Hashia Khan, a Muslim councillor in Chorley, Lancashire, has told The Times she has been on the receiving end of threatening phone calls, verbal abuse and offensive graffiti by Muslim men in her ward who, according to Khan, "can't understand my mainstream views and those of 'live and let live' and how the British culture should be respected".
The campaign has been going on since 2005, when she put herself forward as a Labour candidate. Khan blamed the campaign on a small minority of men.
Khan said that "I've had to totally change the way I go about my job. I used to do ward walks all the time, but now there are some streets I can't even walk down...It is just a few members of the community who think I should be at home with a veil over my face, although if other people choose to do that, then I respect their choice".
The Mayor of Chorley Terry Brown and Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, have both spoken out in support of Khan. Brown called Khan "exceptionally talented" and believes that those who have targeted her have done so as "because she's a female Asian woman their view is that she should be at home producing babies". Abdul Bari encouraged her to go to the police, saying "we want more Muslim men and women playing an active role in ... politics."
However Khan only received lukewarm support from Dukandar Idris, the imam of Chorley's mosque. He doubted Khan's claim that there were certain streets that were unsafe for her, and that rather than airing her problems in public, she should have referred them to mosque elders. Idris went on to say that "because this is Britain, you cannot tell anyone what to do. I can tell my wife, but cannot tell other women, 'You cannot do this and that'".
help your fellow Muslims, male or female to achieve equal status