Portrait of Dr Anne Aly. Credit:Nic Walker Away from the hot lights of the TV studio and the stiff formality of academia, the 49-year-old is a complete surprise: bouncy and possessed with an almost overpowering cheerfulness. Her speech, salted with slang and colloquialisms ("That's my working-class background coming out, I'm ghetto!" she jokes) is startlingly direct, although that vanishes once she switches to the profundities of terrorism and foreign policy. My first impression of Aly is crystallised as we cruise around her electorate, Cowan, in her predecessor's work car, a Holden V8 SS-V ("I can't believe Luke Simpkins was wasting taxpayer's money on this gas guzzler"), when I'm admiring the verdant front lawn of her new Cowan home ("Nope, that's fake grass, but it looks good, doesn't it?"), when we're wolfing down curry puffs that evening with her husband and son ("At school, I was always picked last for sport, but first if someone wanted to win an argument!"), and when I pay her a visit in Canberra just a few weeks into the job, where she seems totally in her element ("My initial nerves have gone now; I've received some good advice from Bill, Tanya, Penny and Ed"). Aly's openness is one of her biggest selling points as a politician, says her fellow federal Muslim MP, Labor's Ed Husic: "Anne has instant relatability. She's warm; she never fails to make eye contact." Perhaps it's those alert, chocolate-brown eyes of hers, set so wide part: in some photos, leaning into the camera, she looks as eager and game as a Disney character. She has a sharp taste in clothes: "I take pride in my grooming; it's something I learnt when I was living in Egypt." Right now, though, matters are a little awkward. I'm sitting in Aly's office and a woman is crying tears of joy in her arms. I feign a sudden interest in the spaghetti tangle of conference tags from the Middle East, Europe and the US that sit in the middle of Aly's coffee table, mementoes of the counter-terrorist summits at which she has been a speaker over the past few years. Two of her volunteer campaigners, Lara and Bob, have popped by for their first visit since the win, and Lara has become a little emotional. "They were by my side the whole time of the campaign," Aly says, watching the pair leave her office, before getting back to business. "What needs to change in this country," she declares, "is political will."

Anne Aly making her maiden speech in federal Parliament in September. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Aly was a bet that paid off spectacularly for the Australian Labor Party in the July federal election. The first-time contender won the key marginal seat of Cowan in Perth from the Liberal incumbent Luke Simpkins. The pivot point in an increasingly bitter, dirty campaign was when Justice Minister Michael Keenan accused Aly of "poor judgment" for penning a letter of "support" designed to reduce the jail term of then Perth-based Islamist preacher Junaid Thorne – who publicly backed the 2015 Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris – and had been arrested for trying to board a domestic flight under an assumed name. (We'll unpack the contents of the letter a little later.) Aly, the only Australian invited to the White House to speak at a countering-violent-extremism summit in 2015, must have appeared a tempting target to Liberal power brokers, which is no doubt why deputy PM Julie Bishop stepped up Keenan's attack, attempting to brand Aly as being soft on terrorism and border protection. (That sentiment was echoed by John Howard and Mathias Cormann.) "The funding of the organisation linked to Anne Aly … was to mentor young people before they were radicalised," Bishop said. "It was not to write references to release convicted criminals from their jail sentence." Anne Aly talking to Malcolm Turnbull in Parliament. Credit:Andrew Meares Simpkins joined the chorus on the campaign trail, leading to the kind of war of words with Aly across radio, print and TV that has journalists salivating at their keyboards. Bill Shorten quickly labelled it a smear campaign, warning Malcolm Turnbull to "call off the attack dogs".

