While chronicling her early life and political career, Rabina Khan discusses and dismantles stereotypes about Muslim women in Britain
(THE NATIONAL NEWS) “A gentleman asked me one day what colour my hair was under my hijab. In order to intrigue him, I told him it was pink, but one of my aims was to quash the notion that hijab-wearing women have no interest in hairstyles or vibrant colours,” Rabina Khan, British-Muslim politician and writer, tells The National.
“Of course, what I would like to have said is, ‘And what colour was your hair before you went bald?’ but I wouldn’t be so insensitive.”
This experience inspired the title of Khan’s memoir, My Hair is Pink Under this Veil, which was published by Biteback in May and is full of recollections, remonstrations and witty responses.
Khan, who moved to the UK from Bangladesh at the age of 3, is a Liberal Democrat councillor in the London borough of Tower Hamlets, and former special adviser to Lord Newby in the House of Lords.
“My place, as a second-generation immigrant, was not in the home. It was out in the world,” she writes in her book.
When she was 19, she aspired to become a teacher and refine the entire education system – one that did not fairly recognise her heritage and her community’s contribution to Britain, but rather, homogenised South Asia, failing to differentiate between India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Writing of her children’s present-day experiences with Islamophobia, Khan upholds her belief that the education system needs to be upended from the primary school level in Britain.