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PARTISAN REVIEW
Forced marriage is one of these practices. Among Muslims in Europe,
it's quite common for young people to be compelled by their parents
to
accept spouses they don't want. Some women manage
to
escape these
situations and seek protection in women's shelters. In
1999
the
Guardian
published an article by Faisal Sodi, a British Muslim who
complained about these shelters, which in Great Britain are called
"women's refuges." Charged Bodi, "Refuges tear apart our families.
Once a girl has walked in through their door, they do their best
to
stop
her ever returning home. That is at odds with the Islamic impulse
to
maintain the integrity of the family." (Bodi made certain
to
note-as if
it definitively established the loathsome character of women's shelters–
"the preponderance of homosexuality among members and staff. ") Cit–
ing universal Muslim belief in "the shariah, the body of laws defining
our faith"-which he described, a bit unsettlingly, as "a sharp sword
capable of cutting through the generationa l and cultural divide"-Bodi
argued that British authorities must recognize the Muslim community
"as an organic whole" and thus accord it a larger role in resolving con–
flicts over forced marriage. Bodi's plaint was phrased with extreme del–
icacy, but the point was clear: when Muslim girls or women flee the
tyranny of father or husband, the government should essentially hand
them over to a group of Muslim men. In short, British law should effec–
tively be subordinate
to
Muslim law. Group identity trumps individual
rights.
Nothing, of course, could be more undemocratic. Yet time and again,
governments in western Europe have shown themselves to be exceed–
ingly susceptible to such arguments by Muslim leaders. The same is true
of the mainstream media, whose main concern in such matters, it often
appears, is
to
avoid offending Muslim sensibilities . Representative of the
media's standard approach
to
issues involving Muslim subcultures was
an article about forced marriage that appeared in
2000
in the Norwe–
gian newspaper
Aftenposten.
The article tamely characterized the dif–
ference between Western-style consensual matrimony and forced
Muslim marriages as a "collision between the individual-oriented West
and the family-oriented East." The reporter went on
to
express admira–
tion for the "family-oriented" approach and even cited the low Muslim
divorce rate to support the contention that the Muslim way was bet–
ter-ignoring entirely the fact that wives who are forced
to
marry are
hardly in a position
to
decide to divorce.
Then, in September
2001
(on ly five days, in fact, before the destruc–
tion of the World Trade Center), the Norwegian newspaper
Dagbladet
reported that
65
percent of rapes of Norwegian women were performed
