Mariam Khan is a writer and activist.
She is a contributor to Nikesh Shukla’s forthcoming anthology Rife: Twenty Stories from Britain’s Youth, writing on the policing and politicisation of Muslim women’s bodies. Mariam has written on feminism, Islam, publishing and identity for the Stylist and Metro.co.uk.
The idea for It’s Not About the Burqa came to Mariam after she read a report about a leaked conversation that the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, had with one of his officials. In that conversation he said that the ‘traditional submissiveness’ of Muslim women was a key problem in the fight against Islamic extremism. Mariam was fed up of hearing about what Muslim women were from people who were neither Muslim nor female. Her book brings together the voices of eighteen Muslim women, and their stories: they are all different, some are funny, some warm, some sad, some angry. All are passionate and all are calling time on the oppression, the lazy stereotyping, the misogyny and the Islamophobia.
Supported by Amal – A Saïd Foundation Programme