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

[ChazsBrilliantAttitude]

If I wanted to show that racism was prevelent in British pubs and I targeted pubs that were the usual haunts of Combat 18, the EDL and the BNP I am sure I could show that at all or nearly all the pubs I visited racism was displayed.

It would be meaningless research because the sample chosen was biased rather than random.

That's why I want to know the basis of selection for such a very small sample of mosques.

[SilverApples]

'out of how many mosques? 56 out of 1500 mosques (i didnt know there were that many actually!). '

Crescent, we had several local mosques that were purely slightly adapted terraced houses. Tiny, but still fit for purpose!

www.mosquedirectory.co.uk/search_mosque/mosquesearch.php

[Dobbiesmum]

I'm still waiting for the OP to target all Catholics who must surely have known what was going on behind closed doors while young children were being abused for decades by some Catholic priests, or did the entire church going population just turning a blind eye to that OP?

[friday16]

Sorry, and to clarify two points.

One is, forced marriage is cultural, not religious. In Birmingham it's a problem that schools are trying to address, but it is certainly not restricted to Muslim girls. It's also happening in nominally Hindi and to a lesser extent Sikh communities. The common factor is conservative, less well educated and less well integrated first generation immigrants from quite small geographic areas, not religion. The desire to "marry in" to preserve a cultural heritage in a "foreign" country is hardly unique to any one religion.

Secondly, when I gnomically said "what makes you think they don't", I was unfortunately looking a bit dog whistle-y. The point is that everyone reads newspapers or sees the television news. Muslims in Britain "know about it" in the same sense that I, as a white Briton, "know about" Fred West. As Eldridtch has pointed out, it is flat-out racist to say that people from group X should condemn every bad thing that other members of group X do, even if they claim to do so in Group X's name. It's McCarthyite, imposing a loyalty test on people just because of their ethnicity. Of course, the left is not immune to this - there's a tendency to demand that Jewish Britons have a position on Israel/Palestine, which is just as racist as the assumption that Muslims who don't start every conversation with a long list of condemnations are somehow friends of the Taliban - but it does seem that "othering" Muslims on the grounds that somehow their silence on forced marriage (or genital mutilation, or the veil, or whatever) is equal to support is a new, and nasty, tendency.

[BoreOfWhabylon]

OP, YABU and your agenda is writ large.

I suggest posters just let Fruity and Flapjacks get on with fulminating away to each other.

Nothing to see here just a couple of Islamophobes

[friday16]

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.

This.

[FruityPops]

Dobbiesmum - child abuse is never acceptable. But I am allowed to comment on forced child marriage. I saw it on the ITV news last night and thought it was terrible, so I started a thread on it.

[EldritchCleavage]

You are allowed to comment, of course.

And we are allowed to point out how wrong-headed, disingenuous and irritating your comments are.

[YouTheCat]

So you joined MN just to say your piece on these terrible Muslims, Fruity?

[friday16]

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

Actually, the Muslim Mainstream is probably to be found on the "meh" side of the MCB. The MCB was formed in the aftermath of the Rushdie affair, and some of its earlier leaders were a bit excitable on that topic. Inayat Bunglawalah has recanted somewhat, but it's a serious problem that the impression of organised British Islam as being a bunch of book-burning nutters persists. I think he realises the harm that was done. But there are still forces around in British Islam who are wanting to re-fight the Rushdie affair (see here) and the MCB is not entirely free of this tendency.

I know a lot of fairly politicised Muslims, albeit mostly of the left (the people who joined, and then left, Respect) and I've not heard Rushdie mentioned in a decade. The MCB hasn't moved on quite as much.

[EldritchCleavage]

No, Fruity is also weighing in on the talcum powder, babies and ovarian cancer debate as we speak. Just in case we didn't think she was a proper Mumsnetter/Mumsnutter.

[YouTheCat]

She only joined yesterday.

Another poster did the same last week. All manner of comments on various threads but had only just joined (unless she had name changed) - most comments on the subject of Muslims funnily enough.

[Dobbiesmum]

Fine, I understand that, my issue is that you are making a blanket assumption that it is a problem in one religious group which is known to happen by everyone within that group. It doesn't just go on here, it's all over the planet practiced by many different religious communities. It's happening right now. Specifically targeting one particular group does a massive disservice to young women and girls everywhere by making it seem like "it couldn't happen here".
Yo only have to look at what happened in the US in the FLDS under Warren Jeff's to see that 'nice white girls' (that statement was NOT intended to upset anyone, I'm just trying to get fruity to see a point!) can be forced into underage marriage as well.
This is a human/women's rights issue everywhere. We cannot fight it on one small front, it needs to be a global effort.
Which is why I'm linking to this:
www.girlsnotbrides.org/news/

[friday16]

I've not read the original article, but is it really based on dredging around a few fringe mosques and finding that even amongst those, only a minority may not quite have been clear in their condemnation of an obviously illegal practice?

