Multicultural wife murderer in Britain



A pharmacist who brutally murdered his wife in a fit of jealous rage before he calmly left the family home and went to work has today been jailed for life.

Devoted mother Raheela Imran, 45, was killed by her husband of 16 years, Imran Sharif, after he returned from dropping their children off at school on October 20 last year.

Father-of-four Sharif, 44, of Slough, Berkshire, slashed her neck with a knife and then hid the murder weapon, stashed his blood-stained clothes in his car and went to work.

He was today jailed for life for the brutal murder.

Reading Crown Court heard Sharif had been stealing Viagra and anti-depressants from his workplace at the time of the callous attack.

The court heard Sharif left Mrs Imran's body on the kitchen floor before he changed out of his bloodstained clothes and hid them under the driver's seat of his car, concealed the murder weapon - which has never been found - and went to work.

Sharif initially denied killing his wife but eventually confessed to a friend and fellow prisoner while he was being held in custody at HMP Bullingdon.

He then pleaded guilty to murder at Reading Crown Court.

Allan Mainds, prosecuting, told the court Sharif had become convinced, mistakenly, that his wife was having an affair with her younger cousin who lived in Pakistan.

He said the pair would text and speak frequently but the relationship was nothing more than a friendship, with Mrs Imran fulfilling an 'almost maternal' role.

'There were regular exchanges of affectionate texts and telephone calls,' he said. 'The defendant interpreted these as the actions of an unfaithful and secretive wife - a totally wrong interpretation.  'He saw this previously successful marriage was at an end.'

The court heard that paranoid Sharif even downloaded a tracking app onto his wife's pink iPhone which automatically sent copies of her messages to his own phone.

Mrs Imran only discovered the app when a colleague discovered it while trying to fix something on her phone.

The couple, who were cousins, married in Pakistan in 1997 and went on to have four children, all aged between seven and 15 years.

The court heard the relationship deteriorated on a family trip to Pakistan in April 2014 Sharif accused his wife of having an affair in front of other family members, told her he would divorce her and allegedly hit her.

Mrs Imran, who had worked at PC World in Slough since 2001, confided in friends that the relationship was in trouble, saying she had got onto a motorbike with her cousin in Pakistan and 'you should have seen Imran's face.'

Things came to a head on October 20 when Sharif stole his wife's phone and the house landline phone to prevent her from contacting her cousin, the court heard.

When she returned home to search for her phone Sharif confronted his wife and tried to strangle her, before slashing her neck in a 'violent and sustained' attack, before getting changed and going into work.

When Mrs Imran's brother found her body hours later there were signs of a struggle, with cuts across Raheela's hands.

Her larynx had been broken and she was naked from the waist down.

A post mortem examination found she died as a result of a wound to the neck.

Sharif was arrested later that day and was charged with murder on October 23 after officers discovered a Tesco carrier bag in his car containing a grey long-sleeved shirt and denim trousers covered in his wife's blood.

Before the relationship broke down, the court heard the couple had bought land next to their home in Slough and went on to build the family home and rent out their other property.

Sharif had been working as a pharmacist in Slough for more than 14 years, although when officers searched his home they found he had been illegally self-prescribing a range of drugs to treat erectile dysfunction and depression.

The couple's eldest daughter Zahara, who is now living with her siblings and other family members, said her mother, who was described as 'completely devoted' to her children, was her inspiration.

The brave teenager said: 'Raheela was the most caring, loving and big-hearted person.  'My mum was more like a friend to me. I will never be able to match her.

Handing Sharif a life term, to serve a minimum term of 14 years and nine months before being eligible for parole, Judge Cutts said: 'This was a savage attack. I accept that you believed, albeit erroneously, that your wife was having an affair.

'I accept this was not a premeditated killing, however it is clear you intended to kill her on that occasion.

Sharif, dressed in a prison issue blue-grey jumper, with greying hair and stubble, showed no emotion as he was taken down to the cells.

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Free Speech Under Fire; Two Gunmen Killed at Texas "Draw Mohammed" Contest

Free speech is never a justification for violence - or submitting to the thug's veto

The event was organized by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, known for their outspoken views on jihadism and Islam, and the similarly controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders was one of the main draws.

It's not immediately clear who was behind the attack (one suspected gunman's Twitter account has been removed), despite claims that it was connected to the Islamic State.

Twitter was full of the event and arguments over the shooting, Geller's reputation for inflaming opinions, and more, including this from a New York Times' foreign correspondent:

"Free speech aside, why would anyone do something as provocative as hosting a "Muhammad drawing contest"?"  — Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) May 4, 2015

It's not fully clear to me that there is an "aside" beyond "free speech," but Reason of course hosted a similar contest back in 2010 after violence in the wake of the Jyllands-Posten controversy and American cartoonist Mollie Norris faced death threats for suggesting such a thing.

