Child marriage

[FruityPops]

Why are so many imams in the UK willing to force fourteen year old girls to marry against their wishes? Don't ordinary muslims know what's going on?

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2447720/Clerics-18-mosques-caught-agreeing-marry-girls-14-Four-imams-investigated-undercover-operation.html

FlapJack - we don't know! Why don't you ask the ones doing it?

Stop holding muslims in general responsible for the shit ones.

18 is not a lot.

It's 18 too many though !

18 out of 56 is not every imam in every mosque in the UK is it?

those 18 imams should be sent to prison for aiding and abetting a crime.

18 imams out of 56 mosques, which the Dialyfail chose on the basis they would be most likely to agree, is not the norm.

Hubb - what I don't understand is why the muslims in general do not shout and scream and say NO to the shit ones. Or do they, and it is never reported?

Ok the guys are unconnected, is it really less despicable, less newsworthy, less to do with their culture and religion? Honestly?

Stupid thread. Yes, let's not ignore that this happens, but fgs, don't taint all Muslims with the same brush. There are certain communities in which this may happen, but Muslims aren't one big community. There are over 50 Islamic countries and in the world and quick google shows over 70 sects that all follow their own culture and traditions.

This isn't just an Islamic problem, it's a cultural one too.

What I don't understand is why the Christians in general do not shout and scream and say NO to the shit ones. Or do they, and it is never reported?

What I don't understand is why the football fans in general do not shout and scream and say NO to the shit ones. Or do they, and it is never reported?

What I don't understand is why the MNers in general do not shout and scream and say NO to the shit ones. Or do they, and it is never reported?

I can do this all day. Are you getting the point yet?

FlapJack, the shit ones do not head my masjids, they'd be run out pretty damn fast if they did.

They are a lunatic fringe which I nor may family or friends have ever come across.

Unfortunately this is not one "nutter". This was explained to us by CEOP personnel to be a specific issue in some ultra orthodox Muslim cultures.

I agree though, it's not a mainstream Muslim accepted practise but does seem to be happening enough that we as teachers are warned on the signs.

Why would the Daily Mail want to challenge their agenda by reporting about Muslim people being decent, law abiding citizens? It'll never happen.

Flap do you shout and scream and say no to the shit people from whatever groups you are part of?

Can you give an example of when you've done that? Cause I don't really know your point or what you're expecting us to do.

We speak out when we feels it's relevant, not on every single bad thing happening in the world, cause vast majority of the time it's nothing to do with us.....

Daisy forced marriages is not a Muslim crime it is a cultural one, I have heard of Sikh and Hindu girls being forced into marriage by being sent 'back home'.

If you spend all your energies concentrating only on Muslim girls because in you world it only happens to us, you will be doing a huge disservice to the other girls who are subject to this cultural practice.

There are over 1500 mosques in the UK so 56 is hardly a representive sample. Do we know what criteria were used to select the mosques? Was it random or targeted?

DH is North African and muslim and I am not aware of this happening in his community and certainly has not happened with any of his family or friends.

crescentmoon - only two thirds of those contacted refused to perform the marriage? And this is going on in the UK!

That is a tiny percentage out of all the mosques in Britain.

So why are a lot of Imams, in the UK, condoning it?

We come back to the point I and others have made and which a number of contributors are studiously avoiding: the only information we have about this comes from the Daily Mail, a paper with a track record of twisting the facts when it comes to promoting their agenda, and a track record of trying to stir up Islamophobia. Therefore I will take their claim of 18 Imams condoning this with massive caution until I see it confirmed by someone much more reliable.

What is interesting is the contributors to this thread who seem happy to accept every word the Mail says as the absolute truth when it pursues that agenda. I wonder whether they accept the Mail's reporting on everything with such alacrity?

it is not a prevalent practice within the Muslim community.

It's an interesting example of how "Muslim" has become dog-whistle code.

The problem of women being treated as property is not a Muslim issue. It is, arguably, an issue for certain patriarchal cultural groups which happen to be Muslim. Accusing people of engaging in, say, rape as part of being Muslims is ludicrous, because no practicing Muslim would be doing that. It's like arguing that there's a problem with rape being condoned by Christians, just look at Peter Sutcliffe and Fred West (in the case of Sutcliffe, he actually dragged Christianity into his defence at one point).

There are small groups of notional Muslims from particular sub-cultures, mostly in the Indian sub-continent, where patriarchal values do persist. Shafilia Ahmed, for example, was killed within such a cultural bubble. It's unsurprising that most Muslims have no contact with this, just as most Christians aren't Amish. There are small communities that happen to be Muslim where these practices exist. They are not widespread.

I'm a huge fan of Salma Yaqoob, and if I lived in her constituency I'd have voted for her even though Respect were and are utter knobheads. It's vitally important that she be brought back inside the Labour fold and is elected as an MP. She's doing hugely important work to deal with Biraderi clan structures and the effect they have on women, and because she's from the Sparkbrook/Balsall Heath community herself she can do so without howls of racism. On the sadly related topic of "honour killing", she has been extremely convincing. It's about time that a fear of being deemed Islamophobic was replaced with a realisation that there is a problem with forced marriage in a tiny, unrepresentative sub-culture, but to tar the whole Muslim community with it is ludicrous.

crescentmoon - only two thirds of those contacted refused to perform the marriage? And this is going on in the UK!

But the question is what were the criteria for the people contacted? If, for instance, the reporter was sent out to ask around about Imams who might be sympathetic to the request, it follows that he would have been referred to a very narrow selection. I question whether this was randomised research, and I would also like to see the evidence of precisely what was said and by whom.

Oh, friday16, that's a wonderful post. And, I suspect, completely wasted on this OP.

FruityPops Does the MCB actually have any authority over anyone? If so, who appointed them, and are they all men?

No authority, as far as I know. I usually look for their opinion on something, when a hysterical anti-Islam headline hits. They often guide me to what "normal" Muslims are thinking (in the absence of a quick opinion from a Muslim friend/colleague).

It's a shame such a council is necessary really, that we need to be told that 9/11 wasn't a general Islamic initiative, that not all Muslims condone child marriage, and so on...

Daisy, are you talking about the initiatives put into place following the new laws to prevent forced marriage that were passed about 5 years ago?
www.gov.uk/forced-marriage

It was a religious and cultural issue that impacted on schools in Greater Manchester in the late 80s and 90s in my personal experience, as a teacher in a mostly first-generation immigrant area.
Evidence gathered then, and in other areas was part of the drive behind the laws being passed. Muslim friends of mine in London saw it as an archaic issue imported from rural areas in Pakistan and Bangladesh, and didn't see it as being any part of a British Muslim's experience.