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Enemy of the Reich: The Noor Inayat Khan Story to be Screened in Dearborn, MI on March 29th, 2014
She was a Sorbonne graduate of child psychology, an author of a book of fairy tales – and a Muslim covert intelligence officer who died fighting the Nazis. Now, her remarkable story is being brought to the screen in the docudrama <i>Enemy of the Reich: The Noor Inayat Khan Story</i>, which will be screened at the Ford Community and Performing Arts Center on Saturday, March 29th, 2014.
“Despite the fact that many Muslims played brave roles and sacrificed during World War II, the prevailing narrative of that conflict usually doesn’t include any mention,” says Alex Kronemer. Kronemer is co-founder with Michael Wolfe of Unity Productions Foundation, which has produced the award-winning documentaries Prince Among Slaves and Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet, that have both been aired nationally on PBS.
Khan was the daughter of an Indian Islamic scholar, Hazrat Inayat Khan, and Ameena Begum, an American convert to Islam. Her father founded The Sufi Order in the West in London, and was a teacher of Universal Sufism. After Noor Inayat Khan’s birth in Moscow in 1914, the family moved to England, then to Paris in 1920, where she was raised.
In 1940, when the Nazis invaded France, Khan fled to England, where she trained as a wireless operator after joining Britain’s Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. In early 1943, she began her assignment as a covert operative, joining Winston Churchill’s Special Operations Executive (SOE). This organization sought to undermine the Axis powers in occupied Europe via espionage, among other tactics. From Paris, Noor Inayat Khan secretly transmitted messages to Britain.
“For six months she was the only link between the U.K. and the French Resistance, pursued by the Gestapo, betrayed by French collaborators,” says Kronemer. The Nazis arrested her and sent her to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany, where “she fought back against her captors. She escaped twice. She never gave up one name or even her own name,” says Wolfe.
“More Americans need to know the story of Noor Inayat Khan, who fought against one of the most heinous enemies of humanity of the last 100 years,” says local Muslim activist Razi Jafri.
For more information, please contact Dawood Zwink, Executive Director of the Michigan Muslim Community Council at (313) 505-2423 or dzwinkmmcc@gmail.com.
You may also visit www.enemyofthereich.org.
Tickets may be purchased <a href=”http://www.eventbrite.com/e/upfs-enemy-of-the-reich-the-noor-inayat-khan-story-dearborn-mi-tickets-10214815789?aff=es2&rank=1&sid=e14f4a2bab8b11e384b81231381b30f6″>here</a>.