Khalida Khan
Director & Co-Founder
Khalida Khan is a co-founder and Director of An-Nisa Society with a background in local government, equal opportunities, race relations and community development.
She is an activist, campaigner and writer on Muslim issues. She presents regularly on issues of faith, service provision and the Muslim voluntary and community sector and is an advisor to media and researchers.
For over 30 years she has played a leading role in highlighting the need for legislation against religious discrimination and in developing Muslim sensitive services and policies. Her publication, ‘PVE and Prevent: A Muslim Response’ (February 2009) greatly influenced the discourse on the government’s Preventing Violent Extremism policies. She has written numerous papers, briefings and responses to consultations, which include the Crime & Disorder Bill, Single Equality Bill, Codes of Practice for the Equality Act 2010, forced marriage and other government consultations.
She is a co-founder of the pioneering magazine Muslimwise and a frequent writer for the Muslim Update and Q-News, where she led and was instrumental in the campaign for the recognition of Islamophobia and for legislation against religious discrimination.
She was the first to coin the term ‘Institutional Islamophobia’ to identify anti-Muslim discrimination in policies and practices. This campaign came to the attention of the Runnymede Trust. She has been a trustee of the Forum Against Islamophobia & Racism (FAIR) and as a commissioner of the British Muslims & Islamophobia Commission (BMICOM), which was set up by the Runnymede Trust in 1996. Its first report, ‘Islamophobia: a challenge for us all,’ was published in 1997.
She significantly contributed to the follow-up BMICOM Report Islamophobia issues, challenges and action, Islamophobia issues, challenges and action (2004).
Khalida developed An-Nisa Society from an outfit operating in her living room to an organisation that has set the agenda on many critical issues in the Muslim community. She fought to get recognition for the Muslim community as a faith based community with needs emanating from that faith. Insisting that as British Muslims the welfare state needed to address Muslim needs appropriately in the mainstream a well as providing public funding for Muslim voluntary sector initiatives. Her thinking was that if the precedent was set for public faith based funding in one locality then it would have a ripple effect throughout the country. Her aim was to create a demand for faith-based services far and wide in the Muslim community and in the mainstream through awareness strategies and campaigns.
The success of this strategy has contributed to the completely different climate that is now more sympathetic to the idea of faith-based services. Through her relentless campaigning the Society broke the barriers around public funding of faith based initiatives and were successful in achieving funding for a wide array of projects including Islamic counselling, Muslim drugs use, sexual health amongst others. As a strong believer that Muslim communities must be involved locally in the area they are based, she has been instrumental in developing many local networks and forums, and has served as a member of local forums, working parties and steering groups. Khalida’s vision has driven the work undertaken by An-Nisa Society for three decades her leadership has been critical in steering the Society through often difficult times, developing its work and building its profile. In 2003 Khalida was awarded a Lifetime Achievement, from ASPIRE, a BME Health Workers Network.