I am working undercover for Searchlight magazine. Despite being a Muslim, I blend in rather well so, two weeks ago, I was in Birmingham listening to fascist idiot Paul Golding. It could have been Tommy Robinson or Nick Tenconi, or even Nigel Farage. The mouth matters not, but the words do.
“Did our war heroes fight for this?” asked Golding, trying to rouse the small, disinterested crowd to fury. If he meant his right to assemble, to spout bile, hatred, and lies, then, actually, yes.
Bigots on the right always seem to forget the fact that the “heroes” they speak of were often black, brown, Jewish…Muslim.
Two and a half million Muslims in fact. But, to me, there is one name that stands above all. Noor Inayat Khan.
One can only imagine the bravery of a dark-skinned Muslim in her mid-20s, with a whole life of arts, travel, writing, exploration and relative ease, for her family was well off and not without means, volunteering, in 1942, to serve in F (France) Section of the newly-formed and highly-secretive Special Operations Executive.
Noor was born in Moscow and lived in Paris and the UK. Widely travelled and skilled in several languages, her father was a leading Indian musician, and Sufi of royal ancestry while her mother was American.
This international upbringing meant that Noor always sought to break down boundaries between people, nations, and religions.
When she first applied to join the Womens Auxiliary Air Force in 1940 she did so as an effort to show how people from every background, including the foreign and privileged, could serve alongside others.
She was already a published author by 1939, her children’s book of Jakata Tales having been published by Harrop and Sons.
Just after the publication of the book, the Khan family had fled from Paris to Cornwall as the Nazis took control. Despite their Sufi beliefs, which focus on Islamic mysticism, prayer and pacifism, Noor and her brother Vilayat, determined to serve to fight Nazism.
The siblings hoped that their example would “provide z bridge between Britain and India”.
Secret work
It is not surprising that in the extraordinary world of spying and sabotage that Noor Inayat Khab’s language skills and unusual background were noticed.
One can imagine that a soft spoken Indian Princess who disliked violence and dishonesty might not be the best fit for secret work.
In 1943, the life expectancy of an agent in France was six weeks. And yet Noor was keen to go
Despite struggling with the physical and emotional aspects of deep cover intelligence work – she knew she would be sent to France, behind enemy lines and that agents rarely lasted for more than a few months before being captured, killed or evading the Gestapo – Noor’s language skill’s, perfect French for example, and her excellence in small set wireless telegraphy, trumped any weaknesses that she had.
Some SOE training personnel were less than convinced that this tiny, diminutive figure with her small voice and beautiful manners would manage more than a week in occupied territory. But SOE top brass Vera Atkins and Maurice Buckmaster believed that she would, in fact, do a brilliant job.


In 1943, the life expectancy of an agent in France was six weeks. And yet Noor was keen to go. Until now, female operatives had only been couriers, taking messages within and between resistance networks. Noor was the first female telegraphy operator to be sent.
Her job would be to transmit information from France to SOE HQ.
Training aside, the SOE was new. Its operatives had limited experience. Sometimes, agents had to make mistakes, fail, be captured, or die in order for new lessons to be learned. Winston Churchill knew the potential for a legion of spies operating across occupied France.
He demanded that SOE set France on fire. But the chances of an agent coming home were less than 50%.
A vicious enemy
And it was made clear to every potential spy that there was a desperate need for organisation, intelligence, subterfuge, and sabotage.
The situation was made all the more dangerous by the Gestapo, French collaborators, nazi sympathisers and the police, many of whom had been fascists before the war. Against our inexperienced spies were a vicious enemy using brutality, bribery, corruption, terror, torture and treachery.
The outlook for Noor Inayat Khan and her fellow spies was not good. And yet they knew this. Their trainers and their handlers were brutally honest about their chances.
Second to none
Despite all this, Noor was ready, willing, and able to do her bit. Anyway, nobody would expect an Indian woman with a girlish, happy go lucky demeanour to be a spy. She seemed so innocent, somewhat detached from the modern world.
Her heroic work, her ability to stay one step ahead of savage pursuers, keeping nazi agents busy for vital weeks and months, was second to none.
The outlook for Noor Inayat Khan and her fellow spies was not good. And yet they knew this. Their trainers and their handlers were brutally honest about their chances
From June to October 1943 Noor Inayat Khan was the only remaining radio operator for the Prosper resistance network in Paris.
Despite her fellow resisters being rounded up, and her constant need to move from place to place often at a moment’s notice, she overcame fatigue and fear, refusing to come home when Buckmaster offered her a passage back to Britain.
Captured after a tip provided by a treacherous relative of a resister’s family, Noor was taken to Ss Intelligence headquarters at 84 Avenue Foch in Paris. Incredibly, she managed to briefly escape on two occasions.
