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:
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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.