Another Brave woman! (pls note hint of sarcasm)

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[size=18]Our mosques are importing jihad[/size]

Gina Khan is a British Muslim woman who lives near the men suspected of a plot to kidnap and kill a Muslim soldier. She says that it’s time to stop the radicals, and to stop being afraid of themOur mosques are importing jihad Mary Ann Sieghart

Gina Khan is a very brave woman. Born in Birmingham 38 years ago to Paki-stani parents, she has run away from an arranged marriage, dressed herself in jeans and dared to speak out against the increasing radicalisation of her community.

“There are mosques springing up on every street corner,” she says, pointing them out to me as we drive to her tiny house in Birmingham, near the district where nine men were arrested last week on suspicion of plotting to kidnap and behead a British Muslim soldier. Two suspects have since been released without charge.

We pass the biggest mosque, Birmingham Central, where Dr Mohammad Naseem preached at the weekend that British Muslims were being treated like Jews under the Nazis and that the Government had “invented the perception” of a terrorist threat.

“He is not the voice of Muslims in Birmingham,” says Khan, angrily. “I don’t how he has got himself that position. He does not know what he is talking about, he is 80 years old and needs to retire. If you want someone to be running these establishments, you need a British Asian, modern, liberal man.”

Over the past 15 years, she says, there has been an influx of jihadist thinking into her part of Birmingham. Bookshops sell radical literature and the mosques preach separatism and hatred. The Government and the white Establishment have allowed it to happen. And she is outraged about it. “It’s all happening on your doorstep,” she says, “and Britain is still blind to the real threat that is embedded here now.

“I truly believe that all these mosques here are importing jihad. The radical teaching is filtering through, and these mosques are not regulated. They are supporting everything that is wrong about Islam. We within the community knew this. People are lying. They are in denial. They knew they were bringing in radicals.

“But there are still more English and British people, no matter what, and if they got together and wanted to stamp out this radicalism, they could. I am wasting my time talking to my own people; that is why I am sitting here talking to you, to open your eyes.”

Khan is particularly worried about how mosques are brainwashing children and young people: “To me, it is starting to look like a cult.” And her local community certainly seems to be in denial. “After the raid I went to the corner shop here, and they were all saying it was a conspiracy. I turned round and said, ‘No, it is not. Let us be honest’.

“They say we’re being victimised. We’re not. The truth is coming out at last, but it’s 20 years too late.” The trouble is, says Khan, that many of the Pakistanis who have come to Birmingham are all too easily swayed. “Most of them are ignorant, uneducated, illiterate people from rural areas. It is very easy for them to be brainwashed, very easy. These are people who have been taught from the beginning that our religion is everything, it is the right way. You are going to Hell simply because you were not born a Muslim.” Khan is far too independent-minded to accept these beliefs wholesale. “I would say to my mum, ‘Are you telling me that Mother Teresa is going to Hell?’ and she didn’t have an answer. My mum was not backward, but everyone is being taught that Islam is going to take over, there are going to be mosques everywhere. This is something jihadists have planned for centuries. They were just looking for our weaknesses, which they have found.”

Khan believes that the radicals have coopted concerns about foreign policy to suit their cause. When she began to be worried about what the mosques were teaching her children, she decided instead to ask a female student to instruct them at home. Khanpicks up the story: “She was in the kitchen making the tea and it was after the London bombings. She said, ‘What do you think about what’s happening in Palestine?’ I got angry. I didn’t realise how patriotic I was getting. I turned round and said, ‘I do not care what is happening in Palestine or Israel. I give a damn about what is happening on my doorstep. I have family in London. Look at what is going to happen because of these few people. Look at the people who have died or had limbs amputated. Where were the Muslims then? Why did not anyone care? Because they were mostly white Christians’. And now they’ve turned the bombers’ graves into shrines! They’re just killers.”

Khan says she would be delighted if her son joined the British Army or the police. “I say to him, ‘You have these options, you can go into the army and police. You are British, do not listen to anybody else’. I had too much rubbish fed in me that I would be too Westernised. I was told to keep my distance from you because I am a Muslim. It is still really hard to explain to you how you are conditioned. From a young age those thoughts are put in your head: ‘I am a Muslim. I do not mix with those people’. I would honestly say that we are more racist and more prejudiced than the English.”

Yet she feels utterly British herself, and senses no conflict between her race, her religion and her nationality. “I am definitely British. I have a British passport. I love this country. When I went to Pakistan I missed my baked beans. It was as simple as that for me. I went in the 1980s and found that there was more rock music, head-bangers, modern kids there than what was happening here. I came back and said to my mum, ‘What have you been doing to me in this country?’ ” What has been done to her — and so many other Muslim women — is what incenses Khan most, and has emboldened her tospeak out. Muslim society, she says, is based on male domination and the oppression of women. The mosques are run entirely by men, the Sharia councils are run by men, the “voice” of the Muslim community is always male. And it is women who suffer as a result.

Three issues in particular enrage her: forced or arranged marriages for teenage girls, polygamy and the veil. Khan herself was pressurised into marriage at the age of 16 by her father, against her mother’s wish-es. “I was manipulated by my dad’s side of the family into a teen marriage — you know, you are a passport for someone from Pakistan. My mum wanted me to study and make something of my life because she knew what this country had to offer.”

[url=http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/article1354063.e...

I'd like to know why non-Muslims consider her BRAVE? Is she only a brave muslim woman if she speaks out against Islam, even if it is warped or twisted or exagerrated or lies? Why did this girl believe her mother had all the answers. Only Allah swt knows where Mother Teresa is going.

I wonder if she understands the Islamic concept of Jihad? It doesn't appear that she has a full grasp on her faith to me. Another clueless Muslim passing off her misunderstanding of Islam as the REAL ISLAM. Sigh!

I guess this is cheap promotion for a book which probably on it's way!

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