But if Simpkins gained any traction as a result, it aquaplaned every time he was publicly reminded of a clueless he made to federal parliament in late 2011 suggesting Australians were unwittingly taking "one step down the path of conversion" to Islam by eating unlabelled halal meat bought off the shelf from Woolies and Coles. In the heat of the election campaign, the conservative Christian retracted the halal statement but had already fried much of his credibility when, in 2014, he mistook the black-andwhite logo of a Perth nightclub for a flag favoured by jihadists on posters plastered over a city footbridge. And then it was revealed he'd written to Aly in 2015, telling her how much he admired her root-to-branch understanding of terrorism as well as the "content of your media interviews and approach to the threat of radicalisation". Dr Anne Aly with her son Adam and "fangirling" husband Dave Allen. Credit:Courtesy of Anne Aly I know people think I'm hard left, but I'm not, I'm quite conservative on economic policies. On the stump and amid discussion of all things halal, Aly, who describes herself as a "secular Muslim", remained cool and gaffe-free. Meanwhile, her small army of volunteer supporters, chief among them her husband David Allen, an ex-captain of the Australian ice-hockey team, and her 20-something sons Adam and Karim, were busy door-knocking across Cowan, talking about health, education and access to the NBN, rather than fears of jihadists. Still, the results were on a knife-edge – too close to call on election night. Bottom line: Aly won on a 5 per cent swing as the final count was tallied. "It didn't work," Colin Barnett, the Liberal Premier of Western Australia, told journalists flatly of the party's strategy in Cowan. "The whole thing backfired."

Aly with her mother. Credit:Courtesy of Anne Aly Did Aly feel they were trying to unearth some murky corner of her past? She nods thoughtfully: "I heard they were sniffing around, trying to find some connections between me and radical groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir. I said, 'Let them try, they're not going to find anything.' When you grow up feeling you're not good enough, when you're constantly trying to prove yourself, you make sure your work is impeccable. All they could do was clutch at straws." The storm over the Junaid Thorne letter was about suspicion as much as smear; putting Aly's world view as a Muslim under the microscope. In this, Aly's critics might be in for a few surprises. For starters she's no bleeding-heart leftie ("I know people think I'm hard left, but I'm not. I'm quite conservative on economic policies, more left on social issues"). She's a Muslim who believes in a strict separation of church and state ("Like oil and water, religion and politics don't mix, and we've seen the repressive results in countries where religion controls government"). She firmly believes in marriage equality ("I had high hopes for Malcolm Turnbull on this issue, but now someone should send out a search party for his balls"). Dr Anne Aly who is the first female Muslim MP to be elected into Australian Federal politics. Credit:Nic Walker Yes, she says, Muslims in Australia suffer discrimination, but they're not alone ("It's nothing compared to what Indigenous people have had to put up with for over 200 years"). Yes, she demonstrated against the Iraq War, but she doesn't believe the cauldron of woes in the Middle East, including the incitement to jihad, can be simplistically blamed on Western foreign policy ("We still don't understand why some radicalised young people buy that narrative and others don't"). No, she doesn't wear the hijab, but fiercely defends the right of women to wear it if they choose ("There's a big difference between the modern hijab, which women wear with makeup, and the face-covering niqab and burka, which are political tools of oppression in some countries").

In fact, it's only when you bring up a whole host of uncomfortable topics with Aly that a far sharper portrait of the woman emerges – and it sinks in how significant she may be to public life in the years ahead, as a healthy antidote to the pugnacious Right and lameduck Left. How a society treats its minorities reveals its moral core, she believes. By the same token, tolerating intolerance in the name of keeping the peace with those opposed to a liberal world and mutual respect can be a dangerous thing, too. "Ideally, I'd like to work my way out of a job. I dream of a future in which I'm no longer needed because terrorism doesn't exist." Credit:Nic Walker She's sceptical of some elements of Muslim leadership in Australia for not matching their feel-good platitudes to the press with a tolerance towards other minorities in the community. This was highlighted at Malcolm Turnbull's first Iftar dinner in June (four days after 49 people were massacred in an Orlando gay nightclub by Islamist Omar Mateen) when it emerged that one guest, Sheik Shady Al-Suleiman, national president of the Australian National Imams Council, had a long record of extremist comments. Among the most notorious was his description of AIDS as a "divine punishment" for gays, stemming from the "evil actions" of homosexuality. (Al-Suleiman later released a press statement saying he unreservedly condemned "the vilification … of people based on race, religion, gender, sexuality".) When Australia's Grand Mufti, Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, sprang to Al-Suleiman's defence, warning in a letter that the negative media coverage about the Sheik could strengthen terror groups, Aly wasn't impressed. "This whole argument of let's not talk about an issue in case it leads to radicalisation is a load of hoo-ha to be honest," she says. Aly pauses for a moment. "I get criticism from all sides, from conservative Muslims who tell me I should be wearing the headscarf, to anti-Muslim activists. When I get those emails, read those hateful things on social media, I see how the same attitudes to women are shared by jihadists and white supremacists. Women should be at home, making dinner for their husbands and having babies." Aly has, on occasion, taken down her Twitter account to avoid the racist slurs and personal attacks. She has also received death threats. "Everybody thinks they're an expert on terrorism because they've seen it on the news," she says. "From this they put together a hotchpotch of causes based on which end of the political spectrum they belong to." But before we go any further, before we tell you about Aly's lunch with Pauline Hanson, before we talk about her spat with ultra-conservative federal Coalition MP George Christensen, we have to return to pivotal moments in her life, which helped forge who she is. To a primary school yard in 1975. To a Centrelink office in 1994. And to a surprise phone call she received while lying on a Bali beach in January this year.

