‘If you are shown six or seven men and told to choose one, that’s not really a choice...’
PROJECT HELPS WOMEN WHEN ARRANGED MARRIAGES GO WRONG
THE disturbing case of Muhammad Tafham, 31, who was this week found guilty for the murder of his mother-in-law, was watched closely by staff from the Saheli Asian Womens Project.
For 40 years, the project has helped women flee domestic violence, forced marriage and unhappy arranged marriages.
The victim in the Tafham case, Rahman Begum, 46, had helped her 25-year-old daughter flee an unhappy arranged marriage to him. Mrs Begum, a mother-of-five, paid the ultimate price for supporting her daughter’s right to happiness – her life.
In looking at this issue, it has to be said domestic abuse, controlling behaviour – and murder – occur in all types of communities, religious or otherwise.
Many arranged marriages, across Britain’s diverse communities, are done with the full and willing consent of the bride and the groom, blossom into love, and are perfectly successful. But some are doomed from the start.
The situation is particularly difficult when the line between arranged marriage and forced marriage becomes blurred.
“The girls and women in these situations often think it’s their choice,” said Priya Chopra, chief executive at Saheli. “Young girls are often brain-washed into thinking they are getting an arranged marriage, the pressure on them is immense, but they do not see the invisible forces working in the background.
“But, if you are shown six or seven men and told to choose one, that’s not really a choice.”
With Tafham beginning a life sentence, the Saheli Project is appealing to women suffering in silence to get in touch so they can get the help they need.
Tafham’s heinous crime, for which he must serve 21 years before parole can be considered, is an extreme – but not unique – example of what can happen when arranged marriages go wrong.
The murder happened after Aysha Gulraiz, Tafham’s wife and cousin, seized her one chance to escape him. In 2013, when she was just 20, Aysha had travelled to Pakistan and was shown what was described in court as a ‘beauty parade’ of ‘six or seven boys,’ each one a potential husband.
“My uncle (Ms Gulraiz’s dad) said ‘You choose one of them’ and she chose me,” Tafham put it.
Three days later the couple were married in an Islamic ceremony.
Aysha was in love – but not with Tafham. The man she really wanted to be with, Malik, lived in Bradford. But he was not her family’s choice and, desperate to make her parents happy, Aysha had kept the relationship with Malik secret and agreed to the wedding.
It would be another three years before Tafham moved from Pakistan to be with his bride in Rochdale. But in their case, absence did not make the heart grow fonder.
‘Fierce rows’ were a regular occurrence. Aysha repeatedly asked for a divorce and then, with the relationship with Malik out in the open, she told Tafham she wanted to live with her boyfriend. Eventually, a desperately unhappy Aysha left the marital home and moved back in with her mum next door in Clement Royds Street.
Within a few days Aysha, with the help of her mother, had devised a plan to flee Rochdale and start a new life with Malik.
On the evening of Tuesday, February 6, Mrs Begum asked one of her other daughters to take Tafham to the ice cream parlour Sugar Rush, in nearby Deeplish. With the coast clear, Aysha and Malik went into the family home and hurriedly filled bin liners and plastic bags with her belongings. As they did so, Ms Begum told Malik ‘Look after my daughter’ before urging Aysha ‘Don’t ruin your life, go live it.’ The following morning Tafham discovered his wife had left him. Enraged by what he saw as his mother-in-law’s betrayal, he went to confront Mrs Begum, grabbed a 12-inch kitchen knife and stabbed her through the chest three times. One of the blows was so fierce it pierced the 46-year-old mum-offive’s breastbone. Then, as she lay dying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor, Tafham put the blade into his mother-inlaw’s Priya Chopra hand in a clumsy attempt to make it look like she had killed herself, before running away to his cousin’s house.
Tafham’s cover-up attempt didn’t stop the police from catching up with him, and it didn’t stop prosecutors building a case against him. The trial that followed revealed the social pressure some women can face to do as they are told, and not as they would wish.
Jurors were told that after Aysha’s relationship with Malik became common knowledge among the close-knit community in Spotland, her family, who worshipped at the Golden Mosque on Lower Sheriff Street, just yards away from their home, were subjected to ‘mockery and jibes.’ As for Aysha’s dad – Gulraiz Sharif – he ‘disowned’ his daughter because of the relationship, meaning her mum and sisters were forced to visit her ‘in secret.’
During the cross-examination of Aysha’s younger sister Sidra, Abdul Iqbal QC gave an insight into the ‘shame’ the relationship with Malik had brought on the family.
“Your dad was desperate your sister should be a good wife to his nephew. He didn’t want the family to be shamed,” he said.
“He wanted everyone to think your family were good, honest, hardworking Muslims. That’s what he wanted. Within your community in Rochdale, having a daughter who was in a sexual relationship outside her own marriage wasn’t something that would have been looked at with respect. People in your community in Rochdale would have looked with shame at a family with a daughter in a sexual relationship outside of marriage. There was mockery, jibes, people saying that is not a good family. Your dad didn’t want that did he?” Sidra replied simply ‘No.’ Experts working with women who have escaped unhappy arranged