In the video for her new single, Deeyah, the latest singing sensation, writhes seductively in a skimpy outfit. With her long brown hair, huge eyes and endless legs she is any teenage boy’s dream pin-up.

But when Deeyah performs she is sworn at, spat at and told to cover up by boys as young as 14. Burly bodyguards are her constant companions. For while Deeyah — known as the Muslim Madonna — has been a role model to thousands of British Asian girls, her performances have made her a figure of hate to religious fanatics. She has been derided as a “whore” and a “prostitute”.

“Yet I don’t even have a boyfriend. I’m too busy working,” she says. What hurts most is that the criticism has come from within her own community. While many celebrate her breakthrough — her new single, Plan of My Own, is tipped to take her into the mainstream — a section of the Muslim community seems intent on destroying her.

Muslim women are making strides in many areas of society as authors, lawyers, doctors and teachers, but anything that flaunts a woman’s sexuality — as Deeyah will attest — still puts them beyond the pale. Ironically, Deeyah moved to Britain from Norway nearly 10 years ago because she felt it would be a tolerant and multicultural society.

Deeyah — real name Deepika Thathaal — is half Pakistani, half Afghan and grew up in Oslo. She was born into a musical household. When she was seven her father heard her mimicking a song she had heard on the Eurovision song contest.

“He said, ‘Do exactly what you did just now again’,” recalls Deeyah. “So I did, and he picked up all my toys and my Barbies and said, ‘Say bye-bye to these’, and threw them in the dustbin.

“I started crying and asking, what did I do? He told me, ‘There are only two professions in which you will not be judged by your colour, race or sex. It’s either music or it’s sport and I don’t know anything about sport’. The next day he bought me a tiny keyboard and started me having singing lessons. From then on it was just school or music practice and I resented it with a passion.”

But her resentment disappeared when she became successful as a child star, performing on television and at concerts and festivals. She was signed up to do a record at 13. Lively, intelligent and unpretentious, it is easy to see why she was popular.

“I think my dad had some very tough experiences,” says Deeyah. “But I never had any problems with bullying or racism. I was definitely aware that I was a bit different but I fitted in and I had external support from friends and teachers.”

When she brought out her second album at 17, her look included more revealing outfits — although compared with some pop stars they were fairly mild. “I was growing into a sexual person,” she says. “It happens to all of us.”

That change of image put her on a collision course with the more conservative Muslim community, a collision that has dominated her life for the past 10 years.

To begin with, there were visits to her home where her parents were told: “What she used to do was bad enough but now it’s even worse.” The family had to change their telephone number five times because of nuisance calls. One day four men burst into her school. “I could see all the other students leaving extra fast and the staff pretending that they didn’t see what was going on. The men started cursing me, calling me a slut, a whore, a prostitute.

“I couldn’t see why they were so upset, because mine was the first time that a brown face had appeared on the front of newspapers with a positive story. I thought, how can you not be proud?” She was lucky that an older pupil confronted the men and they backed off. Afterwards, as a result, two security guards accompanied her at all times.