A young woman, her eyes red from crying, stands under the fluorescent lights of a Centrelink office in Fremantle, cradling her 12-month-old son in one arm while holding the hand of her three-year-old with the other. She feels gutted. The young man behind the counter has just told her she'll be waiting five weeks for the first payment. She has split from her husband, has no job and not a cent in her pocket. "Can't you borrow some money from your family?" he asks, sympathetic to her obvious distress. "My family don't support my getting divorced; I can't turn to them," she replies, the tears welling up again. Stop it. Stop it. Don't let it get to you. Believe in yourself. It's May 1994 and 27-year-old Aly has split from her first husband. It wasn't meant to turn out this way. After graduating from Meriden, an Anglican high school for girls in Sydney, she set off for Egypt at 17 to "explore her roots" and wound up studying English literature at the American University in Cairo, where her classmates included Queen Rania of Jordan. She married an Egyptian man in her last year of studies and they returned to Australia, settling in Perth (her parents had retired there from Sydney). The marriage lasted six years before ending in a difficult divorce. The pain of that time, struggling to raise her boys on $400 a fortnight, may have dulled over the years, but Aly remembers it clearly. "The experience had a huge bearing on who I am today," she reflects. "I was the first woman in my extended family of 100 or more to get a divorce. It wasn't the done thing. My relatives kept telling me, 'You have to put up with it. You've got two small kids. Who's going to look after you?' " Aly didn't let the emotional turbulence get the better of her. While completing a diploma in language studies and a master's in education at Edith Cowan University, she took a part-time job teaching English to migrants. In 2003, she moved into a policy position at the Office of Multicultural Interests in Perth, working on the first work at the hospital. At home, our parents spoke to us in Arabic; we replied in English."

At a Catholic school in Hill End, Queensland, sevenyear-old Aly copped her first slap of racial prejudice. "My best friend suddenly stopped playing with me one day because her parents thought I was an Aborigine." During high school, back in Sydney, a teenage Aly frequently found herself torn between the rhythms of two belief systems. "I was attending chapel but also fasting for Ramadan, studying the Bible but also memorising Koranic verses at home. When I asked my mum about singing hymns in chapel, she told me I was praying to the same God." Aly's experience of isolation was one reason she sent her two sons to the Australian Islamic College in Perth. "I wanted my sons to feel a sense of community, especially as they had no cousins, no extended family in Australia," she says. "When I went to school I was the only Muslim kid, and that can be quite alienating." Aly has had three husbands; her second marriage, to an Australian with a son Karim's age, lasted 10 years. "We don't talk about him much, that wasn't a good marriage, either." In September 2001, Aly was still with her second husband when news broke that two planes had ploughed into New York's World Trade Center. Both her boys were asleep and Aly was sitting in her Perth living room watching Rove. She was horrified by the events and fearful of what was to come. "My first thought was, 'I hope the terrorists aren't Muslim.' I knew it was going to change the world, both for me and my kids."

