Have you ever come across someone whose life has thrown so many curveballs at them that it almost sounds unbelievable, and yet here they are, still standing? Naz Shah , who is Labour MP for the West Yorkshire constituency of Bradford West, is one of those people. Shah has been in the public eye for a long time — for over three decades, in fact — but not always for happy reasons.
In 1993, Shah's mother, Zoora Shah, was convicted of murdering the man who took advantage of her, raping and abusing her for years, someone the local Pakistani community in Bradford deemed a 'respectable' businessman. He had been recommended to Zoora by the community as trustworthy, which led her to take out a mortgage on a house in his name.
After being abandoned by her husband years before, this had been the Shah family's final shot at escaping a life of homelessness and damp, rat-infested two-room accommodations.
Shah's recently released memoir Honoured (Weidenfeld and Nicolson) is a detailed retelling of the events leading up to her mother's imprisonment and the campaign Shah led alongside London-based women's charity Southall Black Sisters for a reduction in her mother's sentence, when the rest of her community turns its back on her.
Her mother's sentence was eventually reduced from 20 years to 12, but she had served 14 years by the time she was released on parole in 2014.
Shah's memoir has been long overdue; in fact, people have been asking her since she became MP in 2015 , when she planned to pen her life story.
"I originally had a book deal offered to me in 2015. I wrote some of the chapters that are in Honoured in 2017," Shah tells The New Arab .
"I realised I had a lot of healing to do, and I don't think I was ready to write it in 2015; it was too soon, and I had to get to know my constituency. I went to Umrah in 2023, and it felt like the right time." Honoured does not stop at her mother's story. We are also taken on a journey: that of a young woman with no political background who, through tireless community work and grassroots campaigns, enters politics , becoming one of Bradford's longest-serving MPs and a highly respected public figure. Shah is known for her strong record of speaking up about Islamophobia and Palestine .
She was among the first politicians to speak in Parliament about Gaza during Israel's latest genocidal war on the Strip.
Speaking in the Houses of Commons in early November 2023, she said of children in Gaza, "Children at their age should not be asking whether they are going to a graveyard, but whether they're going to a playground or buying ice cream… when will the UK ramp up its effort to end the bloodshed and ensure Palestinian children just have the right to live?" Days later, she lost her frontbench position by voting for an immediate ceasefire , defying Sir Keir Starmer and the Labour Whip. In May 2025, she spoke up again, highlighting Israel's ongoing Nakba and the International Criminal Court and United Nations' assessment of the war as 'plausible genocide,' asking the British government what they were doing to stop the bloodshed, get in aid and recognise Palestine.
Despite her strong pro-Palestine record, Shah faced death threats in her home city while out canvassing for the 2024 General Elections , due to her party's disappointing stance on Gaza. However, she went on to keep her seat in Bradford West.
The overarching theme in Honoured is survival: from the physical abuse her mother endures at the hands of her father and his family members to his abandonment of Zoora for a teenage lover, which renders her and the children homeless.
Shah learns early on in life that life can be unfair. Her choices and freedoms are limited by the fact that she has an absent father.
"You can't have or do that, because you haven't got a father," her mother reminds her, leading Shah to believe she has a lower status in the community.
Shah is then sent to live with her maternal family in Pakistan at the age of 12 in order to escape drug-dealing rapist Azam, who is abusing her mother, and is married off to her cousin at the age of 15.
At the age of 20, Shah becomes a replacement mother to her two younger siblings when her mother is convicted of killing Azam, and for a decade, she just about manages to keep a roof over their heads.
How does one write about such deeply traumatic life experiences without it being re-triggering?
"The writing process was in parts cathartic and in parts very traumatising," Shah explains.
"I got diagnosed with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and had EMDR (eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing) therapy whilst I was writing the book. It hasn't been an easy write, which is probably why I didn't write it in 2015. I recognise this now, but I didn't necessarily recognise it back then," she shares with The New Arab. "My sister said to me, 'The story is amazing; I just wish it wasn't our story.'"
A key theme in Shah's memoir is that of izzat , the Urdu term for honour. Time and time again, Shah's extended family and the local Pakistani community disown her mother for what they perceive as acts of dishonour.
Zoora is given the cold shoulder by the community when her husband runs off with a teenage girl, and instead of being shown support and sympathy, she is held responsible for his misbehaviour.
The family is disowned again when Zoora is convicted of murder. And later, Shah finds herself rejected by her own father when she decides to leave her unhappy marriage. Izzat is the community's measure of one's worth, and the definition of what is and what isn't honourable is subjective.
As a Syed (a family whose lineage is said to be traced back to the Prophet Muhammad's family), Shah and her family have an additional layer of honour to uphold.
And yet, Shah also reclaims and reframes the concept of izzat; one of the main ways she does this is by representing and serving her community as an MP.
In a community that is sometimes guarded and that perceives speaking openly about one's family as akin to hanging one's dirty laundry out, Shah is clear that she asks no one for permission when it comes to speaking her truth.
"There was never an external pressure to not write my story, because I don't seek permission. I'm representing the community. Their permission is my vote," she says.
"When they vote for me, they're saying to me, 'We permit you to be our representative.' They're the ones who honour me to be in this position. I think you have to make those leadership choices. You check yourself internally and how this will land. "Out of all my book launches, the most nerve-wracking one was the one that was in my constituency, simply because I was amongst those who wanted to elect me," she adds. "My strength is rooted in my community," Shah tells The New Arab. "So, it was about reaching my strength. I gave it years and years of thought. How do I speak to my community and take them on a journey with me to recognise what fairness and equality are and the benefits and rewards of that? So, to me it's about telling stories, because stories are the most powerful things that actually change narratives." Around the time Shah's mother was released in 2014, her career took a swerve from public health and social work to national politics.
Through years of activism and campaigning for her mother, Shah has developed the skill set needed for the job.
"Somebody challenged me because they knew I was opinionated and said, 'Would you consider mainstream politics?'" Shah smiles. "I was like, 'No, don't be daft. It's the dirtiest place in a man's world,' and they were like, 'If you don't get in it, how do you change it? How do you clean it up?"
Shah becomes Labour's candidate for Bradford West during the UK's 2015 General Election , going head-to-head with politician George Galloway and another force: the deeply rooted patriarchal institution of the biradari (clan), whereby a close circle of families and their patriarchs in Bradford's Pakistani community exert influence over local politics.
In her book, Shah mentions that one family in particular controlled key council positions and distributed them to other men within the family or to families under biradari control. By winning the elections, she dismantles their influence.
One cannot help but draw parallels between Shah's plight against the biradari and that of the fictional Jia Khan in Bradford-born Saima Mir's crime trilogy The Khan. Shah also knows Saima Mir well. The only difference is that Khan is the leader of an organised crime syndicate, worlds apart from Shah's life.
"The biradari has been the bane of my life," Shah shares. "It's the thing that holds back progression. I'm still fighting it. Ultimately, I feel that communities have to find their own solutions, but you need to empower the community, and the biradari isn't. It doesn't have the stronghold that it had in 2015, and I'd like to think I've contributed to that." ' Honoured ' is published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson and is out now Yousra Samir Imran is a British-Egyptian writer and author based in Yorkshire. She is the author of Hijab and Red Lipstick, published by Hashtag Press. Follow her on Instagram: @ writereadeatrepeat