The reality is that in some conservative Muslim families in Britain, men act as though they have free rein to ‘discipline’ women and girls: KHADIJA KHAN

Religion and culture can never be used as an excuse for domestic abuse. Neither can race. They are all irrelevant where violence in the home is concerned.

Yet women and children are being beaten and even murdered behind closed doors, by men from certain backgrounds who believe they have an ordained licence to commit brutality in the name of ‘traditional and religious values’.

This cruelty should not be acceptable anywhere in the world. In a free democratic society such as Britain, it is beyond despicable. It goes against every value we claim to espouse as a country.

But the brutality and savagery perpetrated against little Sara Sharif serves as a stark reminder that we, as a society, failed to defend these humane values.

We do not yet know why exactly Sara was let down so badly by her teachers, social services and the police. But I think I have an idea.

Urfan Sharif, the father of Sara Sharif, repeatedly told the court that he saw himself as a ‘good father’

The suffering of 10-year-old Sara before she died, at her home in Woking, Surrey, defies imagination. Her father Urfan and her stepmother Beinash Batool, along with her uncle Faisal Malik, inflicted injuries on her over months and years, including burns all over her body, bite wounds and broken bones.

Even in the school photograph of her that has accompanied many of the reports around her murder trial, there is discoloration beneath her left eye that appears to be a bruise. The marks of her abuse were literally staring her teachers in the face.

When her school did alert social services, nothing was done. On one occasion, the family dismissed Sara’s bruising as the result of ‘playing with a pen’. Incredibly, this explanation was accepted.

The authorities ignored everything that was happening to this defenceless girl. Why? I fear that those who might have sounded the alarm were afraid that, by challenging Sara’s parents, they somehow might be labelled ‘racist’ and ‘Islamophobic’.

Sara was described by teachers as a ‘spirited, bold and fierce’ child

In court, former neighbour Chloe Redwin described conversations with Batool and Sharif when she first noticed Sara wearing the hijab that her violent parents had dressed her in to cover her wounds. Redwin told jurors: ‘I saw her wear a hijab in January 2023. I had a conversation with the mother and father of the household…I made a comment to the mother, ‘‘Oh doesn’t she look nice in her headscarf, when did she start wearing one?’’

‘The conversation was shut down,’ Redwin said. ‘[Batool] said ‘‘She decided to wear one, she wants to follow her religion’.”

Of course, hideous abuse happens in many white families across Britain. You only need to look at the murder of Baby P in 2007 or Arthur Labinjo-Hughes in 2020 to see that much.

Screen grab from body cam footage issued by Surrey Police of the arrest of Sara Sharif’s uncle Faisal Malik

But as a young woman who grew up in Pakistan with a strict Muslim father, Sara’s tragic case hit a nerve. The reality of the matter is that, in some conservative Muslim households across Britain, men – fathers, grandfather, brothers and uncles – act as though they have free rein to ‘discipline’ women and girls with physical violence.

This vile mindset does not only affect Muslim communities, of course. But it does reflect the practice of generations in traditionally Islamic countries. Inside some highly conservative Muslim families in the UK, the violence intensifies, men striving to prove that they have not become ‘soft’ and Westernised.

I spent the Nineties and Noughties in Pakistan, where my father wouldn’t hesitate to smack me or my two sisters if he was displeased with us. Our mother stood up for us, fiercely, but in Lahore a slap for a child was not seen as abusive, much as it wasn’t in post-war Britain.

My father also disapproved of education for girls. He declared that, if we went to school, we would be corrupted and might become prostitutes. It was generally accepted among everyone I knew that Western women were all immoral, slovenly and promiscuous, and that good Muslim girls had to be preserved from such a fate. Keeping us at home instead of sending us to school was one way to do that.

I will always be grateful that our mother insisted we had to be educated. Still, I didn’t lose that negative perception of European women until I left Pakistan, living first in Germany and now in Britain.

Sara Sharif’s mother is European, a white Polish woman, and it is evident that Urfan Sharif, her father, had an ingrained misogynistic attitude.

If he is anything like the older men I grew up around, he may have been afraid that his daughter Sara would grow up ‘Westernised’ and that this, crucially, would bring dishonour on him.

The British Pakistani community is largely conservative, and it is a widely held belief that family and religious honour should never be compromised.

It’s a life-or-death matter for a few narrow-minded, misogynist individuals. It can drive them to extremes of abusive, controlling behaviour, and often they are urged on by other family members, both male and female, in Britain and back in Pakistan.

According to Sara’s teachers, she was a ‘spirited, bold and fierce’ child. These are admirable characteristics, but to a man such as Urfan they were an open threat. Messages sent by Batool, the stepmother, to a relative, describe Sara as ‘naughty’. But in those conservative Muslim households where women are viewed as property, the word ‘naughty’ can mean ‘disobedient’ and insufficiently subservient.

In this way, men are able to place the blame for violence on the child. They can pose as good parents, who act out of love and a respect for traditional values. Urfan Sharif repeatedly told the court that he saw himself as a ‘good father’.

Typically, it is girls and young women who are subjected to beatings, not boys. It is also women who can be forced to hide the marks of their abuse by wearing headscarfs, hijabs or burkas.

As a child, I never wore the hijab. Children in Pakistan generally don’t. But it is increasingly common in British schools now to see pupils adopting it, and very few head teachers have the courage to question it.

Whatever a school’s general rule about uniforms, allowances are made to accommodate the demands of religious groups who have no hesitation in using threats and campaigns of vilification to enforce their own stipulations about dress.

As I say, I fear this was why no one dared interrogate Sara or her family about why she was wearing the hijab, in the months before her father abruptly took her out of school altogether.

The fact is that any religious requirement for wearing the veil is contentious, and disputed by some Muslim academics. But as a minority of religious extremists have come to dominate the mainstream narrative, it has become an arbitrary cultural norm that most Westerners accept too readily.

Olga Sharif with a photo of her beloved daughter Sara

Sara’s stepmother Beinash speaking alongside Sara’s father, Urfan Sharif

As these zealots have imposed themselves as the spokesmen (they are always men) of their communities, they have turned the hijab into a sacred Islamic symbol – something it never was.

Schools, police, social workers and Left wing journalists often remain willfully blind to the uncomfortable truth. They deliberately look away, on the grounds that raising a challenge might ‘damage community relations’.

This cowardice undermines the secular and democratic ideals that make the UK such a desirable home for people from all backgrounds.

Though comparatively few Britons are churchgoers now, this country has always respected different religions. It is also commonly held that all cultures are innately valuable.

But that belief becomes disturbing when the rights of women and girls suffer. And at that point, that culture or religion forfeits its right to our respect.

Khadija Khan is a journalist, broadcaster and co-host of the podcast A Further Inquiry