Millions of British Muslims Could Lose Citizenship

By Staff, Agencies

Research published by the Runnymede Trust and Reprieve cautioned that the UK's "extreme and secretive" citizenship-stripping powers are putting millions of British Muslims at risk of being deprived of their nationality.

The report found that nine million people in the UK – approximately 13 per cent of the population – could be legally stripped of their citizenship at the home secretary’s discretion.

The powers, campaigners warn, disproportionately impact and endanger citizens with heritage linked to South Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

Both organizations warn that the "deprivation regime" now represents a systematic threat to Muslim communities, echoing the state’s discrimination against British nationals with familial links to the Caribbean in the Windrush scandal.

Under current law, British citizens can lose their nationality if the government believes they are eligible for another citizenship, even if they have never lived in that country or do not identify with it.

The report shows that people connected to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Somalia, Nigeria, North Africa and the Middle East – all countries with a sizeable UK Muslim population – are among the groups most vulnerable.

Campaigners say this has created a racialized hierarchy of citizenship, where Muslims’ belonging in Britain is conditional in a way that white Britons’ is not.
People with heritage linked to India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are among the largest affected groups.

The majority of those stripped in practice have been Muslims of South Asian, Middle Eastern or North African heritage.
The report added that people of color are 12 times more at risk than their white counterparts.

The report traces how citizenship revocation, once a tool used only in exceptional wartime cases, has been transformed by two decades of counterterror legislation.

Since 2010, more than 200 people have had their citizenship revoked for reasons described as “conducive to the public good”, with the overwhelming majority being Muslim. In 2022, the government gained the power to strip citizenship without notifying the individual.

And a 2025 law now ensures that even when courts rule the deprivation unlawful, people do not regain their citizenship until the government’s appeals – sometimes lasting years – are exhausted.

The report highlights several cases where the UK erroneously believed someone could acquire another nationality, only for courts to rule they had been left unlawfully stateless – sometimes for years.