The political and religious worlds of England and Ireland have condemned the killing of Margaret Hassan, the woman aid worker of dual British and Irish nationality, who also retained her Iraqi citizenship (she married an Iraqi), and who has lived for years in Iraq where she worked as local director of the international humanitarian organization, Care International. Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, archbishop of Westminster and president of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, expressed “sadness and horror” on hearing of her murder and called Margaret Hassan a “martyr for goodness, truth and generosity”. As soon as he heard news of her death, the Cardinal phoned her family to express his condolences and called her murder “a violation of the Islamic value of mercy”. The archbishop of Westminster also appealed for the body of the woman to be restored to her family. On 6 November, during a meeting of Churches Together in England, strengthened by the moral and spiritual support of personalities involved in ecumenism, the Cardinal had appealed to the kidnappers to “practice the great Islamic virtue of mercy and release her”. On 3 November O’Connor had also met with six exponents of the Islamic community in England to join together in opposition to the violence being perpetrated in the name of religion and to defend mutual religious freedom wherever in the world it is threatened”.
