Mehreen Baig (born 28 November 1989) [1] is a British television presenter. She has presented several documentaries on topics relating to Britain's Asian and Muslim communities.
Mehreen Baig (born 28 November 1989) [1] is a British television presenter. She has presented several documentaries on topics relating to Britain's Asian and Muslim communities.
Baig was born 1989 in Hackney, East London to Pakistani parents. Baig attended Queen Elizabeth's School for Girls in Barnet. [2] She went on to graduate from the UCL Institute of Education. [3] Baig has been a secondary school teacher in North London. [4]
In 2016, Baig was in the BBC Two documentary Muslims Like Us , in which Muslims of differing backgrounds and beliefs were made to live together. [5] She was the second to enter the house after the former boxer and Islamist Anthony Small (Abdul Haqq), who gave her a leaflet condemning gender mixing. [6]
In February 2018, Baig fronted Islam, Women and Me, a BBC One documentary exploring the role of women in the religion. [7] In August, she presented Lost Boys? What’s Going Wrong For Asian Men, which explored issues relating to British Pakistani men. Tim Dowling of The Guardian gave it four stars out of five for being "informed, thorough and provocative". [8] Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan of Al Jazeera gave a negative review, saying that the documentary blamed the men's situation on Pakistani culture more than on discrimination. [9]
Baig has also presented documentaries on physical fitness, [10] and segments on the BBC's Sunday Morning Live [11] and The One Show . [12] In 2019 she took part in Pilgrimage , in which people of differing religious views made a pilgrimage to Rome. [13] In 2020 Baig presented the new BBC Studios and Open University co-production Our Coast with Adrian Chiles. [14]
Mehreen has lived in North Finchley since the turn of the millennium. [15]
There were many video and audio recordings released by Osama bin Laden between 2000 and his death in 2011.
Yvonne Ridley is a British journalist, author and politician who holds several committee positions with the Alba Party in Scotland. She was a former chair of the National Council of the now-defunct Respect Party. Ridley made global headlines when she was captured by the Taliban in 2001 after the events of 9/11 and before the start of the U.S.-led war. Two years later she converted to Islam. She is a vocal supporter of Palestine, which she took up as a schoolgirl in her native County Durham. She is an avid critic of Zionism and of Western media portrayals and foreign policy in the war on terror, and has undertaken speaking tours throughout the Muslim world as well as America, Europe and Australia. She has been called "something close to a celebrity in the Islamic world" by the journalist Rachel Cooke, and in 2008 Ridley said that she had been voted the "most recognisable woman in the Islamic world" by Islam Online.
Rageh Omaar is a Somali-born British journalist and writer. He was a BBC world affairs correspondent, where he made his name reporting from Iraq. In September 2006, he moved to a new post at Al Jazeera English, where he presented the nightly weekday documentary series Witness until January 2010. The Rageh Omaar Report, first aired in February 2010, is a one-hour, monthly investigative documentary in which he reports on international current affairs stories. From January 2013, he became a special correspondent and presenter for ITV News, reporting on a broad range of news stories, as well as producing special in-depth reports from around the UK and further afield. A year after his appointment, Omaar was promoted to international affairs editor for ITV News. Since October 2015, alongside his duties as international affairs editor, he has been a deputy newscaster of ITV News at Ten. Since September 2017, Omaar has occasionally presented the ITV Lunchtime News including the ITV News London Lunchtime Bulletin and the ITV Evening News.
Islam is the second-largest religion in the United Kingdom, with results from the 2021 Census recording just under four million Muslims, or 6.0% of the total population in the United Kingdom. London has the largest population and greatest proportion (15%) of Muslims in the country. The vast majority of British Muslims in the United Kingdom adhere to Sunni Islam, while smaller numbers are associated with Shia Islam.
Mishal Husain is a British newsreader and journalist for BBC Television and BBC Radio and a Sunday Times bestselling author.
Saira Khan is a British television personality. She was a contestant on the first series of The Apprentice in 2005, in which she finished as the runner-up. In 2012, Khan competed in the first series of The Great Sport Relief Bake Off. 2012 to 2017, Khan co-presented The Martin Lewis Money Show, and in 2015, she presented the ITV series Guess This House. From 2015 to 2020, she was a regular panelist on the ITV talk show Loose Women. Khan has also competed in the eighteenth series of Celebrity Big Brother in 2016, and in 2019, she competed in the eleventh series of Dancing on Ice.
Nazia Hassan was a Pakistani singer-songwriter, lawyer and social activist. Referred to as the Queen of South Asian Pop, she is considered one of the most influential singers in Pakistan and India as well. Starting in the 1980s, as part of the duo Nazia and Zoheb, she and her brother Zoheb Hassan, have sold over 65 million records worldwide.
Maajid Usman Nawaz is a British activist and former radio presenter. He was the founding chairman of the think tank Quilliam. Until January 2022, he was the host of an LBC radio show on Saturdays and Sundays. Born in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, to a British Pakistani family, Nawaz is a former member of the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. His membership led to his December 2001 arrest in Egypt, where he remained imprisoned until 2006. While there, he read books about human rights and made contact with Amnesty International who adopted him as a prisoner of conscience. He left Hizb-ut-Tahrir in 2007, renounced his Islamist past, and called for a secular Islam. Later, Nawaz co-founded Quilliam with former Islamists, including Ed Husain.
Quilliam was a British think tank co-founded in 2008 by Maajid Nawaz that focused on counter-extremism, specifically against Islamism, which it argued represents a desire to impose a given interpretation of Islam on society. Founded as The Quilliam Foundation and based in London, it claimed to lobby government and public institutions for more nuanced policies regarding Islam and on the need for greater democracy in the Muslim world whilst empowering "moderate Muslim" voices. The organisation opposed any Islamist ideology and championed freedom of expression. The critique of Islamist ideology by its founders―Nawaz, Rashad Zaman Ali and Ed Husain―was based, in part, on their personal experiences. Quilliam went into liquidation in 2021.
Myriam François, formerly known as Myriam François-Cerrah, is a British journalist, filmmaker and writer. Her work has appeared on the BBC, Channel 4 and Al Jazeera. She is the founder and CEO of production company mpwr productions, which specialises in documentary films centred on minority voices.
Humza Mohammed Arshad is an English actor, comedian and writer of Pakistani descent. He produces the web series Diary of a Bad Man (2010–2013) and Badman (2015–present). His homemade YouTube videos have been viewed more than 100 million times, which makes him one of the most popular online comedians in the UK.
Jeffrey Mirza is a British stand-up comedian and actor.
Mohamed Nasir Nabil Abdul Rashid bin Suleman Obineche, known as Nabil Abdulrashid, is an English comedian of Nigerian descent. In 2010, at the age of 25, he became the youngest black comedian to perform stand-up at the Hammersmith Apollo.
Islamism has existed in the United Kingdom since the 1970s, and has become widely visible and a topic of political discourse since the beginning of the 21st century.
Islah Abdur-Rahman is a British Bangladeshi film director, actor, singer and screenwriter. He is best known for writing, directing and starring in the hit series, the Corner Shop Show and for creating and directing the web series Mandem in the Wall.
Muslims Like Us is a British reality television series shown on BBC Two in December 2016. In the show, ten British Muslims of varying beliefs and backgrounds were placed in a house together. It was produced by Mobeen Azhar.
Asifa Lahore is a British Muslim trans woman who has been described as Britain's first out Muslim drag queen.