladeshi, Egyptian, Italian, French, Czech and Dutch roots all under one roof, there is an extraordinary amount of history, beauty and richness to pass on to our children. The languages, the food, the customs, the traditions, the stories of people who came before us and shaped who we are. Everything that honours where we come from without pulling us away from what we believe.

At 34, I can say with real conviction that there is so much worth holding onto. Our ancestors gave everything for our language and our identity. That is not something to be embarrassed about or quietly let go of. We can love our heritage, honour it fully, as long as it never tips into the kind of nationalism that edges us away from our faith.

Culture and faith were never opposites. They never had to be.