A Pakistani woman and former Dublin resident who was murdered in Islamabad, Pakistan, last week has been remembered by her school friends as someone who “lit up a room”.
More than 70 former class-mates, neighbours and friends gathered at Our Lady’s Grove school in Goatstown, south Dublin, on Monday evening to remember 27-year-old past pupil Noor Mukadam and to call for justice.
The woman was shot and stabbed in the Pakistani capital on July 20th, with police arresting a man reportedly known to her. The daughter of diplomat Shaukat Mukadam, she spent several years in Ireland while her father was posted to the Dublin embassy. *
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Carrying placards bearing the young woman’s face and reading “Justice for Noor”, the mourners walked from Our Lady’s Grove past Clonskeagh Mosque to the grounds of University College Dublin.
Nihed Medbou (27), who went to school with Ms Mukadam, described the death of her friend as a “kind, loving, caring soul and a really good friend”. Ms Medbou read aloud a verse from the Quran that teaches how women should be “treated with respect”. This brutal death is “hard to process”, she said. “I am still in shock.”
Violence against women
Ms Mukadam had campaigned against gender-based violence in the south Asian country, said Ms Medbou.
“She was standing against violence . . . It is crazy because now people in Pakistan are standing against violence against women for Noor,” she said.
Marilyn Egan called for “justice, education, awareness and hope” for her close friend and former class-mate. Ms Mukadam’s murder “doesn’t feel real . . . it does not make sense”, she said, and the killer “must be brought to justice”.
“Violence against women is a problem across the world and Noor herself was a champion against it in Pakistan,” she said.
Moving from Dublin to Bahrain and then on to South Korea, due to her father’s ambassadorial positions, Ms Mukadam had “friends everywhere, but she really was just one of the girls here”, said Ms Egan. Anyone she met “could not help but smile . . . she was always joyful and she spread happiness. She just lit up a room.”
*This article was amended on July 27th, 2021
