<http://www.westernresistance.com/blog/archives/003964.html> UK: Muslim Families Who Use Rape And Violence To Enforce "Honor" Today, February 02, 2008, 2 hours ago | Giraldus Cambrensis <http://www.westernresistance.com/blog/archives/003964.html> Go to full article http://www.westernresistance.com/blog/archives/003964.html Book Cover <http://www.civitasonline.org.uk/acatalog/CS64_200X261.jpg> The <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3295487.ece> Sunday Times highlights one the many cases featured in a new report on "Honor Violence" in the Muslim community in Britain. In the instance cited, a 15-year old girl from Pakistan was made to marry a man by telephone. The man was from Sheffield. She had been shown only a photograph of a younger, handsome man. She came to Britain in April 2007, to find that her "husband" was unemployed, had the mental age of a child aged five and unlike the picture shown to her, he appeared to be about 40. The man's mother tried to get the girl to engage in prostitution. Men were invited to the family home to rape the girl. She fled, and went to the police. She now lives in a refuge. The report from which the case comes is entitled: "Crimes of the Community: Honour-based violence in the UK". It is written by James Brandon and Salam Hafez, and is produced by the Centre for Social Cohesion. The report can be purchased as a book from <http://www.civitasonline.org.uk/acatalog/Civil_Society.html> Civitas, and a pdf document of the 169-page report can be downloaded <http://www.socialcohesion.co.uk/pdf/CrimesOfTheCommunity.pdf> here. Abul Taher of the Sunday Times claims that, containing "over 80 interviews with women's groups, community activists and the victims of honour-based violence, Crimes of the Community is the most comprehensive study of honour-based violence ever conducted in the UK." The cases highlighted in the report are disturbing. The report suggests (page 9) that the insistence upon forced marriages and the culture of "honour" has created a situation where young women from Pakistani and Bangladeshi (Muslim) backgrounds are deprived of higher-level education. It cites data from a <http://www.jrf.org.uk/bookshop/eBooks/1997-education-ethnicity-poverty.pdf> 2007 pdf report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Women aged 25 to 29 with a degree level qualification comprise 53.9% of all those of Indian origin, yet only 25.6% of Pakistani origin women have this level of qualification. Only 15.5% of women of Bangladeshi origin have attained degree-level qualifications, compared to the national average of 29.7%. Some refuges for South Asian women claim that almost half of their clients have undergone forced marriage. Once in such a marriage, they can be forcibly raped. Parents can collude with this, fearing that unless the "wife" becomes pregnant, she will run away. A girl called "Ayesha" of Pakistani origin, living in northern England said: "I was raped. I didn't want to have sex with him. He was the opposite of what I was. He was twice the size of me. And anyway they (parents) would not let me return until I got pregnant anyway. I didn't know him or meet him before and he was not related to me, he was just from the right caste." My sister blames me because she's in this situation - she's three months' pregnant and has been married for four months. My dad won't bring her back until she's had the baby." Often, forced marriages can lead to violence from in-laws. On page 23 of the report, a woman called "Rukshana" describes how she was forcibly married when she was 18. She was first physically assaulted in 2003, while she was four months' pregnant. The assailants were the women in her "husband's" family. The resentment against her stemmed from her not being the family's first choice of bride. They had wanted her groom to marry his cousin. Rukshana received repeated attacks, always for trivial reasons. When her mother died, Rushana was not informed by her hisband's family for months. When she was given multiple wounds, bruises and fractures, she decided to seek help. She went to her daughter's school, collected her child, and sought assistance. The report also includes examples of honor abuse from Sikh and Orthodox Jewish families, but it is clear that the vast majority of cases highlighted involve Muslim girls of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin. Honor killings derive directly from this culture of "honor". The report describes many of the routes where "honor" is forced upon young people, and perpetuated even into fourth generation Pakistani/Bangladeshi immigrants. This may be the most comprehensive study so far, but more studies will need to be made, before this "hidden" problem is fully understood by Britain's legislators. Some alarming conclusions are made. It is suggested that police officers from Asian backgrounds have informed families of the location of a daughter who has fled honor violence. Such situations are unacceptable. Forced marriages can only exist in a culture which allows arranged marriages. Until these are recognized as alien to British culture, and a route whereby communities continue to import new migrants without full integration, honor violence will