Friday, November 21, 2008

The Plight of Muslim Women in Australia

I reported last night on Muslim women in Australia who consider their religion to be the primary guarantor of rights for women. According to them, the only problem up until now has been the false interpretations of the Koran purveyed by Islamic male chauvinist pigs.

Ever since the dawn of Islam, men have been in control. Allah dictated the Koran to a man. Men wrote down the hadith and the sunna. Men established the fiqh and acted as judges. Men were the ones who were educated — to the extent that anyone is ever educated under Islam — and passed down all the Islamic traditions and practices. Men made and enforced all the rules.

So when and where did the “pure” form of Islam exist, the true faith that respected and upheld the rights of Muslim women?

It certainly isn’t evident right now among Australian Muslim men. According to The Age, the mistreatment of women is widespread, and it’s not just the “uncovered cat’s meat” infidel women who are the victims:

Local Muslim Clerics Accused

Some Muslim religious leaders in Victoria are condoning rape within marriage, domestic violence, polygamy, welfare fraud and exploitation of women, according to an explosive report on the training of imams.

Women seeking divorces have also been told by imams that they must leave “with only the clothes on their back” and not seek support or a share of property because they can get welfare payments.

And the report says some imams knowingly perform polygamous marriages, also knowing that the second wife, a de facto under Australian law, can claim Centrelink payments.

The report is based on a study commissioned and funded by the former Howard government and conducted by the Islamic Women’s Welfare Council of Victoria.

It was presented yesterday at a National Centre for Excellence in Islamic Studies conference at Melbourne University.

[…]

It says women, community and legal workers and police involved in the consultation were particularly concerned about domestic violence, and suggested that imams aimed to preserve the family at the cost of women.

When cases came to court they were often dropped after family and community elders pressured women to withdraw charges.

So it’s business as usual, just like Europe. Women lose out and the infidel justice system prefers to be fastidiously multicultural about the whole thing and look the other way.

And, also just as in Europe, the welfare system aids and encourages de facto polygamy among the country’s Muslims:
- - - - - - - - -
It says polygamy is steadily increasing and gaining acceptance among Melbourne Muslims, and Shepparton police report many “de facto” relationships that are really polygamous marriages.

“Community workers who have provided support to women whose husbands took another wife religiously said that women blame the availability of Centrelink benefits … since one or the other wife will be claiming it, relieving the husband of the responsibility of supporting two families,” the report says.

And how does the Muslim community feel about all this? They’re shocked — shocked, I tell you! — at all these infidel lies:

The secretary of the Board of Imams, Sheikh Fehmi Naji El-Imam, said he could not understand how the council could write such a report and denied the complaints “absolutely”.

“They must have heard stories here and there and are writing about them as though they are fact,” he said.

Sheikh Fehmi, who is also Mufti of Australia, said no authorised imam would conduct a polygamous marriage, and it was absolutely wrong that women’s rights were ignored in marriage or divorce, or that imams ignored domestic violence.

“I haven’t heard of any case where the board disregarded a woman or did not try to help her,” he said.

Notice the weaselly wording in this last statement — he hasn’t “heard of any case”. Not that such cases don’t exist, just that he doesn’t hear about them. Perhaps the members of his community are prudent enough not to inform him…?

In any case, one wonders why it’s the women who maintain that Islam is inherently respectful of women’s rights. What makes them feel this way? Where’s the evidence for it? And why the necessity to pretend that things are different from the way they are?

What’s in it for them?


Hat tip: Nilk.

3 comments:

laine said...

This business of western countries supporting through Welfare the polygamous wives of Muslim men who may in fact not be working to support a single one of them is going on in England and Canada as well as Australia. In all cases, the authorities say if the polygamous marriage is contracted elsewhere, and the family then moves to England or Canada where theoretically no one is allowed to contract a polygamous marriage, these marriages are recognized for Welfare and other purposes.

However, even this fig leaf proves false as there are many cases of the more honest imams blatantly declaring that they are in fact performing polygamous marriages IN England, Canada, Australia, and who knows how many more countries where they are breaking the law with impunity. In Canada at least, part of the problem has been previous inaction on polygamous marriages among various Mormon and other sects who have congregated mostly in British Columbia. Now if they started enforcing the law with Muslims, they'd be accused of discrimination. Two wrongs now mean a right to break the law. I'd put money on the likelihood of the same thing going on in the USA.

In Islam, only wealthy men could contract polygamous marriages because only they could afford the upkeep of multiple wives and families. Now, the idiot West allows even the poorest Muslim man on Welfare several wives paid for by the state! not to mention their droves of children. If this is not a way to hasten our demographic death, what is?

History Snark said...

@laine: I agree that Mormon groups do have a history of polygamy, but I've never really heard of there being "inaction" about it.

I've long maintained that polygamy is going to come back in the West. First of all, because *in theory* I see no problem with it. Consenting adults and all that. If it involves children being forced to marry, then that's another issue. But if 3 or more people wish to be a "family" then how is that the business of society? (again, I presume they are self-sufficient and all consenting adults)

Secondly, our Islamic friends want polygamy, whether they admit it or not. If we try to prevent it, then they'll scream "racism" like they always do. Of course, it would be more accurate to scream "religious intolerance" but that's just another arrow for their quiver.

At some point, they'll reach the point of making a legal argument for it, probably in California or Massachusetts. And I really wonder how it can withstand a legal challenge in either area.

Whiskey said...

Legally, polygamy will be coming to the US.

Politically, it is explosive. You are asking single men to support multiple wives of welfare receiving men/women. Or men with only one wife.

It's tailor made to create explosive, populist anger far greater than Prop 13, the Death Penalty, and recall of Rose Bird (California Supreme Court justice) combined. Particularly as more and more young men are single longer, and face realistically living alone.

Polygamy is of course destructive. It means one man has more than one wife and for each extra wife another man has NONE. Thus ZERO investment in stability of the nation, or prosperity, and a direct investment in violent overthrow of the status-quo and rather than consensual and equal marriage, what amounts to sex-slavery.

Mormon polygamy nearly provoked Union Army action to suppress it -- Lincoln ran on an explicit anti-Mormon platform and Twain, Arthur Conan Doyle all had Mormon polygamy as the villain of their stories and novels and so on.

You can't have enough single female/gay domination of culture and society to make polygamy palatable for men, I am shocked that the Conservatives in Britain or the BNP are not making getting rid of Polygamy a central part of their platform to launch themselves into power. The issue is THAT powerful.

Even though Gays ("Big Love") and single women love polygamy. [Note, I've blogged on this very issue, citing Stanley Kurtz's interviews of gay activists wrt redefining marriage and the link between gay marriage and polygamy.]

Polygamy means the government asks men without wives/girlfriends to subsidize those with several. Joseph Smith was killed over this issue, essentially. It's true we don't live in the 1840's any more, but the issue is like dynamite. Explosive.