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Updated 2003-09-18 Haiqa Khan, née Jemima Goldsmith Jemima Goldsmith, the daughter of the late British financier Sir James Goldsmith, glamorized relationships with Muslim men when, at age 21, she married Pakistani cricket star and politician Imran Khan, a man twice her age. She inspired her late friend, The Princess of Wales, Diana to pursue liaisons with Muslim men.
Burrell went on to say "In an effort to make him more committed and jealous, which she later regretted, she also saw Gulu Lalvani, the managing director of Binatone, the electrical company, and was photographed out publicly with him. Gulu Lalvani was a millionaire and was also another Muslim* which I think the Princess thought would make Hasnat more possessive. In fact it had the opposite effect." [see ThisisLondon] It’s also been suggested that Diana got involved with Dodi El-Fayed, the ne'er-do-well with whom she met her death in a Paris highway tunnel, to make Dr. Khan jealous and bring him back to her. * Actually, Lalvani is a Sikh, although he comes from the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, as does Dr. Khan.
While an angry Muslim reader pointed the
behavior of cold and unfeeling Prince Charles towards her, I point out both the Khans and El-Fayeds exploited their sons'
liaisons with Diana for publicity.
Jemima
converted to Islam when she married Imran Khan and took the name Haiqa
Khan. Her testimonial, Why I Chose Islam, is mirrored on many Islamic
dawah (proselytization) sites, often in conjunction with other stories of
converts to Islam:
Jemima writes,
Contrary to current opinion, my
decision to convert to Islam was entirely my own choice and in no way
hurried...I particularly stressed that I had converted to Islam entirely
"through my own convictions". The significance of this has been largely
ignored by the press. The point is that my conversion was not, as so many have
assumed, a pre-requisite to my marriage. It was entirely my own choice.
Religiously speaking, there was absolutely no compulsion for me to convert
prior to my marriage. As it explicitly states in the Quran, a Muslim is
permitted to marry from "the People of the Book" - in other words, either a
Christian or a Jew. Indeed, the Sunnah - which describes the life of the
Prophet - shows that the messenger of Islam himself married both a Christian
and a Jew during his lifetime. Jemima fails to qualify that while a
Muslim man can marry a Christian or Jewish woman, a Muslim woman is forbidden to
marry outside her religion. Women who are neither Christian nor
Jewish are compelled to give up their religion when marrying a Muslim
man. Jemima also fails to mention that Mohammad's two Jewish
wives, Juwairiya and Safiyya, were
acquired as the spoils of war, while another Jewish captive woman, Rihana,
became Mohammad's concubine. Mary the Copt [the mother of his son Ibrahim,
who died in infancy] did not have the status of being a wife, but was merely a
concubine: in Sahih Muslim, one of the authoritative Hadith, she is referred as
Mohammad's "slave-girl."
If the Prophet's marriages and liaisons are the models for "interfaith" marriage
and the dignity accorded to the non-Muslim wife, that provides significant
inducement for the woman to renounce her faith and become a Muslim.
Jemima actually had significant
inducement to convert to Islam. Imran made known his political aspirations
not long before his marriage in 1995, and he asked that people pray that he find
a Muslim bride. Allah-u-Akbar! Allah is truly
great! Allah finds him a wealthy heiress, young, blonde, and beautiful,
whose father can underwrite his political ambitions. It would have been
politically disastrous for Imran to return to Pakistan after his marriage if
Jemima had retained the faith of either of her parents (her father was Jewish;
her mother, Christian). It is very telling that Jemima qualifies that
there was no compulsion to convert with the words "religiously speaking" -
politically speaking, there was compulsion for her to convert to
Islam. As it happened, Imran's political opponents successfully used
Jemima's Jewish heritage (through her father) and her father's bankrolling of
his political campaign to tie him to "worldwide Zionist conspiracies."
Jemima writes,
During the last year I have had the
opportunity to visit Pakistan on three separate occasions and have observed
Islamic family life in practice. Thus, to some extent I now feel qualified to
judge for myself the true role and position of women in the religion. At the
risk of sounding defensive, I would like to point out that Islam is not a
religion which subjugates women whilst elevating men to the status of
mini-dictators in their own homes.
