Zara Mohammed (born 2 August 1991) is a Pakistani-Scottish faith leader serving as Secretary General of the

Muslim Council of Britain The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) is an umbrella body of Muslim organisations in the United Kingdom, with over 500 affiliated mosques and organisations. It was formed in 1994 in response to British government's expressed wish for a single r ...

from 2021 until January 2025. She was the first woman to lead the organisation.

Biography

Mohammed's grandparents immigrated to

Britain Britain most often refers to: * Great Britain, a large island comprising the countries of England, Scotland and Wales * The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a sovereign state in Europe comprising Great Britain and the north-eas ...

from

Multan Multan is the List of cities in Punjab, Pakistan by population, fifth-most populous city in the Punjab, Pakistan, Punjab province of Pakistan. Located along the eastern bank of the Chenab River, it is the List of cities in Pakistan by populatio ...

Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...

. She was born in

Glasgow Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...

, Scotland, and studied at the

University of Strathclyde The University of Strathclyde () is a public research university located in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded in 1796 as the Andersonian Institute, it is Glasgow's second-oldest university, having received its royal charter in 1964 as the first techn ...

, where she graduated with an

LLB A Bachelor of Laws (; LLB) is an undergraduate law degree offered in most common law countries as the primary law degree and serves as the first professional qualification for legal practitioners. This degree requires the study of core legal subje ...

. She gained a BA (Hons) in Law and Politics in 2013, followed by an

LLM A large language model (LLM) is a language model trained with Self-supervised learning, self-supervised machine learning on a vast amount of text, designed for natural language processing tasks, especially Natural language generation, language g ...

in Human Rights Law in 2014. In 2016, she became the first woman to lead the

Federation of Student Islamic Societies The Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) is a national umbrella organisation aimed at supporting and representing Islamic societies at colleges and universities in the United Kingdom and Ireland. FOSIS was established in 1963 and is ...

(FOSIS). She has served as a lawyer since that year. Mohammed previously served as the Assistant Secretary General for the

(MCB), and was elected Secretary General of the organisation in 2021 after receiving the majority of affiliate votes over her competitor,

Ajmal Masroor Ajmal Masroor (; born 19 October 1971) is a Bangladeshi-born British imam, broadcaster and political activist. He is known for being a television presenter on political discussions and on Muslim channels. Early life Masroor was born in Sylhet D ...

. This was the first time a woman had held the position; Mohammed was additionally the youngest, as well as the first Pakistani-Scottish, person to serve in the role.

As Secretary General of the MCB, 2021-25

On 19 February 2021, Mohammed met with the

Paymaster General His Majesty's Paymaster General or HM Paymaster General is a ministerial position in the Cabinet Office of the United Kingdom. The position is currently held by Nick Thomas-Symonds of the Labour Party (UK), Labour Party. History The post was ...

Penny Mordaunt Dame Penelope Mary "Penny" Mordaunt (; born 4 March 1973) is a British former Conservative Party (UK), Conservative politician who served as Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons from 2022 until 2024. She was the Memb ...

, breaking with the Government policy since 2009 of not engaging with the body.

''Woman's Hour'' controversy

On 4 February 2021, in her first week in office, Mohammed appeared as a guest on the

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasti ...

programme ''

Woman's Hour ''Woman's Hour'' is a radio magazine programme broadcast in the United Kingdom on the BBC Light Programme, BBC Radio 2, and later BBC Radio 4. It has been on the air since 1946. History The first BBC programme for women was the programme cal ...

'' to discuss her election as secretary general. During the interview, presenter

Emma Barnett Emma Barnett (born 5 February 1985) is a British broadcaster and journalist who presented ''Woman's Hour'' on BBC Radio 4 from 2021 until 2024. Barnett worked for BBC Radio 5 Live for six years, beginning in 2014, after three years working for ...

repeatedly questioned, and interrupted, Mohammed on the number of female imams in the United Kingdom. Footage of the interview was uploaded to ''Woman's Hour''s

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

page, but was removed after subsequent backlash over Barnett's perceived hostility. Subsequently, an open letter was published criticising Barnett's line of questioning and tone during the interview. The more than 100 signatories included politicians

Sayeeda Warsi Sayeeda Hussain Warsi, Baroness Warsi, (; born 28 March 1971) is a British lawyer, politician, and member of the House of Lords who served as co-chairwoman of the Conservative Party from 2010 to 2012. She served in the Cameron–Clegg coaliti ...

and

Diane Abbott Diane Julie Abbott (born 27 September 1953) is a British Labour Party (UK), Labour Party politician who has been serving as Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Member of Parliament (MP) for Hackney North and Stoke Newington since 1987 Unit ...

, writer

Yassmin Abdel-Magied Yassmin Abdel-Magied is a Sudanese–Australian media presenter and writer, who had an early career as a mechanical engineer. She was named Young Queenslander of the Year in 2010 and Queensland Australian of the Year in 2015 for her engagemen ...

and comedian

Deborah Frances-White Deborah Frances-White (born 10 December 1967) is a London-based comedian, author and screenwriter. She has both British and Australian citizenship. She hosts the podcasts ''Global Pillage'' and '' The Guilty Feminist''. She wrote the 2018 comed ...

. A BBC spokesperson said the corporation would reply "in due course". In August 2021, she was named by ''

British Vogue ''British Vogue'' (stylised in all caps) is the British edition of the American Fashion journalism, fashion magazine Vogue (magazine), Vogue. The magazine was launched in 1916 by Condé Nast, linking together fashion and high society.König A ...

'' as one of the 25 most influential women in the UK. She later described this as one of the highlights of her term:

“I got to meet
Vivienne Westwood Dame Vivienne Isabel Westwood (; 8 April 1941 – 29 December 2022) was an English fashion designer and businesswoman, largely responsible for bringing modern punk and new wave fashions into the mainstream. In 2022, ''Sky Arts'' ranked her the ...
. But the real highlight was Muslim mums and young girls coming up to me afterwards. One mum said, ‘You don’t know what it means for my daughters to see you in Vogue.’ A 14-year-old girl told me she’d been struggling to wear her
hijab Hijab (, ) refers to head coverings worn by Women in Islam, Muslim women. Similar to the mitpaḥat/tichel or Snood (headgear), snood worn by religious married Jewish women, certain Christian head covering, headcoverings worn by some Christian w ...
, but I had inspired her.”

References and sources

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mohammed, Zara 1990s births Alumni of the University of Strathclyde People from Glasgow 21st-century Scottish women politicians Scottish Muslims Scottish people of Pakistani descent Muslim activists Living people