Because in that case, Christians had better stand by their beds, boots blacked, and get ready to condemn on behalf of "the community". Because I bet that if you send reporters to 56 of the sort of fringe nutter churches that meet in school halls outside the structure of the better known Christian strands, you'd not need to wait long to get a litany of homophobic, creationist, "male headship", "christian discipline", "quiverfull", nonsense. Hell, before his website was mysteriously taken down, Richard Williamson (who was a bishop in the Roman Catholic church, invited back by the previous pope) could be found mixing holocaust denial with the claim that education and trousers were sinful for women.

You don't have to look too hard in most religions to find fringe nutters. It is not incumbent on others in that religion to have a laundry list of badness, and ritually condemn each one of them as part of their daily routine.

[bakingaddict]

I would imagine the marriage wouldn't actually be totally legal in this country so while they may be seen as married within their community from a Muslim wedding ceremony perspective it is unlikely that official documents would bear the name Mrs X for a 14yr girl.

I might be wrong but I thought that if you partake in a Muslim, Sikh, Buddist, Hindi etc wedding you must also have a registry office wedding to satisfy the legal requirements for UK marriage. If you can marry in this way then and it be legally recognised in this country then it's for the authorities to intervene but I thought the youngest you can officially marry is 16 so it's a bit of a non-story DM wise as usual.

[FruityPops]

bakinaddict - It's not a non-story if children are being raped in the name of forced marriage.

[YouTheCat]

Children are being raped in the name of all kinds of things.

You keep making this about Muslims when it has been pointed out repeatedly that it is not prevalent and it is a cultural issue and not one specifically about religion.

[sashh]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-24385557

10 men sent to Jail for abusing a 13 year old. Don't ordinary white folk know what is going on?

Oh and the RC church allows marriage by a man of 16 and a woman of 14, although there can be a locally agreed higher age, in the UK it is 16.

[Daisypolka]

The CEOP lecture happened last year again in one of our refresher inset days, so the spectre of forced marriage hasn't gone away since the 80s/90s.

Lets just all do our best to protect young, vulnerable children from these very real dangers. An article in the Independent recently stated a UK charity is advising young girls to hide spoons in their underwear to allow them one final chance for escape while talking to Security before they are spirited abroad.

I come away from these training days very depressed sometimes about all the things young students have to be aware of now FGM, online bullying, forced marriage etc

[FruityPops]

Daisypolka - At least people are bothering to address these problems with training days. If everything is brought out into the open, we can all do something about it.

Lots of people besides some muslims must have been turning a blind eye to forced child marriages (teachers / social workers / health professionals) or we would have heard a lot more about it in the past.

[YouTheCat]

You still haven't got it, have you? Forced, underage marriages happen in some cultures - not necessarily Muslim ones. And they are most definitely not the norm.

[friday16]

Lots of people besides some muslims must have been turning a blind eye to forced child marriages (teachers / social workers / health professionals) or we would have heard a lot more about it in the past.

Occam's razor says things aren't heard much about because they are very rare. For example, you don't hear much these days about satanic ritual abuse, even though a couple of decades ago it was (apparently) sweeping the country like wildfire. That was because it didn't, at least the form claimed, exist. Cases of forced marriage of underage girls are very rare. That doesn't mean they don't happen, but their rarity doesn't imply that there's a conspiracy keeping silent about them.

[bakingaddict]

I for one do not see the rape of children as being a non-story but what I do see as a non-story is a known right wing newspaper having a certain agenda with regards to something that perhaps is seen by it's readers as belonging to a particular culture.

I would like to see a global moratorium outlawing child marriage and FGM but know it would be very difficult to implement and police.

However, the DM as a reliable source of independently verifiable statistics on forced under-age marriage I don't take for granted. If they have sound information and evidence that it's a common practice in this country then they should take it to the authorities. There are taskforces that exist to prevent forced marriages

[Wannabestepfordwife]

Right so by the ops logic as I am RC I should have known about all the paedophile priests and how women were mistreated in laundrys.

IMO underage marriage isn't exclusive to Islam nor is it widespread in this country.

Out of interest what signs do teachers and ss look for, for girls at risk