The Failure of Multiculturalism

“We have a broken immigration system. Despite saying the right thing, [Suella] Braverman did not take much action to stop it. She ought to be judged similarly to what economists would call a revealed preference. In other words, actions speak louder than words.”

Shafilea Ahmed appeared to be an ordinary teenage girl living her life in Cheshire. She lived in the Great Sankey area of Warrington, a town in northwest England, with parents who had immigrated from Pakistan. She was raised by her father, Iftikhar Ahmed, and his wife, Farzana, in a family that adhered to the strict Sunni branch of Islam. Like many ambitious young women, Ahmed was driven and intelligent. An A-Level student at the nearby college, she had dreams of becoming a solicitor.

However, Ahmed’s life was anything but typical in private. In 2003, while on a trip to Pakistan, she rejected a man in a forced marriage. Ahmed tried to kill herself while in Pakistan by drinking bleach, which badly damaged her throat. And then the family went back home. Ahmed disappeared on September 11th of the year, not long after their arrival back in England. A local actress spearheaded a media campaign, urging her to get in contact, sparking a nationwide manhunt.

Her severely decomposed body was discovered in February of 2004. A plastic bag was forced down the 17-year-old would-be solicitor’s throat, resulting in her death. 70 miles from the family home in the Lake District, her dismembered body was buried. Her parents were found guilty of killing her in 2012 and given life sentences with a minimum term of 25 years.

Alesha, Ahmed’s younger sister, testified during the trial at Chester Crown Court that her father suffocated her to death after she told the police that her sister’s refusal to accept the marriage proposal would bring shame on the family. Ahmed’s family believed that she had become “too westernised.” In summarizing, Mr. Justice Roderick Evans said, “An expectation that she [Shafilea] live in a sealed cultural environment separate from the culture of the country in which she lived was unrealistic, destructive and cruel.”