Humera Khan
Trustee & Co-Founder
Humera Khan is a trustee and co-founder of An-Nisa Society. She has a background in local government, equal opportunities, race relations and gender. She is a leading activist, adviser, trainer and educator on Muslim issues. She works with families, providing support and counselling on a broad range of issues.
She is currently focusing her work on improving policies for services for the Muslim community.
She co-founded Muslim Wise and also helped establish Q news magazine, serving as a Contributing Editor. She also writes for various publications such as the Guardian and the Independent.
She is in demand as a public speaker in the media and other public arenas on a wide range of issues ranging from multiculturalism, Islamophobia and racism to social issues such as sexual abuse, generation conflicts, domestic violence and gender.
Humera is involved in developing the work of the Society and in managing numerous projects such as the Muslim mental health project, Islamic counselling, Muslim Fatherhood and sexual health education and writing a series of books on sexual health from an Islamic perspective called ‘Cycle of Life’ and producing a Practitioners Guide and resources for agencies working with Muslim fathers.
At the Society she has worked extensively with children and young people. She led a three-tiered project entitled ‘British Muslim or Wot?’ working with young Muslim boys and men dealing with issues to do with identity and alienation and working on Muslim fatherhood with Muslim boys and young men. She has also facilitated film and media projects, playschemes and various art based projects.
Most recently Humera completed a three-year identity and portraiture project with young people in partnership with the National Portrait Gallery.In addition, Humera is the co-ordinator for An-Nisa Society’s Supplementary Muslim School (SMS), set up in 1986.
At SMS she has developed innovative and pioneering methods of teaching Islamic education relevant to young British Muslims. She has served on various government working groups including the Cantle Commission, established in the aftermath of the 2001 disturbances, the Forced Marriage Working Group and the Preventing Extremism Together taskforce and the Home Office Community Cohesion Review Team set up following the 2005 riots in the North of England.
Humera is active in Interfaith work, which includes being a member of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Christian Muslim Forum and facilitator of a Jewish Muslim text based dialogue group run by An-Nisa Society and the Leo Baeck College. Currently Humera is working on a Jewish Muslim dialogue initiative with young people aged 14-15 in partnership with partnership with West London Synagogue that includes a 5-day trip to Morocco to learn about Jewish and Muslim history and culture.