The veiled Muslim woman signed up by Channel 4 to do their Christmas Day message will not be watching herself on TV – she will be watching the Queen. Khadija Ravat’s six-minute address will go out at 3pm, exactly the same time as the Queen’s annual broadcast. But yesterday, the 33-year-old teacher described herself as a patriotic Brit who has no intention of tuning into C4’s alternative Christmas Day message.
She said: “Believe me, I’m going to be watching the Queen’s speech. I like being British, being British has so much to it that can be shared by so many people.” She denied the C4 scheduling was divisive and said she wanted to build bridges between different communities.
Khadija, who teaches at a private Islamic school in Leicester, added: “We live in a fantastic society. We are all British. We have so many wonderful people around and I hope that we all respect each other. My world is so wonderful. Wherever I look, there are different colours, different people. Sometimes we disagree but we respect each other. That is why I will use the six minutes to put over a really positive message. I want to build bridges.”
Asked if it was provocative for a veiled Muslim to offer an alternative message to the Queen’s, she said: “I have never thought of it that way.”
Meanwhile, today’s Daily Star reports that 94% of its readers have called for the broadcast to be banned.