Her Inspiring Bravery, and links with Sufi Islam, the Ground Zero Islamic Community Center and its Imam
Noor Inayat Khan نور عنایت خان to be honored with a Memorial by Sculpture http://www.karen-newman.com/ at the beautiful green Gordon Square Garden, London. Of Indian-American Sufi Islam descent, she was an Allied Spy in World War 2 who worked undercover as a Radio Operator with French Résistance.
Her father, Hazrat Inayat Khan was a teacher of Sufi Islam and a Musician, a descendent of the late 18th century South Indian Muslim ruler Tipu Sultan, who was the last bastion against the British. He had left India for the West in 1910, initially traveling as a Musician in Europe and North America.
Noor Khan photographed in WAAF uniform between 1940 and 1942, and playing the Indian Veena Noor’s mother was Poet Ora Meena Ray Baker (later ‘Pirani’ Ameena Begum) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ameena_Begum from Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, who was half sister of American Yogi and Scholar, Pierre Bernard. She met and fell in love with Inayat Khan’s during his trip to the US.
Noor was born in Moscow on Jan 1, 1914 and soon thereafter, upon the outbreak of WW1 the family shifted to London. Here in same year Inayat Khan founded the ‘Sufi Order in the West’, which in 1923 was dissolved into the ‘International Sufi Movement’, characterized by respect for all other devotional traditions.
In 1920 the Family had moved onto France, near Paris and here Noorstudied Child Psychology at the Sorbonne and Music at Paris conservatory under the famous Nadia Boulanger, composing for harp and piano. Her father passed on in 1927 during a visit to India.
As a young adult Noor wrote children’s short-stories and sang Sufi songs, a regular contributor to children's magazines and French Radio. In 1940 as France was being overrun by Germany, Ameena Begum with Noor & her younger brother Vilayat fled to London.
In her own words "I wish some Indians would win high military distinction in this war. If one or two could do something in the Allied service which was very brave and which everybody admired it would help to make a bridge between the English people and the Indians." Thus in 1940 as a27 year old wanting to fight the tyranny of Nazism she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force of the British RAF as a AircraftWoman 2nd Class and here she was trained in Wireless Radio Operation.
Three years later she was recruited in the Special Operations Executive (SOE) Spy Agency created by Churchill to sabotage Hitler’s war. In June, 1943 due to her fluency in both French and English she was dropped into Nazi occupied France to work as a Radio Operator with the Résistance's Prosper Network led by Francis Suttill as the link between them and London.
After the quick capture of her fellow SOE spy operators along with many members of the Prosper Network by the Gestapo she was advised by London to come back, but she refused and continued to transmit as the last critical link between the Résistance and London. Moving from one place to another, she managed to escape captivity while maintaining wireless communication with London.
In Oct, 1943 she was captured by the German SD Security Service after betrayal by a double agent. In spite of rigorous interrogation all the Germans could extract from her was false information, they couldn't even get her to reveal her real name. She escaped captivity twice but due to bad luck was captured in the vicinity. She was finally executed at the young age of 30 in Sept, 1944.
In Jan, 1946 France conferred the Military Decoration of Croix de guerre posthumously to Noor and in 1949 Britain awarded her the George Cross and MBE.
Her brother Vilayat Inayat Khan (1916-2004) later became head of the Sufi Order International. Sufi Islam has been described as the exploration of the Mystical Dimension of Islam. It’s about Harmony, Peace and Music, the way which strives for the oneness with God. “How to travel into the presence of the Divine, purify one’s inner self, beautify it with a variety of praiseworthy traits”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_ibn_Ajiba
BTW Feisal Abdul Rauf at the center of Park51 Islamic Community Center near Ground Zero is a Sufi Imam, a Member of Nur Ashki Jerrahi Sufi Order, http://www.nurashkijerrahi.org/ who “joyfully welcome seekers and students of all religious and non-religious paths into our gatherings”. Imam Feisal is somebody who has worked tirelessly to bridge the divides between Islam and other Faiths, particularly Christianity, as between Western and Muslim Worlds, tough to find anybody better suited in the context to help bridge both Worlds split wide apart.
EDIT-09/24 - The one critique to Sufi can be that of Hereditary Succession of Leaders, Peers & others, especially practiced in the developing regions like South Asia, not so much in USA for instance, succession was always meant to be in Islam - on Merit. the best person for the job of a leader, if you will, not an opportunity to be grabbed by the ones closet to it.
REFS: (some temp format problem below)
Current Articles – http://bit.ly/a81i3t HT http://bit.ly/cg4jGh Deccan Herald
Noor Inayat Khan
Articles - http://bit.ly/b40DjI
Shrabani Basu http://amzn.to/9v95jB Amazon, Ratings – 4/5 Stars
Related Videos http://bit.ly/dB4pqS
inc TV Documentary TimeWatch, BBC’s History Series http://bit.ly/agdERB
1st of 5 Parts
Other Video & Radio on BBC - http://search.bbc.co.uk/search?tab=all&scope=all&q=inayat+khan
SUFI ISLAM
Imam Feisal
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