Sure enough, only a few days later, she was in her local shopping centre and saw a mother and daughter sniggering and swearing at a Muslim woman. "What was appalling was that this mother seemed so proud of her daughter abusing this woman. I found it absolutely disgusting that a mother would behave in this way." Aly firmly rejects the stereotype of Muslim women as singularly oppressed when the picture, from country to country, is so varied. Feminism isn't only the prerogative of the West, she argues, pointing out there are many women fighting hard for greater rights throughout the Middle East. Nor is Aly a fan of Saudi-style Wahabist Islam, one of the most punitive forms of the religion. She finds the rise of Islamist fundamentalism in Pakistan and Bangladesh, and the recent spate of murders of secular bloggers there, deeply troubling. With young people constantly online, there are ample opportunities for radical e-imams in the Middle East to recruit those feeling trapped and alienated, she says. "Our research shows that internet habits among the young can be a more reliable reflection of growing radicalisation than physical behaviour." In 2013, Aly established the youth organisation PaVE (People against Violent Extremism) and created tool kits for detecting extremism online. It was in her capacity as the founder of PaVE that, in 2015 Aly wrote a letter to the presiding judge of the District Court at Sydney's Downing Centre about Junaid Thorne, who was jailed for flying under a false name, and his co-accused Mostafa Shiddiqzman (most of the letter concerned Shiddiqzman, who was 19 at the time). The letter isn't a character reference for either man, nor does it pretend to assess their potential for deradicalisation. Instead, Aly offers counselling and mentoring services in aid of their reintegration following a meeting on July 31, 2015 with the two men and their legal representative. "The letter I wrote was not a support letter even if the judge presented it as such," insists Aly. "It was a documentation of a conversation I had with Thorne and his co-accused and lawyer, in which I suggested Thorne should get back into study and stay on the right side of the law. I offered help for his co-accused, who, by the way, is now with his family, out of trouble, back at university and away from Thorne." So how is this a letter of support for an Islamist radical? Michael Keenan seems to have lost his appetite for a further public airing of the issue – he declined Good Weekend's request for comment.

The only reason Aly had contact with the Perth-born Thorne, who is of Aboriginal heritage but grew up in Saudi Arabia, was because of her deradicalisation program. "If you've got any hope of countering the radicalisation of young people, you've got to engage with them, sit down and talk to them," says Aly. "It's not an easy conversation to have, and I could probably have had a much easier life if I didn't speak out for reason and try to fight this terrible spread of extremism, because it's not going away any time soon." Aly has met Gill Hicks, an Australian severely injured in the 2005 London bombings, and Louisa Hope, a survivor of the 2014 Sydney siege. "The work I do in counter-radicalisation is about protecting our lifestyle in this country, not weakening it," she says. "Ideally, I'd like to work my way out of a job. I dream of a future in which I'm no longer needed because terrorism doesn't exist." On holiday in Bali in January this year, Aly took a call from WA Labor president Peter Tinley, asking her to consider running for the key seat of Cowan. "The first thing I did was call my son Adam, who was in Perth. He said, 'Yes Mum, do it. You have to do it.' " (Adam Rida – he goes by the surname of his father – has been a member of the Labor Party since he was 17.) "Towards the end of last year, I was growing impatient with the endless conferences, dialogues and summits," she continues. "I wanted to see change. I wanted my work to mean more. The call came at the right time and I saw an opportunity to change the system, to effect change and to make a difference." A white T-shirt branded with the words Straight Outta Cowan in big black letters (a riff on Straight Outta Compton, the title of an iconic hip-hop LP) hangs in the window of Anne Aly's office in Parliament House, Canberra. She criss-crosses from Perth to Canberra when parliament is sitting, and only has 10 or 15 minutes to chat before rushing back to the chamber. "It's my job to make sure she eats," laughs her husband, David. "No time to play Candy Crush on her phone today," jokes son Adam, sitting opposite. She met Allen more than 11 years ago when they were both working for the West Australian government. Both were married, and the relationship went no further. Four years ago, Allen, a policeman turned crime prevention officer, emailed her out of the blue. It turned out they were both getting a divorce at the same time, and they began dating.

