Media bias in reporting of Shafilea Ahmed murder

There has been extensive coverage in the weekend’s papers of the conviction of Iftikhar and Farzana Ahmed for the murder of their 17 year old daughter Shafilea. While the horrendous crime warrants the attention, the deliberate refraction of the issue through the lens of Islam is reprehensible.

Cristina Odone in the Daily Telegraph, writes “When Muslim parents hate their host culture so much that they will kill a child who seems to embrace it, then they are guilty of intolerance – the kind that non-Muslims are wary of showing, lest they be branded racist, or bigoted.”

In the Daily Express on Saturday, Chris Riches and Adrian Lee write of the “Thousands of young Muslim women who defy tradition or embrace Western culture regularly face violence in the UK.”

And in the Mail on Sunday Suzanne Moore argues that “The abuse and killing of women is not a ‘cultural practice’ that we must treat differently to any other murder. It is the most abominable way of controlling women. We do  not have to dance around the issue of Islam either. This  is against every moral law.”

Such biases are to be expected given tabloid persistence in portraying the issue of ‘honour killings’ as a crime to which Muslims are disproportionately disposed. Such bias was in evidence in a Daily Mail article misrepresenting the results of an attitudes survey among South Asians towards the concept of ‘honour’. It is also prevalent in the mischaracterisation of multiculturalists and ‘liberal-lefties’ as complicit in the ‘collective denial’ of problems arising from ethnic and religious communities in the UK. For example, Leo McKinstry’s claim of authorities’ “hesitancy in tackling so-called “honour” attacks on women in Muslim communities,” ignoring the wider consequences of this heinous practice in other communities.

As Islamophobia Watch notes:

“In the UK, ACPO’s Honour Based Violence Strategy emphasises that honour-based violence is “a cultural, not a religious phenomenon” which “cuts across all cultures, nationalities, faith groups and communities”.

“Gurmeet Singh Ubhi, was convicted of killing his daughter, in a case that had obvious parallels with that of Shafilea Ahmed. Because the perpetrator wasn’t a Muslim, however, this murder received far less attention from the national media, and we were spared stupid articles from the likes of Cristina Odone claiming that it was his religion that made him do it.”