continue to thrive. _____ Family of teen Muslim invited men to rape her Abul Taher A GIRL of 15 was tricked into a "telephone marriage" ceremony to a Sheffield man with a mental age of five in a ceremony recognised by sharia (Islamic law). When the girl arrived from Pakistan expecting to meet the handsome man she had been shown in a photograph, she found that he was 40 years old, unemployed and disabled. To make matters worse, her mother-in-law decided to exploit her attractive looks by forcing her into prostitution. The family invited men to the family home to rape her before she managed to escape to the police by bolting through the front door. She was taken into care and now lives in a refuge. The case is highlighted in a report by the Centre for Social Cohesion, which has found that policemen, councillors and taxi drivers are turning a blind eye or even conniving in enforcing the Asian community's strict "moral code" on young women. The girl's marriage last April was not recognised by the Home Office but was approved by the Islamic Sharia Council in Britain. She is typical of the runaway brides at risk of an "honour killing". According to official figures, 10 to 12 women are murdered in Britain in honour killings each year, but the government has been warned by MPs that this is a serious underestimate. Police often record the deaths as cases of domestic violence, while other girls are driven to suicide or taken away to their family's country of origin and never seen again. Many Asian parents would rather resort to violence against their children than see their reputation tarnished by the perceived dishonour of allowing them to become "westernised". The report, Crimes of the Community, claims the problem is no longer an issue of first-generation migrants importing attitudes from "back home" but is "indigenous and self-perpetuating" because it is sustained by third and fourth-generation immigrants. The study reveals the case of Saamiya, a 16-year-old girl from Birmingham, whose parents were so angry when they discovered she had a boyfriend that they flew her to Pakistan and told her they had arranged a marriage two hours before the ceremony. "During the Islamic ceremony my dad was standing behind me with one hand on my shoulder and with his other hand he had a gun which was pointed at my back so that I didn't say 'no'," Saamiya said. "To everyone else it looked natural - he was just standing there stroking my shoulder - but just before he had told me that he would shoot me if I didn't go through with it." She was rescued from Pakistan by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's forced marriage unit and now lives in a refuge in the Midlands, but has been told that she will be murdered by her brothers. The girl told investigators: "I haven't been back home since then. My brothers say that they want to take me back to Pakistan so they can kill me basically. They'll just pay the police there to keep quiet... I don't want to be killed. I'm only 16. I want to live my life." The think-tank's report comes after Gordon Brown, the prime minister, said last week that he was extremely concerned that too little was being done to prevent honour crimes. The study criticises the police and schools for failing to take action in a misguided attempt to avoid offending cultural sensibilities. Karma Nirvana, a support group in Derby, claims it asked local schools last year to display warning posters produced by the forced marriage unit. It said the schools refused. Derby council last week denied that the group had made the requests, but the prime minister has pledged to investigate reports that the government unit cannot get its advice posters into schools for fear of upsetting local opinion. According to the report, women who go to the authorities to seek protection have been tracked down through their mobile phones or even by leaks of confidential information from government databases. Jasvinder Sanghera, director of Karma Nirvana, said that police who find girls who have escaped from their families often simply return them to their parents where they face further abuse, with some Asian officers actually colluding in crimes. Sanghera is taking a case to the Independent Police Complaints Commission of a girl who fled her family but was kidnapped by relatives and held prisoner. She claims that a police officer tipped off the family where the girl was staying. "Police have a long way to go before they get on top of honour crime. There is a lingering fear among officers of being dubbed racist for probing cultural issues. We've got to shake off that myth," she said. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3295487.ece (F)AIR USE NOTICE: All original content and/or articles and graphics in this message are copyrighted, unless specifically noted otherwise. All rights to these copyrighted items are reserved. Articles and graphics have been placed within for educational and discussion purposes only, in compliance with "Fair Use" criteria established in Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976. The principle of "Fair Use" was established as law by Section 107 of The Copyright Act of 1976. 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