"IF SHE TALKS ABOUT JIHAD IT'S MAINLY IN CONTEXT OF STRUGGLING AGAINST EVIL" LONDON MAYOR SELLS A POLICE STATION TO ULTRA CONSERVATIVE MUSLIM WOMEN'S GROUP RUN BY SHARIA LOVING MUSLIMAH

London's Metropolitan Police has sold one of its disused stations to an organisation run by a hardline Islamic scholar with what her critics call a "medieval view of human rights and women's place in society".



Dr Farhat Hashmi, who has PhD in Hadith Sciences from the University of Glasgow, founded and runs Al-Huda International, which operates Islamic education programmes for young Muslim women across the world.



Hashmi and her organisation say they are progressive feminists who empower Muslim women by helping them to understand and interpret the Quran in order to use it to assert their rights under the Islamic faith.



But those who have experienced classes taught by her organisation, from Canada to Pakistan to the UK, claim she advocates an outdated and oppressive form of Islam that incorporates the likes of jihad, polygamy and subservience to husbands.



Boris Johnson, under the auspices of The Mayor of London Office for Police and Crime (Mopac) has sold a former police station in Chadwell Heath, Redbridge, northeast London, for £1m to Al-Huda Welfare Foundation, the UK branch of Hashmi's global organisation, which it said will be used for "education/community" purposes.



When the claims were put to a representative of Al-Huda, they told IBTimes UK that Hashmi's critics have misinterpreted her teachings.



Shazia Nawaz, a regional coordinator at Al-Huda, said Hashmi is not using the definition of jihad ‒that of religious warfare ‒ commonly understood in the West.



"If she talks about jihad, it's mainly in context of struggling against evil, which lies within ourselves to become a good human, a disciplined person, a civilised citizen and to struggle to revive the humanitarian spirit in people and community around us," Nawaz said.



And in the past Hashmi has denied promoting polygamy per se. Instead she said she teaches the word of the Quran, which is that if "a man has relations with a woman outside of marriage, the Quran orders him to marry her".



Mopac had not replied to IBTimes UK's request for comment on why it had sold off a public asset to the controversial Al-Huda.



"My gripe with Hashmi is that she is spreading a very retrograde and obscurantist brand of Islam," said Farzana Hassan, a columnist for the Toronto Star in Canada.



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