Nevertheless, Noor was sent to the notorious Pforzheim prison where, for ten months, she was tortured, shackled in chains and kept as a “non person” before being sent to Dachau, the nazi death camp outside Munich.
Executed
On or about September 1944, Noor and four women were executed, having been viciously beaten by SS personnel. It wasn’t until 1958 that the final details of Noor’s last hours were discovered.
But it was known that she had been executed after interviews with nazi guards at Dachau offered new information. A witness to Noor’s murder told that her last words were “liberte”. Freedom.
It is known that under torture Noor Inayat Khan never revealed details of her fellow operatives. Many cracked under Gestapo brutality that had reached the level of a sick and destructive art by 1943. But not Noor.
She was not the only Muslim to fight for freedom and humanity during World War Two but her story, which came to greater public attention after the film A Call To Spy, highly recommended of course, brought the incredible story to new audiences.
Heroic battle
Many within the UK Muslim community knew little or nothing about their own sister’s heroic battle.
Noor Inayat Khan was survived by her mother, Pirani Begum, and her siblings Vilayat, Hidayat, and Khair-un-Nisa. Vilayat was a well-known Sufi teacher who founded the Sufi Order of the West.
His sister Noor was posthumously award both the George Cross in the UK, and the Croix de Guerre by France.
There is a plaque bearing her name at the Air Force Memorial in Runymede and, in 2012, a beautiful statue on a plinth, detailing her life and sacrifice, was unveiled by the Princess Royal in Gordon Square, London, where Noor used to visit and play as a youngster.
Please take time to visit, lay flowers or stand as witness to her sacrifice if you’re in the city. I have been there several times with family members.
Vital to remember
The life and work of Noor Inayat Khan is more vital to remember and understand today than at any time since 1945. The same forces of darkness that she fought against are rising again.
The same dangerous fascist politics are coming to the fore and lies about “what our ancestors fought for,” as if this was one fixed and easily identifiable thing, are being peddled across the nation.
I can say that my father, who fought for Britain in the Second World War, did so to create a better, fairer, freer, more tolerant, and peaceful world.
His vision, and tens of millions like him, would hold Noor Inayat Khan to be the ultimate example of patriotism and sacrifice quite at odds with the fascist conception of a closed, militaristic Europe at war with itself, and at war with other countries and cultures peddled by the Goldings, Colletts, Yaxley Lennons and allies.
No. The legacy and vision of Noor Inayat Khan is one to which we can all subscribe.
Freedom!
The citation announcing that Noor had been awarded the George Cross was made in the London Gazette in 1949. It read:
The KING has been graciously pleased to approve the posthumous award of the GEORGE CROSS to :— Assistant Section Officer Nora INAYAT-KHAN (9901), Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.
Assistant Section Officer Nora INAYAT-KHAN was the first woman operator to be infiltrated into enemy occupied France, and she was landed by Lysander aircraft on 16th June, 1943.
During the weeks immediately following her arrival, the Gestapo made mass arrests in the Paris Resistance groups to which she had been detailed.
However, she refused to abandon what had become the principal and most dangerous post in France, even though she had been given the opportunity to return to England, because she did not want to leave her French comrades without communications and she also hoped to rebuild her group.
Therefore, she remained at her post and did the excellent work which earned her a posthumous Mention in Despatches.
The Gestapo had a full description of her, but it only knew her code name “Madeleine”. It deployed considerable forces in its effort to catch her and break the last remaining link with London.
After 3 months, she was betrayed to the Gestapo and taken to its H.Q. in the Avenue Foch.
The Gestapo had found her codes and messages and as a result, it was now in a position to work back to London. It asked her to co-operate, but she refused and gave it no information of any kind.
She was imprisoned in one of the cells on the 5th floor of the Gestapo H.Q. and she remained there for several weeks during which time she made two unsuccessful attempts to escape.
She was asked to sign a declaration which stated that she would make no further escape attempts, but she refused to sign it and the Chief of the Gestapo obtained permission to send her to Germany for “safe custody” from Berlin. She was the first enemy agent to be sent to Germany.
Assistant Section Officer INAYAT-KHAN was sent to Karlsruhe in November 1943, and then she was sent to Pforzheim where her cell was apart from the main prison. She was considered a particularly dangerous and uncooperative prisoner.
The Director of the prison was also interrogated and confirmed that Assistant Section Officer INAYAT-KHAN refused to give any information whatsoever, either about her work or her colleagues when she was interrogated by the Karlsruhe Gestapo.
She was taken to the Dachau Concentration Camp with three other female prisoners on 12 September 1944. On her arrival, she was taken to the crematorium and shot.
Assistant Section Officer INAYAT-KHAN displayed the most conspicuous courage, both moral and physical over a period of more than 12 months.