Rabina Khan (Bengali: রবিনা খান; born 15 September 1972) is a Bangladeshi-born British writer, politician, former councillor for Shadwell and Cabinet Member for Housing in Tower Hamlets Council, community worker and author of Ayesha's Rainbow.
[1][2][3] Khan's father worked as a machine operator at Chatham Dockyards in Kent; he returned to Bangladesh to get married.
[5] Khan has since worked as a community regeneration worker[4] in the Isle of Dogs, Tower Hamlets in the East End of London.
[10] Ayesha's Rainbow is a children's novel, which tells the story of a seven-year-old Bangladeshi girl growing up in London's East End who befriends an elderly white neighbour.
[4] It is partly autobiographical, based on Khan's own experiences growing up in Britain in the 1980s and 1990s,[7] and working as a community safety officer in the Isle of Dogs when British National Party candidate, Derek Beackon, was elected as a councillor in September 1993.
[16] Khan has worked as a freelance creative consultant for the BBC, ITV, Rich Mix Cultural Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.
[17] In 2006, Khan featured in and was a script advisor for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's documentary Young, British and Muslim.
[21] In the May 2010 Tower Hamlets Council election, Khan won a seat in Shadwell for the Labour Party.
[22] In October 2010, she was suspended along with nine other councillors from the Labour Party for supporting the newly elected independent Mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman.
[40][30] Khan was subsequently re-elected as a councillor as a member of the Tower Hamlets Independent Group (THIG).
[41] In November 2016, she defected from THIG to form the People's Alliance of Tower Hamlets (PATH),[41] which was formally recognised as a political party by the Electoral Commission in February 2018.
[19] In October 2014, she was named 'hero of the year' in the European Diversity awards for her engagement in the East End and wider society.