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Interview With Gina Khan - Part 1

GP Interviews - 1/11/2008

Gina Khan lives in Birmingham's Ward End. She is a British Muslim and has spoken out in the past about the problems she and her community faces from extreme Islamists. Described as "a very brave woman" in an article for the London Times, Gina will, over the coming days, be stating her experience to the Westminster Journal as a British Muslim and calling out, especially to the British Government, for help in solving the Islamist problem the West now experiences from within. This is the first of two parts of the interview.

Q: So, Gina, tell us a little about yourself, your background and your motivations:

I'm a British Asian Woman from a Pakistani ethnic background; a Sunni Muslim and a lone parent. I grew up in Birmingham in the English Midlands - in an area with a preponderance of Muslims.

Today the rhetoric you hear from extreme Islamists or the stories you read in British papers about honour killings or forced marriages doesn't shock me or many others at grassroots level. It's an old story, one that has been repeated for hundreds of years. Just that today the voices are amplified after 9/11 and there are more extreme mosques and more extreme Islamists than ever on the streets of areas like mine.

I was once one of the 'silent majority' who remained silent. I was told silent and good Muslim women are respected and honoured. I was told Islam protects and gives special status to Muslim women/mothers compared to the Western woman.

My life experience proved otherwise.

I have always had an issue with aspects of my religion and culture but was taught never to question. Now I question, seek and acknowledge the truth - the truth as I see it, as I lived it, and as I observed it from others around me, all of my life.

I am not liked by the Islamists. I've had bricks thrown through the window and I've had family members beaten up. I've been told to move on. But I'm not budging. This is my home and I belong here. The Islamists where I live - in Birmingham's Ward End - are an awful scourge.

Q: Why are you not like them yourself?

I was 10 when I first started to reason and listen to what my inner voice was telling me, compared to the voices that were drowning out my own authentic voice. I remained silent back then though, and I have since paid a very high personal price for that silence, as I could not get on with the confined ways as laid out for me. Looking back - I suppose I was only young - I participated in my own oppression and thought I was being a good Muslim woman. As hard as people tried though, they couldn't take the Britishness out of me! I fought suppression and oppression until I have become who I've become.

I think in English, I talk in English. I wasn't even fluent speaking Urdu and Punjabi until I was 18yrs of age. The women in my family were not backwards, my Mum was the head of the family, and she was a strong independent woman who made sure Dad could never engage in polygamy in this country (as he had done before in Pakistan before they migrated to Birmingham). But don't get me wrong - I'm a Muslim alright.

Q: And your parents?

Mum had herself been a victim of polygamy before meeting my father and had been forced to abandon her studies to get married at 15. My mum was educated at a British school in Pakistan; she wasted no time in integrating and making herself familiar with the rules and regulations of Britain when she arrived. She spent most of her life trying to perfect her English or trying (and usually failing) to pass her driving test! She ran a business and took care of her family.

Dad was 30 odd years older than Mum. He was illiterate and could only sign his name, but he learnt English to get by. In fact I recall one of Dad's regular visitors in the 70s was his 'gaffer'. Like many immigrants, Dad had come years earlier than Mum and worked in a factory. Every Thursday the 'gaffer' would come in his white rover and every Thursday I would wonder what they had to talk about because Dad's English embarrassed me even as a child.

We ran shops and we all had to contribute, whether it was behind the counter or stacking shelves. In the early 80s, when I was about 9, we moved to Ward End, at a time when we were the first Asian family who had bought a business on Washwood heath road. I grew up with friends who were English, Jamaican, Greek, Indian, Sikh, and Chinese. We integrated into the wider community.

My parents had friends who were non Muslims, who came into our homes, shared our food, and shared our culture with us. I didn't know any different except when mum would teach me about Allah. On the one hand the Christian God in school was a loving God but our God was to be feared. Though now I believe religion was used to control us in our version of Muslim society.

Q: To control you?

Muslim women were not allowed the freedom of love then and they're not now. Arranged marriages are the norm, yet I remember many of Dad's friends who had English wives, who hadn't been subjected to conversion. Muslim men have freedom, choices. I learnt that young - Muslim women don't. We're controlled from birth to grave.

Women were taught to be submissive and listen to our elders, slave around to the whims of older brothers. My parents were 'modern' Muslim, we didn't cover our heads, and in fact my mum didn't either - unless we were praying or reading the Quran.

Q: You loved your family?

