Sara Khan

Despite Britain having some of the best gender equality legislation in the world, it doesn't touch a lot of Muslim women. Why does it not?

That's a very interesting question. And I've spent my life working and engaging within Muslim communities, particularly with Muslim women. And some of the stories and some of the women that I've engaged with really gave me sleepless nights. Women I know who are living in East London and who've lived there their whole lives and have never sat on a tube. Women who have told me that they're not allowed to attend their son or daughter's parents' evening or not allowed to do the school pickup. And it reminds me almost of slavery. And it's about combating that culture. You can implement legislation quite easily and create legislation. Trying to change attitudes and trying to change cultures is something far, far more difficult. Women want to hear this. They want to hear about gender equality. They want to hear about how Islam is compatible with women's rights. Because often that's not what they're hearing from religious clerics. They're hearing a very opposite idea. And so if you go in and say, well, actually, this is their own patriarchal interpretation of Islam, but there are much more diverse and progressive interpretations, which absolutely embraces feminism and women's rights. This is what women absolutely want to hear.

Tell me about your mother as a young woman. What were her aspirations?

She came to this country when she was about twenty one. She'd got married when she was nineteen, so she was quite young and my mum has always been a feminist. … She had very high aspirations. She told me how once she wanted to become a detective. I remember once she's saying she wanted to become an astronaut. You know, quite out of the box, culturally, anyway, aspirations. But she fulfilled very much the traditional cultural role that was expected of her, which was to be a housewife in particular, to raise the children. And so all of those dreams for her really were cast aside. And I think for her, that's why she again she's always encouraged us to fulfil your dreams because she never had the chance to fulfil her dreams.

What was it that made you put [the veil] on in the first place?

I did. I believed at that time that wearing the headscarf was a compulsory act of worship that you should do for the sake of God and I was coming across lots of different preachers and I didn't realise at that time that actually I was involved in a lot of Islamist groups and you know as I've as I've grown older and I've read a lot more and I was not just being exposed to Islamist or Salafi or Wahhabi literature but a much more wider and diverse understanding of Islam, I came to the conclusion that I don't believe the headscarf is compulsory. You know, I always defend the right to women wear whatever they want to wear, whether they want to wear a bikini or whether they want to wear a hijab, because I passionately believe in women's choices and women's rights.

One of the accusations thrown at you is that you are the Tory government's house Muslim. How do you react to that?

I think that if you are an independent and opinionated Muslim woman who has set up an organisation from scratch, you know, you will be accused of being a government stooge. I've been called a native informant. I mean, House Muslim is an incredibly racist term actually. And I mean, I have very much worked with the Labour government under with Prevent, as I have with the Conservative government, and I've absolutely made clear my views and disagreements, for example, with the new counter-extremism bill that's coming out and how I believe actually sections of that will violate human rights. So I've got no qualms about speaking my views plainly to the government.