Why did we? As I wrote at the time:

"There comes a point in any society's existence where it must ultimately, to paraphrase Martin Luther (who himself was more than happy to see opponents put to death), dig in its heels and say here we stand, we will do no other. We don't need to be perfectly consistent philosophically or historically or theologically to assert what is special and unique not just about the United States, with its bizarre and wonderful articulation of the First Amendment, but the greater classical liberal project comprising not just the "West" (whatever that is) but human beings in whatever town, country, or planet they inhabit.

And at the heart of the liberal project is ultimately a recognition that individuals, for no other reason than that they exist, have rights to continue to exist. Embedded in all that is the right to expression. No one has a right to an audience or even to a sympathetic hearing, much less an engaged audience.

But no one should be beaten or killed or imprisoned simply for speaking their mind or praying to one god as opposed to the other or none at all or getting on with the small business of living their life in peaceful fashion. If we cannot or will not defend that principle with a full throat, then we deserve to choke on whatever jihadists of all stripes can force down our throats."

The recent contest comes in the wake of the murder of staffers at Charlie Hebdo, the French magazine routinely and wrongly attacked as racist and reactionary (read Matt Welch on that and on American writers denouncing PEN giving an award to the writers, editors, and illustrated shot to death by Islamic radicals). Much of the commentary over this latest shooting will doubtless revolve the odiousness of Pamela Geller," her track record of "provocations," and the like.

That is simply besides the much larger and more important point that free speech is free speech and should never be challenged by the thug's veto or bullets or violence. The United States Constitution doesn't simply enshrine free speech in the First Amendment but also religious freedom and freedom of assembly. These things are all intertwined and an attack on one is an attack on the others.

Allowing infringements on any of that—whether out of sensitivity, fear, or distaste with particular groups (whether Charlie Hebdo or Geller)—is not a small thing and it's never a final thing, either. Giving in to violent reprisals doesn't end them, it only sets the stage for the next choking down of free expression and the openness of society.

In the wake of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, President Obama announced that "the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam," while blaming the death of a U.S. ambassador and soldiers on a YouTube video that supposedly created a spontaneous demonstration against the country that had recently helped liberate Libya from a dictator.

The president was wrong then and those who say we must rein in free speech are wrong now. The threats to speech are not simply emanating from terrorists who pledge allegiance to a demented form of Islamic theocracy. They are everywhere throughout America today and despite an ever-increasing number of platforms from which to speak, the plain fact is that "incursions against free speech and a truly unregulated marketplace of ideas" are also flourishing.

The future must belong to those who recognize a categorical difference between free expression and violent reprisals. The future must belong to those who affirm speech over silence and freedom over fear, regardless of who is speaking and who is offended.

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UK: Labour candidates address sex-segregated election rally

We are not in Lahore in the Punjab, but Hodge Hill, Birmingham. It is not a private gathering in a mosque or other sanctified space of holiness, but a hired function hall for a public meeting, where the previous guests ate bacon sandwiches and unclean dogs begged beneath the tables. It is not a religiously mandated Friday Jumu’ah, where Muslims would listen to the call to prayer and begin their rakat with the tahyat-ul-masjid salah and listen attentively to the imam’s ritual khutbah.

It is a Labour election rally, where Muslims are listening to parliamentary candidates, including Tom Watson, Liam Byrne, Kahlid Mahmood and Jack Dromey (Mr Harriet Harman) issue the call to vote, with assurances of sharia-compliant schools and a pledge to outlaw ‘Islamophobia’.

It is astonishing, in England in 2015, that zealots for absolute equality and gender parity would deign to address a sex-segregated meeting. How is this ‘progressive’? How is it consistent with Labour’s ‘equal society’ and enlightened notions of human rights?

The women aren’t quite second class, for they are not seated behind the men or shunted down to the basement as they are in many mosques. But they are separated nonetheless, like the sheep from the goats, and the inference is clear: when it comes to courting the Muslim vote, gender apartheid trumps equality.

Perhaps Khalid Mahmood is used to this sort of cultural directive, and tolerates it because he grasps the backward belief of some of his co-religionists that women are chattel and exist to obey orders. But would Tom Watson address a political gathering where white men sit on the right and black on the left? Isn’t that racist? Would Liam Byrne agree to speak at a meeting where heterosexuals were separated from homosexuals? Isn’t that homophobic? Would Jack Dromey accept an invitation to address an audience where Muslims were separated from Sikhs, or Protestants from Roman Catholics? Isn’t that bigoted sectarianism?

