Why do Muslims get picked on at Christmas?

Every year, in the lead up to Christmas, tabloids run turkey (that is, dumb and stupid) stories about Muslims objecting to the festival, cards, crackers, music, trees, pressies, paper hats, church services, mince pies, street decorations, and ho-ho-hoing Santas.

Such culture alarms are now an annual ritual, an essential part of the season. They reassure those lost souls who want all their Christmases to be white.

Many of the reports are cooked up, some rely on unverified gossip usually put about by disgruntled council workers or jingoists, and a few are truthful accounts of Muslim grouches who are forever trying to stop the rest of us having a good time.

Mercifully, this year we'd had fewer Muslim panic stories than ever before. And some killjoys came along and spoilt it all.

Boxer Amir Khan tweeted a picture of a Christmas tree he had put up for his three year old daughter. Islamic ultra- conservatives got fired up.

Here are some choice (edited) tweets: "Allah will surely punish those who imitate the kuffar by celebrating and joining their pagan festivals"; "He is not a true Muslim"; "You must be dead and your family will be death[sic]".

Muslims also came to his defence, but were no match for the practised decriers. Tabloids got their outrage.

Phew. It now feels like a proper Christmas. Now I can go decorate my tree and cake. That will get both Muslim puritans and white xenophobes going.

We Muslims can't win. If we join in, we are interlopers, gate crashers or faith traitors. If we don't, we imperil the nation, insult its God and identity. The crusade is still with us and playing out under twinkling fairy lights.

The celeb cook Nadiya Hussain is a practising British Muslim with the most open of hearts and minds. She charmed millions when she won Bake Off in 2015. She also made some implacable enemies.

A few weeks back, she shared some of her recipes and ideas for a fun Christmas. White trolls were apoplectic and let rip. How dare a brown skinned woman, in her horrible headscarf, invade our festival? Give 'these people' an inch and they steal your jobs, prizes, houses, benefits, lovers and now our precious Christian traditions and heritage.

Such nastiness is not restricted to the internet. A young Muslim friend was so very delighted when her little girl was chosen to play Mary in the nativity play in a Church of England school. Great news, real change, I thought. My children only ever got to be goats and sheep.

But no. Things soured fast. A group of parents complained that the little girl was too dark to be Mary. Jesus and his parents were Middle Eastern people - BROWN WITH DARK HAIR. The school, to its credit, did not give into the ignorant fools. But the episode was distasteful and disgraceful.

I wish more native Brits knew liberal, integrated, thoroughly British and principled Muslims. With terrorism and radicalisation grabbling attention and resources, those who are happy and well adjusted go unseen and unheard.

When the Grenfell disaster happened the local mosque Al-Manaar opened its doors, offered shelter and food, and offered solace. Our mosque in Kensington sent out a battalion of young volunteers to help.

Christmas is bringing out more of this generosity and spirit. Across the country, mosques have decided to offer places at night for the homeless and are also feeding thousands of people. Others are sending out winter warmer packs, walking round the cold streets and handing over food or just talking to the most wretched in our nation.

Check out #AVeryMerryMuslimChristmas and you will see more of this warmth and engagement.

These are reasons to be optimistic. Only most Brits have no idea of what is going on. Sometimes I wonder if is willed blindness or worse, a stubborn refusal to disrupt the good/evil frame.

We Muslims are joining in the merriment too. My mother loved Christmas and even sipped a sherry or two. ("Not hurting anyone. God will forgive me"). She made many of the costumes for the nativity play. Muslim families will cook turkeys on Christmas day, fry up sprouts, make roast potatoes, all spiced up of course. There will be fights and embraces, mad relatives and sweaty cooks.

This week I went to St Bride's Church where they had a Christmas service/celebration for the Journalist's charity. I sang the carols and was moved, as always. A chap opposite was watching me. He looked baffled. At the end he came up to me and gruffly asked how I knew the words, as if I had stolen them. I thought the question rude so blanked him.

To people like him and Muslim fundamentalists I say: Christ for us Muslims is a messiah sent by God. Why would we not remember and celebrate his story?