Yes, very much so. I inherited my Mum's love for Indian/Pakistani classical movies, music, saris and her respect for Bhutto in Pakistan. She shaped my thinking from an early age. The first book she gave me was about The Creation of Pakistan and Jinnah the founder.

I was closer to my father. I was subjected to a lot of 'double-talk'. On the one hand my Mum had hopes that I would study and go to University. On the other hand Dad was plotting my arranged marriage, with his extended family, to his nephew in Pakistan behind Mum's back.

I was closer to my Father but was manipulated later by him as a young teenager when Mum sent me to Pakistan for the first time on a holiday with him. The excuse they use is 'it's in our culture or in our religion' but endogamy (against British law) didn't apply to us.

Q: Endogamy - the practice of marrying within a particular social group?

Yes, I recall one of my older sisters sacrificing her first love, to marry a cousin because Dad had betrothed her at the age of 9. I still remember the day she was leaving to go to Heathrow airport in the late 70s, Dad lowered his head, put the palms of his hands together and said '' please keep my honour my daughter''- almost pleading.

Such were the sacrifices Muslim daughters made because of extended families and the pressure of family honour. Mum objected but she could do nothing as a man's word is meant to be sacred. It was a Muslim man's world and still is.

In the 70s, another sister who was in her twenties and has since died became a victim of polygamy. As a child I watched her being sectioned under the mental health act. Mum and Dad had arranged her marriage to a Muslim man who was a driving instructor, homeowner, respectable on the outside. Just after the birth of her second child they all discovered that he was already married. On being found out, he ran off to Holland with the secret wife and abandoned my sister and her two daughters. She fell apart. She knew she was finished in the eyes of Muslims, though we still loved her. Polygamy was the norm-and British Pakistani men hadn't abandoned the practice even though it was banned under British law.

Q: And you? You had tough times on account of not being willing to submit, though you remained a Muslim?

Yes - and events shaped me. These family events shaped my mind, my thinking. I left home early after divorce myself and became distant from Islam - but only temporarily. It's not for me to say but I think I am a good Muslim. I do not conform to outdated norms but that does not stop me from being a good Muslim in Britain today.

I have lived in a hostel, abandoned and alone, I had lost my first child and sister within a few months and post natal depression wasn't recognised in those days. Certainly nobody understood my plight as a young divorcee, stigmatised by a label, accused of dishonouring the family. Amazing really, because divorce rates are so high amongst British Muslims - the community loses so many of its "daughters" this way.

Q: As your home area became more Islamist, so did your father?

In the early 80s, my Dad was a pensioner even though I was only 13. Dad had gone to hajj when he became a pensioner and religion took over. Soon after becoming more religious, Dad started to attend the local mosques in Alum Rock, Washwood heath and Small heath. Tablighi Jamaat ran these mosques and even then in the 80s they had established quite a few prominent mosques, where only men attended.

Dad and I spent a lot of time talking as this change was occurring. It was before I was married - as I lived life as a 'caged virgin'. He would say ''there will be mosques everywhere. Islam is the true religion, Islam will take over and kafirs (unbelievers) will burn in the fire of hell''. In hindsight Dad was obviously being brainwashed into an ideology. He visibly changed. It's the same kind of rhetoric the West hear Islamists and Jihadists preach today. Tablighi Jamaat are part of it - I can't understand why politicians can't see this.

I was frightened and didn't question my father's beliefs. In time I saw mosque after mosque being built in my area. I witnessed the power of dynamic preachers on satellite, on tapes.

Q: Your area changed dramatically?

In the 90s, my family had sold up and moved out of Ward End. I had returned after I had married to live in Ward End. Ward End was not the same place anymore. Non Muslims were moving out as more Muslims were moving in. I recall seeing posters and flyers asking Muslims to attend meetings, I didn't understand why the Muslims suddenly hated the West or what they meant by the 'Ummah'. I and my friends were witnessing the rise of more and more young Muslim men growing beards and wearing Arabic style tunics.

Women who were once 'normal' British Asians were now wearing the black veil or head coverings. Islamic bookshops and clothes shops sprang up from nowhere. It was Islam going backwards not forwards. I used to joke that soon they will be importing camels.

Little did I realise that influence was coming from desert Islam, Wahhabism, and there were other branches too: Sunnis who adhered to Maududi's interpretation of political Islam. If I hadn't researched or educated myself into the rise of political Islam and Jihadism, I would have thought my Dad was right and extreme Islamism is the only true religion.