As the Archbishop of Canterbury recently observed, “Equality as an aim in itself through government action is doomed not merely to defeat but to totalitarianism.” Conservatives will not instinctively prioritise the universalism of equality, but would certainly advocate the liberal core concept of equal concern and respect expressed to all in their common humanity, without the need to respect some of their attributes or ends. Human equality for the Christian is not merely an abstraction of thought to be dispensed with for political expediency, but an incarnational assertion that we have a common purpose and share a common end.

As St Paul said: ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus‘ (Gal 3:28). Clearly, Muslims are not all one in Mohammed: the seed of Abraham is not united in the ontological parity which negates the subordination of one sex to another. There exists still a formal religious and legal universalism which imposes gender limitations upon political and social practices.

Would Labour politicians address a meeting where Jews were segregated? If not, why is the segregation of women remotely acceptable to politicians who have dedicated their lives to ending the social and economic inequalities endured by women in all cultures throughout the whole of history?

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Judge takes toddler from 'homophobic' mum to live with gay dad and his lover

A mother can lose her daughter because of her opinions about homosexuals?

A 15-month-old girl should be taken from her ‘homophobic’ mother and sent to live with her wealthy gay father and his lover, a High Court judge has ruled.

The mother lied when she agreed to become a surrogate for the gay couple’s desperately wanted child, Ms Justice Russell said.  In fact, she really wanted a baby for herself and regarded the girl’s gay father as no more than a ‘sperm donor’, the judge said.

In a judgment published yesterday, Ms Justice Russell said the mother had used her daughter to manipulate the court – and had tried to discredit the gay father and his partner ‘in a homophobic and offensive manner’.

She said the mother had secretly named the girl and had her baptised in defiance of a court order and without the couple’s consent.

In her ruling, the judge said the 15-month-old girl should not be affected by her mother’s negative views of her father because they will ‘directly affect her own sense of identity’.

Instead, she ordered that the girl should live with her father and his boyfriend and said that the mother – who has been breastfeeding and sleeping with her daughter – should be allowed to see her only under the supervision of social workers.

‘This case is another example of how agreements between potential parents reached privately to conceive children to build a family go wrong and cause great distress to the biological parents and their spouses or partners,’ Ms Justice Russell said.

The judge ordered that none of the individuals involved in the dispute may be named in public.

The row between the gay couple and the mother began after an apparent surrogacy deal broke down. The mother, a Romanian who has two older daughters who live with her divorced British husband, met the 43-year-old Romanian father when they were both teenagers.

The father lives with his 38-year-old partner, but the gay couple are not married or civil partners. In 2013 they struck an agreement which the father thought meant the woman would be a surrogate mother.

She would play a role in the child’s life but he and his partner would be the main carers. However the mother told the court the agreement was with the father alone, that there was no role for his partner, and that she would be the main carer.

The child was conceived by an artificial method at the gay couple’s home. The mother then paid towards the rent of a house in South London where she could live with the couple.

The deal broke down shortly before the baby was born in January 2014, and the mother went to hospital for the birth without telling the father. The affair became a court battle before the baby was a month old.

The senior judge who took the baby from her surrogate mother last year became the first allowed to take a feminist title. High Court judge Alison Russell is known on the bench as Ms Justice Russell.

The decision to allow a judge to be addressed that way was taken by Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas and Sir James Munby, the judge who heads the family courts where 55-year-old Ms Justice Russell will operate.

It is a departure from past practice, in which women judges were not permitted to deviate from established forms of address.

The judge, who has no children, is unmarried and lives with her partner Julian Francis in Brixton in South London.

She describes her interests as Spain, Handel, cooking, reading, and playing with her niece and nephews.

The baptism mattered to the three because the mother usurped the right to name the child and establish her religion.

The mother is an Orthodox Christian, while the father is a protestant and his partner a Roman Catholic, the judge said. Ms Justice Russell added that the mother ‘decided to breastfeed on demand and co-sleep with the baby: This directly affected the amount of time she could spend with her father’.

The judge said her conclusion was that the mother ‘set out to inveigle the father into acting as her sperm donor so she could have another child’.

She declared: ‘While to move a young child from her mother is a difficult decision and is one which I make with regret as I am aware it will cause the mother distress, I conclude that the father is the parent who is best able to meet the girl’s needs both now and in the future.

‘It is he who has shown that he has the ability to allow her to grow into a happy, balanced and healthy adult and it is he who can help her to reach her greatest potential.’ [Utter rot.  A daughter needs her mother.  The dried-out old bag of a feminist judge would not have a clue about motherhood]

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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