Nadiya Hussain, winner of last year's The Great British Bake Off, has spoken about receiving Islamophobic abuse because she wears her hijab in public.
"After every Islamic terrorist attack, I walk out of the door with a cloud over my head," the 31-year-old British-Bangladeshi told The Times. "If I’m on the train, people will sit away from me, or God forbid I've got a rucksack or a suitcase... I've been shoved waiting for a bus, had things thrown at me."
Yet Hussain, who was recently commissioned to bake a cake for the Queen as part of her 90th birthday celebrations, also said: "It's nice living in England and we are, I like to think, a very integrated society. The negative people are definitely in the minority."
During her wide-ranging interview with The Times, Hussain revealed that her husband faced criticism from more traditional members of the Muslim community when she competed on The Great British Bake Off last year.
"They said: 'Can he not provide for her, so he sent her out to work?' They said he wasn't a proper man," Hussain recalled. "It doesn’t affect him. Not one bit."
Hussain, whose recipe book Nadiya's Kitchen will be published on the 16th of June, added: "Last night, I was in bed, pottering on Twitter, and he was doing the ironing at the foot of the bed. If any of my kind of elders had seen that, I think they would have just died."
Hussain, a regular contributor to The One Show and Loose Women, also spoke about being a role model to other British Muslims. "I feel I’ve been given this voice and I want to help someone who thinks they can’t break away or needs confidence," she said.
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT