Thirty years ago I watched my mum cry when Zulfiqar Bhutto was executed, today I cried for the daughter of Pakistan’s destiny.

Benazir Bhutto was a more than a beacon of light for mobilising Pakistanis against Islamism and instilling Pakistan’s democracy. She had the same fire, passion, commitment that her father had for his country, and for the tenets of democracy. In 1986 after years in jails and then exile, she left the safety of England to return to Pakistan and took on dictatorship, she bravely ignored death threats and achieved her ambitions to become Pakistan’s first woman Prime Minister.

In her autobiography Daughter of Destiny in 1988, she was the first to identify the ‘Islamization’ of Pakistan and the reversed
rights and freedoms of Pakistani women under President Zia who engaged with Islamists in the 80s. She was a threat to Islamists and Jihadists who deploy an anti-democracy propaganda with violent terror, and yet she returned from exile again, knowing she faced death threats, only to be assassinated in a barbaric Jihadist’s attack. She was a threat to Islamists and Pakistan’s only glimmer of hope of restoring full democracy.
She gave her life for Pakistan and was self determined in her quest to establish democracy again, as she once did on the first of December 1988.

I hope she now becomes the inspiration that British Pakistani women aspire to, so that we too can fight the extremism
in Britain that Jihadists have embedded into our communities; I hope that British Pakistani women stand up for the tenets of democracy that we live in. I hope that British Pakistani women take off the black headscarves and veils to adapt the true Pakistani style and dress that represents Pakistani culture as she did and oppose the cult Jihadism represents. I hope we can collectively oppose the ‘ideology’ that she alone as a woman opposed without fear. I hope we break our silence now to honour her memory and aspirations.

Benazir is an inspiration and Icon for Pakistani men and women. Jihadism opposes democracies, opposes women
leaders, reverses the equality and the freedom of muslim women. I hope British Pakistani women stand up with the same passion and bravery that Benazir demonstrated, against an extreme global ideology. Islam hasn’t just been hijacked, it has been blacklisted by Jihadists and Islamists…who aim to destroy democracies and people who want to live in a civilised world. I hope British Pakistani women in Britain take the first lead against the suicide human bombs created by Jihadists and their mentors.

I hope for a lot, but more than anything I hope Benazir becomes our symbol of inspiration, never to be forgotten.

Pakistan has lost a daughter, a sister, a mother, but she will remain forever in our hearts…as there won’t be a Pakistani woman
of her calibre and class to inspire British Pakistani women or people again.

27th December 2007 will be remembered as the saddest day in the history of Pakistan for generations to come.

She will always be our hero.

Gina Khan, Birmingham