Muslim Loose Women star Saira Khan has said she’ll never stop wearing bikinis or standing up to extremists in a fiery rant.
Saira, 47, previously posted a bikini snap on Instagram in response to a preacher who said it was a sin for Muslim women to pluck their eyebrows – inviting the woman who made the remark to ‘kiss my [bottom]’.
Her defiant post attracted a flood of comments, including one that said ‘if you value your life keep the f*** out of Islam’, which Saira publicly reported to police via a Tweet.
Today the mother of two revealed her husband Steve Hyde pleaded with her to ‘let it go’ over fears for the safety of their children, but said she ‘can’t not speak up’.
Saira Kahn went on a passionate rant on today’s Loose Women, saying she wouldn’t be silenced by Muslim trolls
Saira posted this risque bikini picture on Instagram, telling Muslim extremists to ‘kiss my bottom’
She said on the show she would continue to wear bikinis and be a positive role model for Muslim women.
Saira had been on holiday last month when she discovered that a Muslim convert said women are committing a sin by plucking their eyebrows.
After being contacted by a fellow Muslim woman who said her husband had banned her from working in a salon, Saira said she felt compelled to speak out.
She said: ‘I could not believe what I was hearing , here was a woman, of all the things you can preach that’s going on in the name of our religion, she chooses eyebrows, and actually makes women feel bad about themselves.
‘”It’s a sin,” she said so I posted that in defiance, saying you are a prehistoric dinosaur for coming out with things like this.’
Saira received the ‘worst, vile comments’, including death threats, for her defiant post.
Defiant: The mother of two revealed her husband Steve Hyde pleaded with her to ‘let it go’ over fears for the safety of their children, but said she ‘can’t not speak up’
At the time a troll, posting under the handle @silverbengle, commented on Saira’s Instagram telling her to stay out of Islam if she wanted to live.
They posted: ‘Keep your f****** mouth shut! Your not a Muslim nor do you represent anything to do with Islam!!! Your white masters have given you what you desire as a sell out reporter!!! If you value your life keep the f*** out of Islam [sic].’
Saira said her husband warned that extremist ‘nutters’ could harm their children Zachariah and Aamara, and begged her to ‘let it go’.
‘My husband pulled me to one side and said ”Look you’ve got two children, you don’t know what nutters are out there. You can’t speak about, this just let it go.”
He was so concerned that I just thought, “you know what Steve, you’re right,” but I can’t not speak up because the only image people will have of Muslim women in this world is those extremists,’ she explained.
‘I want people to know I am a Muslim woman, I want to wear a bikini, I wear it with pride, and I will pluck my eyebrows.
‘Killing other people in the name of religion is a sin but not plucking your eyebrows.’
Saira and her husband Steve are seen with their son Zac and adopted daughter Amara in 2010
Her fellow Loose Women panelist Andrea McLean praised Saira for being ‘brave’, but she said she didn’t feel brave for speaking out.
She explained: ‘I think it’s so wrong and weird for me to feel brave just to call somebody a dinosaur. That’s not brave, we should all be allowed to say something like that. The thing that really saddens me, the point I want to end on, my family came here, my mum and dad nothing in their pockets, they came in the ’60s I was born in the ’70s.
‘My generation of people went through the National Front, we went through the BNP, we had skinheads writing names, that generation put their head down, they were grateful to be in the country, they were grateful to get a job, and they wanted to have their kids to be educated and enjoy all the freedoms of this country.
‘What I find sad is that there are people of my colour, of my religion, now giving me death threats – fourth, fifth generation on, that’s the sad thing and I think that’s its a disgrace and that’s not why my parents came to this country in the first place.
Instagram user silverbengle send Saira a death threat for her bikini pictures in a now deleted comment
Saira was quick to report the death threat to the police on Twitter, before speaking out about it today
‘I think we all have to really stand up, I will not keep my mouth shut. If somebody says to me you cant pluck your eyebrows I will call them a prehistoric dinosaur and I’ve said it on national telly.’
In May the star Saira publicly criticised a Muslim man who slammed her for baring her body in a Loose Women campaign about body acceptance.
She told the troll to ‘go and do one’ and dubbed him a ‘narrow minded, misogynistic, brainwashed, backward idiot’.
Taking a stand: How Saira uses social media to shame online trolls
This is not the first time Ms Khan has hit back at vicious online trolls.
In May the star publicly called out a Muslim man who criticised her for baring her body in a candid shoot alongside her fellow Loose Women panellists.
Social media user Bilal Ali said that as a Muslim he was ‘disgraced’ to see the image. In a lengthy post, he told her she was not a role model and it was his ‘duty as a brother’ to tell her.
Criticism: Saira, second from right, publicly called out a Muslim man who criticised her for baring her body in a candid shoot alongside her fellow Loose Women panellists
Saira posted his comment in full with a very heated response, telling the man to ‘go and do one’
Saira posted his comment in full with a very heated response, telling the man to ‘go and do one’ and dubbing him a ‘narrow minded, misogynistic, brainwashed, backward idiot’.
She added that it was her choice to take part in the shoot and ‘if Allah doesn’t like it – let him deal with me.’
She concluded the post: ‘If a woman in a bikini offends your version of Islam – then seriously you should not be looking in the first place.’