COPENHAGEN - Sherin Khankan is a 45-year old mother of four. She is also Denmark's first female Imam and runs the Mariam Mosque in Copenhagen.

She has led the foundation of a women-led mosque in Copenhagen and she is also an activist on Muslim issues including female integration and extremism, and has written numerous texts discussing Islam and politics.

Sherin Khankan is a female Imam who runs the Mariam Mosque in Copenhagen. The idea for the mosque came a month before two planes slammed into the World Trade Center skyscrapers in New York on 11 September, 2001.

"We are the first mosque in Scandinavia that conducts interfaith marriages," she told EUobserver.

She is a well-known Muslim author and activist born in Denmark to a Syrian Muslim father and a Finnish Catholic mother.

Khankan is a sociologist of religion and philosophy, specialising in contemporary Islamic activism in Europe and the Middle East.