Salma Yaqoob, the leader of Respect Party and Birmingham city councillor for Sparkbrook, has revealed that she is to step down as a councillor because of ill health.

She has voiced concerns about the effects of a long-term illness and said she could not devote enough time to serve her constituents.

She will officially announce her resignation to party activists later today (Thursday).

However, mother-of-three Ms Yaqoob stressed she had not been forced out by racists who had plagued her with hate mail and death threats since she stated her opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

She said: “It’s a decision I have been struggling with for a year because I have had ongoing health issues. I realised I could not keep putting it off.

“I care passionately about politics. My place on Birmingham City Council was hard won and it has been a genuine privilege to serve the people who gave me that mandate. However, I will carry on campaigning on issues I feel strongly about, such as the protection of essential public services, but as a member of the public.

“It took a lot of soul-searching to come to this conclusion, but I must take a back seat for the sake of my health and my family,” she added.

Ms Yaqoob has been called a firebrand by her opponents – who perhaps mistake her passion for what she believes in as something more sinister.

But in reality, the 39-year-old is a typical mother, leading a normal family life. Strip away the political veneer and there is a bashful young woman with a cheeky self-depreciating sense of humour waiting to get out.

She’s a role model for thousands of young Muslim women and she takes this responsibility extremely seriously.

Ms Yaqoob, a qualified psychotherapist, was first elected to the city council in 2006. But her role as leader of the local Stop The War Coalition has ensured that she has always been a controversial figure.

She first entered politics 12 months previously as the Respect candidate in Birmingham Sparkbrook, where she was narrowly defeated by Labour’s Roger Godsiff in the 2005 General Election. Her passionate campaigning on local issues ensured she gained plenty of admirers, but her outspoken views on British involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan also gained her many enemies.

Ms Yaqoob received death threats from extremist groups and had billboards featuring her image defaced. She believed she was being targeted for being a Muslim woman in the public eye and for working with churches and synagogues.

Twelve months later in the local elections, she faced harassment and death threats from al Ghurabaa, an Islamist group later banned under the Terrorism Act 2006. Al-Ghurabaa claimed that it is an act of treason for Muslims to participate in Western democratic elections, and its members defaced her election posters with the word ‘Kafir.’

She said: “I have had death threats, nasty phone calls, vile letters and still do. There have been threats to my children and Islamists have vowed to behead me because they think I have sold out.

“But my stepping down from the council is nothing to do with them. I always said the racists would not beat me and they have not.”

A 50-year-old Bartley Green man is currently on bail for psychiatric reports before he is sentenced on race hate charges concerning the Respect leader. Stuart Collins will be sentenced later this year.

Ms Yaqoob said: “I seem to draw the ire of two lots of extremists. I get far right extremists who like to give me abuse and I get religious extremists.

"The irony is that the far right put me in the Islamic extremist brand and like to say that about me because I am a Muslim woman.