Recently in the press, we have been hearing about a campaign by Tariq Ramadan and other organizations like SPIOR (The Islamic Organisation of Rijnmond) in Rotterdam. In an article published on the 29th July in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitun, Necla Kelek, who was born in Tukey, is a sociologist and woman’s rights activist against forced marriages in Germany. Here she denounces the ambiguity and hypocrisy of this campaign.
Since in 2005 I demonstrated with my book, ‘The imported bride’ that Muslim women were married by arrangement or force and imported as brides to Germany there have been protests from Muslim men, Turkish men and their political allies. The criticized me for focusing on individual cases, and Turkish politicians declared publicly that they married for love, to show that forced marriage has nothing to do with their culture, nor with Islam. Researchers into migration have called for ‘justice for Muslims’ and defended marriages of importation as if in a kneejerk reaction to restrictions on immigration.
Since then, it is now acknowledged that in this country thousands of Muslim women and men are forced into marriage by their families every year. Women’s refuges and counselors offices are full, because of young people who are terrified of being married off over the holidays in their parents’ countries.
Hand in hand against forced marriage?
The Islamic community has taken account not only of this issue, but also so-called ‘honour’ crimes, domestic violence and education -- due to the pressure of public opinion. No one takes the repetitions of the inevitable refrain ‘this has nothing to do with Islam’ seriously anymore. So, Tariq Ramadan, the ideologue of ‘European Islam’ is attempting to solve this problem for Muslims. With the Islamic associations of Rotterdam, and Berlin, and ‘Inssan’ (which is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood) along with Günter Piening, integration officer for Berlin, he has launched an initiative called ‘Hand in hand against forced marriage’.
It’s an attempt to contain and advise Muslim girls in an Islamic manner; girls who are becoming more independent, so that they don’t run away to the state-run social services or the refuges for women who are victims of violence, where they may turn away from Allah. The initiative was inaugurated in Kreutzberg, Berlin, where they produced a brochure in eight languages.
Not in the name of Islam
It’s new and to be welcomed that Muslims and Islamic organizations are recognizing that forced marriage is a problem in Muslim societies. Of course, they relativise it, by specifying that it also occurs in Buddhist, Hindu and Christian societies too. Forced marriage must be shown as a cultural problem, not a religious problem. This differentiation between culture and religion is intended to save religion from its social responsibilities and from self-criticism. Ramadan and the others explain that the Prophet’s words and examples are perfect, and that only humans can commit mistakes. Thus they wash from Islam the stains of the crimes committed in its name.
The recognition that religion and culture together form a ‘cultural system’ which cannot be separated is explicitly denied by Muslims, who absurdly simultaneously reject the separation of faith and everyday life, of religion and politics. Forced marriage shall not be Islamic. Mohammed would have affirmed it precisely. That Mohammed himself married Aisha when she was just six years old is not considered abusive, or a forced marriage, but in Ramadan’s interpretation is an ‘anecdote’ used to discredit Islam.
The central Qu’ranic verse on marriage is “You shall encourage those of you who are single to get married.” (Sura 24, verse 32) It is not actually written, “Single people should get married,” which would imply that human beings have an independent right to choose who to marry, but delivers as its verdict ‘Marry off single people’ so that marriage becomes the business of the family and the community.
In praise of the extended family
What is interesting is how Ramadan and his adherents define the family. It is not a family composed of the mother, father and children, but the extended family, the tribe. Of course, the umma, the community of Muslims is made of the culture of the family. We can read, ‘In family cultures, the family is more important than the individual. The family understands itself as a unit and a whole and is recognized as such…Each member must act in the interest of the family.’ If not, then family ‘honour’ is damaged. ‘In this group, honour is a collective possession, and the responsibility is carried by all the family members, whatever their place in the family hierarchy.’
Ramadan and his students are trying to reinterpret our fundamental rights and the values of European civil society. They deny individual rights to free choice, in making this a social and not an individual affair, supporting the system of “social shame” with the fatal concept of the honor. Not once in does this booklet grant a person the right to decide who they want to marry for themselves. ‘The family forms the core of Islamic society, and marriage in Islam is the only licit means to found a family”. The idea of sexuality for its own sake is out of the question.
A kind of Islamic couples counseling
And Piening, the ‘red’ officer for integration in Berlin wanted, as he said to ‘learn from Rotterdam.’ Does the Senate see this in the same light? At Rotterdam, Tariq Ramadan has, amongst other things, affirmed, “Freedom it is not the freedom which the others expect from us” What this means is: freedom to each -- within his laws. An interesting variation, under which shari’a law would be freedom. Neither does he wish to talk about integration, because for him Muslims are part of a multicultural society where each religion has its own conceptions and rules which must be recognized as such. That European society should also protect the fundamental rights of each individual, whatever their group or religion, is a fact that he pointedly ignores.
Under the banner of opposing forced marriage, what we are offered is in essence no more than Islamic couples counseling. It is clearly shown that arranged marriages are praised, even though it is well acknowledged that coercion often plays a part. “A marriage is thus always a union between two family groups… As a marriage is a union between family, the families seek the partners who go best together and which allow the best union between the families”. We are warned against mixed marriages: “A Muslim boy has the right to marry a Christian girl, but a Muslim girl does not have the right to marry a Christian boy”.
Against coercion in marriage
‘Marriage is half of religion’ according to another expression attributed to Mohammed. In this sense, Ramadan’s arguments are an advertisement for Muslim pressure on marriage. Because if women are not married, if women are not controlled by men, Muslim society doesn’t work. The initiative is thus a confusion of labels. Just as there is a fundamental law against marriages of young people under the age of 18, the must be a principle forbidding forced marriage. Each young person married against their wishes by their parents must have the benefits of protection from society.
Advocacy groups for women, or refuges for women who are victims of violence like Papatya, the writer Serap Cieli, Peri ‘the Good Fairy’ or Hatun & Can are the true responses to the problem of forced marriage. A law to criminalise forced marriage must be debated and adopted by the Bundestag. We are all called on to spread awareness about forced marriage and to continue to clarify this subject so that the politicians do not fall once more for the media campaigns of Islamist preachers.
Necla Kelek
References from ‘Hand in hand against forced marriage’ by SPIOR. Translated from French