I was able to see this first-hand
when I met Imran's sisters in Lahore: they are all highly educated
professional women. His oldest sister, Robina, is an alumnus of the LSE and
holds a senior position in the United Nations in New York. Another sister,
Aleema, has a master's degree in business administration and runs a successful
business; Uzma is a highly qualified surgeon working in a Lahore hospital,
whilst Rani is a university graduate who co-ordinates charity work. They can
hardly be seen as "women in chains" dominated by tyrannical husbands. On the
contrary, they are strong-minded independent women - yet at the same time they
remain deeply committed both to their families and their religion. Thus, I was
able to see - in theory and in practice - how Islam promotes the essential
notion of the family unit without subjugating its female members.
Imran's sisters are among the privileged
in Pakistan, where 70% of the population is illiterate, and have benefited from
western education. They can hardly be seen as normative of the role
of women in Islamic countries. Jemima herself has unusual freedom of mobility for a
Muslim woman (who must often get permission from her husband to travel), indeed,
for any woman, due to her family's wealth: she and Imran split their time
between residences in London and Pakistan.
Jemima started a clothing line, which she terminated in 2002,
thereby putting 800 needy Pakistani women who did embroidery and needlework out
of work. In an article published in UK newspapers, she blamed the shutdown shutdown of her clothing line on
Pakistan's worsening economy since 911 and on America's presence in Pakistan and
Afghanistan (anti-Americanism plays well in leftist UK newspapers).
She noted that many of these women were the principal breadwinners in their
family, as their husbands were drug addicts. Are these women any
less indicative of the status of women in Islamic countries?
Jemima writes, I am nevertheless fully aware that
women are sometimes exploited and oppressed in Islamic societies, as in other
parts of the world. Judging by some of the articles which have appeared in the
press, it would seem that a Western woman's happiness hinges largely upon her
access to nightclubs, alcohol and revealing clothes; and the absence of such
apparent freedom and luxuries in Islamic societies is seen as an infringement
of her basic rights. However, as we all know, such superficialities have very
little to do with true happiness. Besides, without in any way wishing to
disparage the culture of the Western world, into which I was born, I am more
than willing to forego the transient pleasures derived from alcohol and
nightclubs; and as for the clothes I will be wearing, I find the traditional
shalwar kameez (tunic and trousers) worn by most Pakistani women far more
elegant and feminine than anything in my wardrobe. Ah yes ;-), the Islamic countercharge
that Western society exploits women through media depictions when charges of
exploitation of women in Islamic societies is raised. I know that the
purpose of women's magazines is really to deliver audience to advertisers, and
in that context, sex sells. Women's magazines didn't degrade me, but the
lesser humanity accorded to me as a non-Muslim vis-à-vis Muslims was
degrading.
In Jemima's case, these charges are
particularly disingenuous. She is a staple of glossy style magazines,
particularly in the UK. She epitomizes the very things that she regards as
superficial: in 1999, she was mentioned in Vogue (USA) among the society girls
who sipped champagne at fashion shows - consumption of alcohol being forbidden
or "haram" in Islam. More recently, Jemima was featured on the cover
of the February 2001 issue of Tatler
(UK). The cover story dealt with her own clothing line that features
miniskirts and spaghetti straps - hardly "modest" Islamic dress for women.
Tellingly, while her society friends modeled these dresses for the photo spread,
Jemima was dressed in a sweater that modestly grazed her midriff (offering a
glimpse of flesh) and white jeans. While she was more covered than
her friends, her outfit did reveal her shapely figure.
Jemima is right about one thing:
"as we all know, such superficialities have very little to do with true
happiness." Right! You don't have to be Muslim to deplore the
consumerism and materialism in Western society, and Islam is not the remedy for
the ills of Western society.
Other Information:
Web site of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, political party
headed by Imran Khan. This site includes Jemima's notorious article Tell
the Truth about Israel (ghost-written by Imran?), which she refused to
discuss for the cover story in Tatler.
Islamic Monitor is a
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Diana pursued Dr. Hasnat
Khan, a Pakistani-born surgeon. She did some silly things in pursuing Dr. Khan,
which makes one question her mental and emotional stability. She
approached Dr. Christiaan Baarnard about creating a position for Dr. Khan at his
heart institute in Cape Town without Dr. Khan’s knowledge. Perhaps she was planning to present this to Dr.
Khan as a fait accompli so that her fantasy of running off together and
getting married and living happily ever after could be fulfilled. Diana's
butler, Paul Burrell (whom Theodore Dalrymple aptly described as her
Jemima Goldsmith is a public figure and serves as
a role model for other women contemplating relationships or even marriage with
Muslims. It is essential that the disingenuousness of her testimonial be
exposed so that other women will not be misled into believing that marriage with
a Muslim is a desirable lifestyle choice.