Charlotte Proudman, a pupil barrister and blogger for the Independent, reports on a conversation with a Muslim woman who was seeking a divorce…
After fleeing a forced marriage characterised by rape and physical violence, Nasrin applied for an Islamic divorce from a Sharia council; that was almost 10 years ago now. Despite countless emails, letters and telephone calls to the Sharia council as well as joint mediation and reconciliation meetings, the Sharia council refuse to provide Nasrin with an Islamic divorce. Why? Because of Nasrin’s sex. An Imam at the Sharia council told Nasrin that her gender prevents her from unilaterally divorcing her husband, instead the Imam told her to return to her husband, perform her wifely duties and maintain the abusive marriage that she was forced into.
A measure of scepticism is always required in cases of anonymous reports but, frankly, I’d be surprised if things like this haven’t happened. One need only survey the men who run these courts – “follow the mullahs”, as the old saying doesn’t go – to see what an alarming phenomenon they represent.
Take the Islamic Sharia Council. The largest Sharia body operating in Britain, it’s often been in the news as one or other of its leaders voices horrible opinions yet no one of influence has grasped that there’s a pattern: just about all its leaders have voiced horrible opinions. Maulana Abu Sayeed, the President of the Council and a man who’s been accused of involvement in war crimes in his homeland of Bangladesh, is a man who thinks rape is “impossible” within marriage. Dr Suhaib Hasan, general secretary of the Council, has spoken warmly of the merits of “flogging the drunkard and fornicator”. Haitham al-Haddad, who represents it in the media, thinks that apostates should be killed; FGM is legitimate; spousal abuse is none of our business and Islamic law should become “dominant in the world”. The Council’s own website offers defences of the most brutal interpretations of Islamic penal law.
I’m not an enormous fan of condemnation by quote. (Too often it summons to mind an image of an overdressed, overdramatic woman with a hand stretched out before herself, clutching something malodorous between a thumb and finger.) Yet such quotes and such men deserve the treatment. Their ambitions stretch beyond the power they’ve been given, clearly, but in focusing on that we can see why they should have none. They’ve frankly admitted, among other things, to being untroubled by spousal abuse yet their career is in presiding over marital disputes. That’s sick. Is anyone less suited to a job? Sid the Sexist as a relationship counsellor, perhaps? It’s disturbing to know situations like this are prevalant in Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh. It’s horrifying to think that they’re common in London and Manchester.
April 4, 2012 at 7:43 am
A few extracts from the Wikipedia entry on marital rape:
Countries which were early to criminalize marital rape include the Soviet Union (1922/1960), Poland (1932), Czechoslovakia (1950).. as of 1999, 33 of 50 U.S. states regard spousal rape as a lesser crime…in the U.S., there is a marriage exemption to the charge of statutory rape even if one of the spouses is under the age of consent in the jurisdiction where the sexual act takes place…The marital rape exemption was abolished in England and Wales in 1991.
April 4, 2012 at 10:50 am
Indeed. And that was disgraceful. But, then, this post is an overt criticism of Sayeed et al, not an implied defence of Britain circa 1990.
April 4, 2012 at 1:54 pm
And is the current state of affairs in the US ‘horrifying’? Or is it only those of a certain religion that are worrying?
April 4, 2012 at 3:13 pm
Yes – it’s disgraceful. (Though there’s a sizeable difference between “lesser crime” and, “Crime? What crime”.) I believe we’re entering the realms of a “will-you-condemnathon”. It’s interesting that different people will make recourse to this gambit when different issues are the subject of someones’ attention.
April 5, 2012 at 10:07 pm
No, I’m sorry if that seemed like my intention, which was more to point out that this particular allegation against a group of Muslims was normal for this country until recently and still is in other similar countries.
I would have had a lot more sympathy a couple of decades ago with a line of political thinking that picks out the most reactionary positions on social issues and says we must concern ourselves with them as our biggest political priority, But the experience since then of humanitarian imperialism and its (sometimes deliberately) counter-productive effect has made me think that a methodology that takes into account the power in the world of the various actors and looking for the beam in your own eye first is much more productive in creating a better society, much better than the Oh My God, that’s awful, something may have to be done approach which I can see you reject in some cases, but seem to lean towards more in others.
April 5, 2012 at 10:36 pm
Only one of them, in fact. The others have admitted to sympathising with some or all of the amputation of thieves, the flogging of drunkards, the execution of apostates, the mutilation of young women and the domination of Islamic over the world but not, in public, at least, that particular view. It wouldn’t surprise me if they subscribed to it, I’ll admit…
The issue isn’t merely their opinions – it’s their opinions and the position from which they advertise and act upon them. If they were grocers or accountants it wouldn’t be of major interest to me but the fact is that they’re respected speakers, influential clerics and authorities over the lives of suffering men and, especially dangerously considering their views, women. That’s considerable power. Not institutional power but power nonetheless.
I’m wary of outrage that’s expressed at practices and acts in other countries if it veers towards the proscriptive, “something must be done” approach. But that doesn’t hold for things that take place within our borders.
April 27, 2012 at 11:23 pm
[...] he was greeted with a storm of controversy and faced the threat of deportation. In Britain he presides over Sharia courts; is a regular guest at Mosques and a favourite of Islamic societies and now, rather disgustingly, [...]
May 2, 2012 at 10:14 pm
[...] one thing for Sheikh Haitham al-Haddad: where he goes you can be sure of trouble. He crops up among clerics and speakers and around him you find all manner of demagogic theocrats. He’s set to address [...]