The silence of the imams... while another child dies

By Carole Sarler
Guardian Unlimited

Sunday February 7, 1999

Take three girls, linked by nothing save their fathers? faith and the fact that I knew all of them. The first was a bright, young schoolfriend of my daughter whose parents suddenly announced, when she reached 15, that she?d be leaving school shortly to prepare for her marriage to a strange and older man. My daughter asked me, on the frightened child?s behalf, if I would hide her ? but, even as I weighed my conscience against Holloway prison, my dilemma was removed: the child had, mysteriously, ?changed her mind? about the man. We never saw her again.

The second girl was only 14 when her own family beat her, kidnapped her and imprisoned her ? all designed to knock the Western stuffing out of her ? and then began to plan her wedding. She escaped, but was almost murdered in the process, and now lives as a teenage exile far from all she ever knew.

The third was a neighbour. A darling little thing, perhaps 16, with a sweet, shy smile and a puppy dog eagerness to please the husband who had been found for her. For his part, she was there to work and breed and she most certainly wasn?t allowed to mix with anyone else. So I didn?t get to know her well at all. Still I was sorry when, one lonely day, she hanged herself.

I thought of all three of them last week, while reading Andrew Marr?s claim that ?we? can live with Islam. And I wondered: which ?we? exactly? Which ?we? includes white Britons like Mr Marr, but excludes darker Britons like the young women above? And is it really a ?we? that proper liberal thought should embrace at all?

The thrust of the piece was a celebration of pluralism combined with a plea that Western liberalism should not allow ideological opponents to rob us of our ?best self?; that is to say, we should not be tempted toward the murky depths of intolerance. Fair enough ? save when, as here, this uplifting cry implicitly insists that we must tolerate the intolerable.

The writer, unable or unwilling to address this moral difficulty, ignores it instead in favour of propping up his argument with eclectic reference: Sunnis and Shi?ites and Thirty Years Wars and crusades and caliphates. His erudite engagement in debate relies heavily upon the notion of all things being relative ? thus, to assist his assertion that ?we? have nothing to fear from Islam, he points out that nowhere in the world has it yet produced anything ?half as nasty as the Spanish inquisition?. (My, what a comfort it must be, when Salman Rushdie yearns to do his shopping, to know that at least it isn?t Isabella stopping him.)

Closer to home, Mr Marr cites the antics of Sheikh Abu Hamza saying, correctly, that this buffoon should be beneath our anxieties rather than allowed to fuel them in his role as contemporary bogeyman. And with this, the whole debate does move forward an inch: it used to be the case that liberal Britain left Islamic practice and ritual alone on the basis of respect for differences in culture; but now that we have our Hamzas, clearly undeserving of anything we might call respect, we are urged to leave it alone on the basis that it doesn?t much matter anyway. Or, where the concerned liberal was once told that he may not intervene he is now told that he need not intervene.

What this scholarly stance provides, unfortunately, is yet another theory to feed the practice that ignores the predicament of the three young women of whom I spoke, as well as the thousands of others in their position. So schoolteachers will continue to lose pubescent girls ? at an age when in law they should still be compelled to be there ? and will continue to say nothing. Heads who know perfectly well that a planned fortnight?s ?holiday? in a distant land might mean a vanishing off the face of the earth will, still, alert nobody. Social services and police will still take little or no action this side of blood loss (and then not always), still with the glib get-out that it is all too ?sensitive?.

The Government will still give passports for bogus husbands to treat child brides as they please, not to mention work permits to ?imams?, who often don?t have a single religious or teaching qualification and whose sole purpose is to ensure that the old ways never, ever change.

Also helping to preserve the old ways, there will still be British boys being raised to protect family honour by spying on their sister ? and then being encouraged to participate either in her beating or a beating of her ?unsuitable? friends: systematic induction into violence before the first whisker is in sight.

And still (the ?still? that rankles), if any among us confess our unease ? or ask only that the law for the protection of young people be implemented equally ? we will be vilified as ignorant. Or racist. Or both.

Ignorant usually comes first. We are ignorant because, say the learned ones, there certainly are unpleasant practices ? but they are nothing to do with Real Islam. I have had educated Islamic leaders shake their heads in sorrow at me, as they explain how Islam in its true form is a benign, tolerant, kindly, civilised religion; such finer practitioners are privately quite snooty about what they call ?village Islam?, imported from the illiterate of, say, Pakistan to lead the illiterate in, say, Sheffield (see work permits, above).

In their support, we get the ?It?s only a few? qualification, as offered by Mr Marr: ?The vast majority,? (beware writers resorting to Vast Majorities), ?bear no relation ? they?re hard-working ? family-loving? etc.

So where, in that case, are the loud, proud, public voices of dissociation, from the ?educated? Muslim or the ?majority? Muslim, denouncing debasing practice? Nowhere, that?s where. By their silence they collude, which means that it makes no effective difference whether they follow real or village Islam. Moreover, to those who say that none of such practice is about Islam or even about religion at all, that it is only the inevitable result of years of oppression and poverty, I must ask this: since when is poverty an acceptable defence for child abuse?

While we?re at it: since when is a wish to protect children a mark of ?racism?? Indeed, it is often those who are quickest with accusations of racism who are themselves guilty of the worst racism of all. For when they claim to relish cultural diversity, what they are really saying is that of course there are deeds and practices and rituals that would be quite unacceptable for a white girl ? but they?re perfectly all right for a brown one.

Andrew Marr?s ?we? might well feel they can brandish sufficient intellectual justification to allow them to live with that. Some of us, however, find it a little harder.

Nigella Lawson is away.