Stirring a potentially explosive debate over faith and politics, the first Muslim woman to serve in the British cabinet said on Thursday that prejudice towards the country’s Islamic minority is so prevalent that it is seen by many as normal and uncontroversial and has “passed the dinner table test.”

“It seems to me that Islamophobia has now crossed the threshold of middle-class respectability,” Baroness Sayeed Warsi told an audience at the University of Leicester in the English Midlands. “For far too many people, Islamophobia is seen as a legitimate, even commendable, thing.”

Lady Warsi is the chairperson of Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative party and a minister without portfolio in the coalition government, making her Britain’s highest-ranking Muslim leader. Her comments seemed likely to add fuel to a long-simmering debate that has never been far from the political forefront, particularly since the London suicide bombings of July 7, 2005.

The attacks by four British Muslims, killing 52 travelers on the bus and subway system, opened a passionate discussion both about what Muslim leaders depicted as a deep sense of alienation among some young Muslims and about the resentment of those complaints among some Britons.