NORTHAMPTONSHIRE – A lawyer, peer and previously a minister, Baroness Saeeda Warsi said she and British Muslims are facing a daily “loyalty test”, urging “paranoid” government to change its approach towards the religious minority.

Despite some signs of progress, “I still feel like every day I’m having to face a loyalty test,” Warsi told the audience at the Greenbelt festival in Northamptonshire, Church Times reported on Saturday, August 26.

Warsi was speaking at the festival where she was promoting her new book The Enemy Within: A Tale of Muslim Britain.

Addressing the crowd of hundreds who came to hear her speak, the former minister confirmed that British Muslims were just like them, coming in all shapes and sizes.

“They shop at Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Asda,” she said. “The posh ones even go to Waitrose.”

But despite the presence of young, well-integrated Muslims in popular culture, such as the popstar Zayn Malik or the Great British Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain, Muslims were still “sick to death of being counted out” of mainstream society.

The Government’s approach amounted to “the paranoid state”, she said, noting how anti-terrorism policy focused solely on prescribing ideology and ignored the other factors research showed pushed people into extremism.

She also lamented that the Government’s engagement with the diverse Muslim community was seen solely through the prism of counter-terrorism.

“There are far more Muslim doctors in the NHS than there are Muslim terrorists,” she said.

“We are more likely to be lifesavers rather than life-takers. This policy of disengagement is fundamentally wrong.”

As well as criticizing the Government’s approach, Baroness Warsi also said that interfaith efforts needed to be much more robust in the battle to keep Britain’s Muslims integrated into society.

She also asked the largely Christian audience to listen to their Muslim friends and ask questions to get a better understanding of the faith.

“I don’t think tea and samosas in draughty church halls are going to fix the problems. It’s nice, and we have to keep doing it, but we need something much broader and bolder.”