The Centre For Social Cohesion

Those already noted include:

that she had repeatedly informed the police members of her family were planning to kill her for, in their eyes, having besmirched their family honour by entering into an unsuitable relationship;

that the police failed to act on her complaints or take them seriously, even after she turned up at a local police station, one New Year’s Eve just a few months before her murder, distraught and blood bespattered, accusing her father of just having attempted to strangle her;

that a few months after this incident, her naked corpse was found, unceremoniously crammed into a suitcase that had been dumped beneath a pile of bin-bags, her neck still bearing the bootlace used to strangle her;

that her suspected killers, a pair of Iraqi Kurdish contract-killers whom her father and uncle had hired to carry out her killing, have reportedly returned to Iraq, where they are openly boasting of having raped her before garrotting her.

'How could the details of her case possibly get any worse or more disturbing?', I can hear you think. Well, I think they can.

For, as I say, there is an aspect about Ms Mahod’s tragic case the true significance of which has yet to receive the notice it deserves, or, worse still, is being ignored for reasons of political correctness.

As reported, what Ms Mahmod had done so to shame the men-folk in her family that they were willing to have her killed was to enter into a relationship with an Iranian Kurd, that began after the breakdown of the marriage that her father had arranged for her when she was aged seventeen.

As the case is reported in today's Times, why this relationship had so shamed her father and uncle was that the man with whom she had entered into it was neither ‘a strict Muslim’ in their eyes, nor from the same region in Iraq as they were.

The disturbing aspect of the case the significance of which has yet to be duly noted, or, still worse, might be being deliberately suppressed for reasons of political correctness, is that, by entering into this relationship, had the victim not previously obtained a divorce in Muslim law, she would have been committing adultery in Muslim eyes, a capital offence for Muslim women according to Shariah law.

It could well be this consideration, and not the fact the man with whom the murder victim had entered a relationship was not a true Muslim in the eyes of her father and uncle, or from the same place as were they, that made them think they were not just entitled but morally obligated to take her life.

Should it have been her adultery in the eyes of her family that had so dishonoured them, then, contrary to what is being said about her murder as well as about a disturbingly large number of honour killings of and suicides by Muslim women throughout the Muslim world, it is the religion that they shared in common, and not any other extraneous circumstances, such as what passes for local custom in the parts of the world from which their families hail, that was directly implicated in their untimely deaths.

I truly hope I am wrong here, and it will turn out that the murder victim in this case had previously obtained a divorce in Muslim law before beginning her relationship with the man her family considered had so dishonoured it.

If I am right, however what this tragic case further suggests is that the government would be wholly wrong, even to contemplate for one minute, granting any form of jurisdiction here to Shariah law, even in matters of family law. For doing so may only encourage other Muslims to believe that it takes precedence over the law of the land, something which, especially in the area of criminal law, would be fatal, as the details of this tragic case would seem to have shown only too clearly.

I trust that all who attended last week-end's 'Enough' demonstration to protest about what they consider to be the human rights violations of the Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis will be out again in protest this coming weekend, this time at the truly horrendous crimes of honour-killing that are being perpetrated against Muslim women, not just here, but throughout the Muslim world. I do hope so, but am not holding my breath.