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print versionThe Unpalatable Truth About Forced Marriage
By Yasmin Alibhai-brown
Britain’s first Muslim peer has linked unhappy arranged marriages to the grooming of girls by Asian gangs. His courage to speak out should be applauded, not vilified.
This week, a Muslim peer broke the code of silence that pervades British-Asian communities and spoke out against the criminal practice of forced marriages.
He starkly stated that there was a connection between forced marriages and the Pakistani gangs in the north of England convicted last month of entrapping and grooming young, often white, girls for sex.
He said that British-born Pakistani men are too often forced into loveless marriages with cousins from abroad and suggested this encouraged them to seek out these young girls.
It was time, he told the British Muslim community, to look more closely at the underlying causes of the crimes committed by such grooming gangs. Time for Muslims to do more to promote UK-based marriages.
For giving an honest, informed and heartfelt opinion, Lord Ahmed of Rotherham has been assailed, abused and ripped apart by the religious and cultural guardians of those communities in a reaction that has been utterly disgraceful.
So let me say loud and clear that the coerced marriages Lord Ahmed is talking about are inhuman. Those parents who enforce them claim they are legitimate and say they provide the only way to ensure their young remain linked to extended family networks and prevent them becoming ‘westernised’.
We have all heard the dreadful tales of young girls and women handed over to cousins in Pakistan or to men they have never seen in Bangladesh and India.
The problem is most widespread among Muslims, though a considerable number of Sikh families also believe their daughters should accept, without protest, husbands who are chosen for them.
Courageous: Lord Ahmed has broken the silence surrounding arranged marriages but has been abused for his honesty
Courageous: Lord Ahmed has broken the silence surrounding arranged marriages but has been abused for his honesty
In these transactions, women are treated as mere goods or chattels. Inevitably, some try to escape; others kill themselves.
So common is the distress and anguish caused by these marriages that there is now a dedicated government-run Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) which intervenes and rescues the victims.
However, as Lord Ahmed points out, some young men are also caught up in this tragedy, though their plight barely ever merits attention and everyone presumes that they collude with the oppressive system.
Some undoubtedly do so. But there are many more who yearn to be free.
One man I met, called Taher, looks back with revulsion at his previous self, for he too used to prey on young white girls. Today he works for a charity and says he feels desperately sorry for the victims of arranged marriages.
Today, 14 per cent of cases dealt with by the FMU involve highly distressed men trying to flee from coerced marriages. There has been a 65 per cent increase in reported cases of this since 2008.
The consequences of this tradition of arranged marriages are appalling.
Some Asian husbands trapped in loveless, dead relationships become frustrated, their desires emotionally distorted. And yes, as Lord Ahmed says, they prey on young white girls for their perverse sexual satisfaction.
Sex, for them, is not reciprocal or an act of consent. It is taken as a right, regardless of what their wives — or indeed, those young girls they prey on — think.
I recently met a young Muslim woman called Munee, who told me she was brought over from Pakistan to marry her cousin when she was 17.
With brutal candour, she said to me: ‘It was like rape every time because he didn’t want me and I didn’t want him.’ She ran away. And, she told me, her husband now has a 13-year-old white ‘girlfriend’.
But her husband is far from acting alone in the Pakistani community. One man I met, called Taher, looks back with revulsion at his previous self, for he too used to prey on young white girls. Today he works for a charity and says he feels desperately sorry for the victims of arranged marriages. ‘I was crazy — a young man with sexual needs married off to a young virgin. She was very sweet, but there was nothing between us,’ he says.
‘I would not sleep with her, so I started cruising with these guys looking for easy sex with white girls.’
A Number of Asian men run off to get away from forced marriages. I know of stories of savage sexual and physical abuse and emotional persecution meted out to rebellious sons.
He continues: ‘There was one really sweet teenager — her mother was a drunk — who really got attached to me. She changed my attitude. Everybody had failed her, so I stopped behaving like that.
‘I still feel guilty and filthy for what I did in the past. And I now want to help these families.’
There are also many men in arranged marriages who fall in love with women out of their religion.
As this is deeply forbidden by their faith, most have to carry on secretly living, in effect, tormented, bigamous lives.
You might say what they do is unforgivable — indulging themselves with two women.
But most of the mistresses understand and put up with it.
Sandra, a teacher in Huddersfield, is the white mother of two little girls born out of wedlock. She is 38.
The girls’ father is Salman, the son of Kashmiri immigrants. He has been having an affair with Sandra since they were teenagers because he was forced by his parents to marry another woman. Sandra is philosophical. ‘I always knew that he couldn’t marry me,’ she says.
‘I couldn’t make him break up his family — I love him too much for that. So he has a wife he can’t communicate with really, but he treats her well. And with me it’s the real thing. He takes care of us. But most of the time he is unhappy and burdened with guilt.’
More Asian families need to understand what their cruelty is costing their children and society.
A Number of Asian men run off to get away from forced marriages. Imran Rehman, from Derby, tried that. He was found by his family and abducted. His legs were shackled and he was locked up for two weeks.
I know of other stories of savage sexual and physical abuse and emotional persecution meted out to rebellious sons. Imagine being treated in this way by those who claim to have your best interests at heart.
Jasvinder Sanghera, a brave woman who rejected a forced marriage and was made to suffer appallingly, runs Karma Nirvana, a helpline for victims of forced marriages.
In 2007 she decided to support male victims, too. ‘So many were calling us,’ she says. ‘They are told: “Marry the one we find and then play around, do what you want.†They are supposed to keep up the family name, to be strong. If they disobey, they are put under terrible pressure — physical and mental.’
Yet even in the most authoritarian families you find men who courageously defy conventions and prejudices and make independent choices.
The number of marriages between Asian men and white women increases year on year — and many of the wives freely choose to convert to the faith of the husband’s family and are embraced by them.
I knew Iqbal in Uganda, where I lived before I came to this country. Now living in a small town up north, he openly married his English girlfriend, who did not become a Muslim.
He tells me: ‘My mum, a widow, was dead against it — more worried about what other people would think rather than what her son would want.
‘My family never met her. They said I was blackening our name.’ The marriage has lasted more than 25 years.
Another man, Bashher, an Indian Muslim, rejected the chosen bride and married Nasrin, his Muslim girlfriend. Outraged, his family cut him off.
After their children were born there was an emotional reconciliation. Nasrin says their rebellion made her in-laws understand young people had rights and freedoms.
More Asian families need to understand what their cruelty is costing their children and society.
I am not hopeful. As the country gets more permissive and undisciplined, conservative ethnic communities seem even more determined to control the desires of their young and make them conform to callous, antiquated marriage rules.
Though his remarks were stark and sweeping, Lord Ahmed was brave — and right — to call for an honest debate on this vital issue.
