As a fighter, Amir Khan has never been short of bottle, which is what in boxing they call bravery. Now the former world champion and Olympic silver medallist has demonstrated he also has both courage and class outside the ring too by becoming one of the few high profile Muslim sports personalities to put his head above the parapet and express his outrage at the shameful atrocities committed by the inhuman extremist zealots who defile his religion.

More than that, after Christmas Khan is to spend the New Year in Pakistan, the birthplace of his parents, to "send a statement" to the Taliban about his revulsion at their massacre of 132 schoolkids and several of their teachers in the North Western Province of Peshawar last week.

He realises his own life might be endangered but declares: "Talking about this stuff could be threatening for me but I must speak out and tell people that what is happening is wrong. They were innocent kids. I cannot believe how sick in the mind some people are. Have they got no brains? It has to stop.

"Some people don't walk to talk about the Taliban or other extremist groups but I'm open. I want to speak the truth."

The 28-year-old Khan has already donated the 24 carat gold thread shorts, worth around £30,000 (which he wore when producing perhaps the most scintillating performance of his 33-fight career in defeating top American welterweight Devon Alexander recently in Las Vegas) to help rebuild the army school so mercilessly desecrated by the Taliban.

He says: "I hope by going to Pakistan it will send a statement that not all Muslims are terrorists, that we despise what is happing in the name of our religion and that things like this just set the country way back."

Amir Khan sold the shorts he wore when beating Devon Alexander to raise money to help rebuild the army school in Peshawar so mercilessly desecrated by the Taliban
©Getty Images



Khan's courage, evident from the Olympics of a decade ago in Athens when as a teenager he valiantly fought a solo battle for Britain, losing only to the Cuban Mario Kindelan, then the world's finest amateur, in the final, is to be admired.

The Pakistan atrocity has been similarly condemned by another famous sporting Khan, ex-cricketer-turned-politician Imran, who visited the school in Peshawar and called on the nation to unite "to fight the menace of terrorism".

Yet the Khans are relatively lone spokespersons among sport's Muslim community, though Muhammad Ali, worryingly hospitalised with a bout of pneumonia, has always vehemently condemned Islamic extremism and was among the first to speak out after 9/11.

But it would be good if such as double Olympic gold medallist Mo Farah, the England Test cricketer Moeen Ali, who, like Amir is of Pakistani descent, and former world champion Naseem Hamed, freshly elected to boxing's Hall of Fame, also publicly stood up to be counted, alongside Muslims prominent in football, baseball, basketball and squash. As Amir says, it could make a difference.

While maniac groups like the Taliban, Al Qaeda and ISIS, aka the Islamic State, have yet to use sport as a vehicle for their warped ideological warfare, who is to say that one day they won't. Unless of course, Islamic State do a Kosovo and eventually become members of the International Olympic Committee!

Imran Khan is another Muslim sportsman who has spoke out about the atrocities committed by radical Islamist groups ©Getty Images


Meantime, before he leaves for Pakistan, I suggest Amir Khan takes a short trip across Lancashire from his Bolton to Darwen, where a chat with a young fellow boxer would underscore his antipathy towards terrorism.

For the scars around the eyebrows of Ajmal Faizy were not inflicted in any fight, but a grim legacy of a more terrifying encounter as a 13-year-old in his native Afghanistan when he was brutally beaten and tortured by the Taliban.

How he fled that troubled land to become one of the rising stars of British boxing is a story astonishing even by the many extraordinary tales of the unexpected which inhabit the sport.

It began eight years ago in a small Afghan village near the town of Charinkar in the province Parvan, some 70 kilometres from the capital, Kabul. Faizy's family owned some arable farmland, its fertile soil producing grapes and vegetables, through which ran a small river. One day the Taliban came calling and demanded it be handed over to them.

Faizy's's father, Abdul Salam, refused. So they took him to a barn, hanged him upside down for three days and savagely beat him. He died soon after.

As the new head of the family, teenage Ajmal became the target of Taliban brutality when they
returned with a renewed demand.

Young Muslim boxer Ajmal Faizy has overcome torture from the Taliban to become a rising star in British boxing ©Twitter



Now, Faizy dispassionately recalls how they first threatened him, and then set about him with sticks and clubs. "They beat me up badly, smashing my teeth, my face and shoulder. I still have the scars," he told insidethegames.

The Taliban may have broken his bones, but not his spirit. He told them he would not allow them to take the land. "How could I? It was my family's only income and we would have had nowhere else to go."

It was when the Taliban said they would kill him when they next came back that Faizy's mother decided he must flee. She sold off part of the land - not to the Taliban but to another farmer - to raise the money to send her son to Kabul and then abroad.

In Kabul a family friend hastily arranged a plane ticket to Dubai, where Faizy was put on another flight. "I had no idea where it was going," he says. It happened to be Manchester.

On landing at Ringway, and speaking no English, he was detained while an interpreter was brought. Eventually, after an investigation into the boy's story, he was given temporary refugee status and placed with a foster family in Darwen, near Blackburn.

It was there that the next phase of his astonishing journey unfolded. Wandering through the town he walked into a local gymnasium run by well-known veteran boxing trainer Barry Higginson. Although he had never boxed he accepted Higginson's invitation to punch the bags.

Liking what he saw, the trainer, whose family have "adopted" the youngster, not only taught him how to box, but helped him learn English, which he now speaks fluently with a Lancashire burr. He was found a place at Rhyddings School in Oswaldtwistle, where he went on to get a fistful of GCSEs.

Meantime AJ, as he is now known, had also embarked on a successful amateur boxing career as a promising light-welterweight, winning all his bouts.

He has now turned pro - the first Afghan to do so - and at 21 is unbeaten in four fights, winning three by k.o.

Ajmal Faizy knows all too well the atrocious acts committed by radicalised Islamist groups, a cause that Amir Khan is fighting against in his trip to Pakistan ©Twitter


Higginson, enthuses: "He's a terrific prospect. A natural. He boxes like a Mexican, full of grit and fire with a hell of a punch. He's exciting and there's so much to him. He's also got the right mind-set for boxing, a very tough kid. He's got a big heart, he can bang and he's in your face all the time. He's a right good lad too. Really pleasant and appreciative. I just wish I had another ten boxers like him."

His promoter, Steve Wood, sees his story as a good news tale that can benefit the sport as a whole. "Boxing sometimes gets a bad press but AJ's story is a great example of the good that can come from it," he says.

It is one that has even stirred the World Boxing Council, who recently awarded him and his trainer their WBC Champions' medal. Says President Mauricio Sulaiman: "This young man is already a champion of life by his courage and determination to overcome so many disasters."

Faizy, who has applied for British citizenship, is a volunteer worker at Age UK while studying at college to be a plumber, now has a ring nickname. They call him "The Dream".

That is because he has one. "Obviously I would love to become a world champion but more than that I want to win a Lonsdale Belt as a British champion. My trainer has told me so much about its history and prestige and winning one would mean so much because this country has been so good to me.

"My mother and sister are still in Afghanistan and I pray for them every day. With everything that's happened, boxing takes away all the stress. It was a very bad time in Afghanistan, but I'm happy now."

His is an immensely heartening story which lifts the spirits a time when all that is good in the sporting world must come out fighting, as Amir Khan has, to help overcome evil.

Alan Hubbard is a sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Games, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.