MPs back campaign to put Muslim heroine on British bank note

British politicians have thrown their weight behind a campaign to make a Muslim spy who resisted the Nazis the new face of the £50 note. Aged just 29, Noor Inayat Khan was parachuted into occupied France to serve as a radio operator behind enemy lines during the Second World War. She helped run the Prosper […]

British politicians have thrown their weight behind a campaign to make a Muslim spy who resisted the Nazis the new face of the £50 note.

Aged just 29, Noor Inayat Khan was parachuted into occupied France to serve as a radio operator behind enemy lines during the Second World War. She helped run the Prosper network of resistance communications in Paris, an Special Operations Executive established by Winston Churchill in order to “set Europe ablaze”.

As mass arrests by the Gestapo stifled the allies’ communications networks across France, Khan refused to leave her French colleagues and single-handedly ran a cell of agents in Paris for 3 months. However, she was eventually betrayed and captured by the Nazis, eventually perishing in Dachau concentration camp.

Born to a wealthy American mother, and an Indian Muslim father in Moscow, the Sufi operative began her career as a children’s writer in Paris before joining the war effort. A bust of her was unveiled in London in 2012 by Princess Anne. (thenational.ae)