Any politician needs a comfort zone and her husband, who has worked with Aly in mentoring sessions with at-risk youth, appears to be providing her just that. He converted to Islam "after meeting Anne and getting an understanding of the religion", he says. The couple were married in April 2013, following an Islamic wedding the year before. "I'm not romantic," Aly says. "I can't even remember our wedding anniversary. Dave is the romantic one. I can't even watch romantic comedies." The relationship seemed unlikely at first. He was the high-school jock who grew up in Canada; she had been the nerdy, overweight kid who preferred debating. "We often joke that if we were at the same school together, we would have been swearing at one another in the hallway," she says. In a later chat, Anne Aly does a sidesplitting impression of her mother, who phoned her when David popped by to ask for her daughter's hand in marriage (Aly's father passed away early last year). "Someone wants to marry youuuu," her mum lilted down the line. "He's seat-ing here on the sofa here like a leetel pussy cat. We come over to your place now to discuss…" Aly laughs at the recollection: "Poor Dave. He comes from a Canadian family who are all atheists, and was thrown into this crazy Muslim family with all its Arab traditions. When the two of them arrived, Mum sat down between us and told us we could both go to the mosque that night and get married. Dave goes, 'But Mrs Aly, I haven't asked her yet!' and she goes, 'Ask her? You asked me first and I gave permission. What's your problem?' "

In a measure of her desire to reach across boundaries, Aly recently invited Senator Pauline Hanson to lunch in parliament – the same One Nation figurehead who warned of "terrorism in our streets" if Muslim immigration and mosque construction weren't halted. Did it go well? "I think so. Her response seemed to be positive. I always think you can find common ground with people if you look hard enough. I told her we are not going to agree on a lot of things, but hopefully we can disagree with respect." Aly also offered some small insights into how the seeds of radicalisation can be sown. "I told her it's not the sheiks in the mosques who are preaching hatred but the ones who approach 16-year-olds outside, saying, 'Your sheik isn't talking about jihad; he's not a real Muslim, come to my prayer hall and you'll learn about the real Islam.' " If Aly has an issue with anyone at present, it's George Christensen. "If you go to his Facebook page, you'll see comments from people, including one calling for me to be shot, and he's done nothing about it". (At the time of Good Weekend going to press, George Christensen's Facebook page from January 28, shortly after Aly announced she was standing as a Labor candidate, does indeed include a raft of highly offensive comments, including the death threat she mentions. Good Weekend contacted Christensen's office, and was told the comments would be removed immediately.) Has Aly had any contact with Christensen? "No, George tends to scurry away when he sees me. I don't know why, I'm not that scary." What of the populism of the One Nation senate success, Brexit and, far more significantly, the recent Trump presidential victory? Hasn't there been a kind of domino effect in a shift to the right, with perhaps more to come in the elections next year in France and Germany? "There is a definite worldwide shift towards both ends of the political stream," she says. "That's why it's so important we hold the centre, and have our voice heard. If you look at countries with extreme regimes, they don't last; they implode."

Aly sees her political mission as much broader than simply talking about Islamic issues. "I'm not the minister for Muslim people all over the world," she says. "No one is. I've been forced to look at this issue because I'm always asked about it." Loading In her maiden speech to parliament in September, Aly brought up the growing income disparity between those living in the outer and inner suburbs of our capital cities. As exhibit A, she cited her own electorate, in which children are 30 per cent less likely to finish school than in the inner-city and unemployment is up to five times higher than the WA average. "I'm dedicating my parliamentary career to the creation of a national strategy to deliver the benefits of growth to the outer suburbs of every city in Australia, from Lakemba, where I grew up, to Cowan, which I represent, and to every other suburb in between," she declared. And the future? Aly believes she could take on a shadow ministerial role a bit further down the track, but for now has to serve her apprenticeship learning political processes as a backbencher. "Hey, I'm just getting started," she smiles.