ACTIVIST

BATTLING EXTREMISM Sara Khan co-founded Inspire as a channel to articulate British Muslim issues. The author and activist has a new battle on her hands with radicalisation and extremism on the rise BY RYAN YOUNG

f the tragedies of recent months have reminded the world of anything, it is that the battle against extremism really does begin at home. In the UK, few can claim a higher profile in that fight than Sara Khan, the co-founder of Inspire, a nongovernmental organisation aimed squarely at countering the twin evils of extremism and gender inequality in the country's sizeable Muslim communities. Following the sudden rise of the terrorist group Isis (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), Khan has been thrust further into the limelight as a figure of authority and a vocal opponent. Last year she was named one of Britain's 500 most influential people

Kham meets with British Muslim women to discuss extremism and women's inequalities 52

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by the publishers Debrett's, deemed an authority on the British way of life. In July Khan appeared alongside Caitlyn Jenner and Angelina Jolie-Pitt on the BBC Woman’s Hour power list. Khan is the face of a grassroots organisation, founded from a kitchen in 2009 by a collective of Muslim women united by a need to tackle head-on the inequalities and indoctrinations they saw embedding in their own communities. “A group of us realised that none of these so-called Muslim bodies represented us or our views,” says 36-year-old Khan. “There was a real sense of frustration, of ordinary Muslim women deciding, ‘we have got to do something because the