We are entitled to condemn this male barbarity

She was a young Somali called Aisha, and she was 13 years old. Last week, she was murdered - not in an act of war but in the name of "justice." Her crime, according to her father, was to have been serially raped by three men. She had been, he said, a virgin.

Fifty men representing the local al-Shabab militia, however, had a different version. They said she had committed adultery. So they buried her up to her neck and stoned her until she was dead.

There were around a thousand witnesses, who had travelled to the local stadium where she was to meet her bloody end. Some protested in vain. One, a young boy, was shot dead. The militia subsequently apologised for accidentally killing him. They made no apology for the brutal act that ended Aisha's life. They made no arrests of any men involved in her sexual violation.

Amnesty International, which investigated the murder, claims such a grotesque act is not unusual. And this horror story tells us many other tales. It gives us evidence, if more were needed, of how men continue to use and abuse the tenets of their faith, interpreting Islamic laws in ways that defy common humanity and horrify serious and genuine scholars of that religion. These so-called defenders of the faith and upholders of mis-shapen Sharia law belong to a long, ignoble tradition of self-serving men who use selective quotations from scripture and heavily doctored "translations" to subjugate women, denying them human rights, education and parity of esteem within relationships.

Although death by stoning, casual rape and the horrendously misnamed "honour killings" are at the bloodiest end of the spectrum, this patriarchal denial of basic rights through theological diktat is by no means confined to Islam. The Anglican church in England is still engaged in hissy fits over the ordination of female bishops, while every branch of the Christian religion laboured for alibi-infested centuries before there was such a thing as women ministers.

It is not so very many decades since western women who were engaged in "holy matrimony" enjoyed the legal status of chattels, while the concept of rape within marriage only arrived in the last quarter of the twentieth century. So we may not stride self-righteously around the moral high ground as we contemplate the awful plight of one young African girl barely into her teens.

Neither should we barge in waving the flag of cultural imperialism which has embroiled us in so many contemporary conflicts as a result of our arrogance and ignorance. But common humanity demands that we separate that which is none of our cultural business from that which is, quite simply, indefensible. Many young women in the UK choose to wear different forms of modest Islamic dress and headwear, not because of clerical compulsion but because it either informs their identity or affords them personal security, or both. So long as that is their free choice, that is entirely their concern. But if young UK women are subjected to forced marriage, or physically harmed because their choice of partner does not conform to their parents', it becomes our concern, too.

Female circumcision is another moral minefield, and British campaigners against the practice are routinely advised to back off from criticising customs stemming from non-western traditions. Yet it is difficult to view this particular act as anything other than female genital mutilation designed to deny sexual pleasure and pain-free bodily functions.

In the bloody wars currently scarring parts of the African continent, humanitarian agencies present a disturbing and consistent picture of rape being used widely as a weapon. Such are the tribal mores in some of the affected and afflicted regions that the victims of those rapes are not routinely given aid and comfort, but too often find social and marital ostracism adding miserable insult to terrible injury. Again, that is at the most heinous end of a spectrum to which our own civilisation is no stranger. You only have to contemplate the history of prostitution to wonder how it can be that those who provided sexual services were prosecuted, while those who seek them have been subjected to a rather less rigorous judicial code.

Nevertheless, we are entitled publicly to condemn those whose notion of justice is the mutilation and death of a young girl. Even if the wholly unsubstantiated charge of adultery had been true, it would not have been a crime had it been a man who had had multiple partners. But what would most honour the memory of Aisha, and protect those like her, would be for men from her own culture to stand up and declare that such an act has no place within a faith originally founded on peace and tolerance; one, indeed, that explicitly lauded female progress.