Why Islam is a feminist issue: Most Muslims lead decent lives. But, ignored by the PC brigade, mass migration and multi-culturalism have encouraged, among some, a deeply worrying contempt for women
The
mass migration into Europe of people from North Africa and the Middle
East is one of the most significant cultural, social and economic
challenges of our time.
Its
repercussions will be of historic significance. And yet, gripped by
impotence, we appear to have no coherent strategy for dealing with these
seismic events.
We
veer from hysteria at the sight of dead children washed up on Greek
beaches to xenophobic fury at the news of migrants molesting Western
women in public.
Politicians
dither and recite cliches, while pressure groups issue politically
correct platitudes. We are paralysed by inaction. And it’s easy to see
why.
Hundreds of migrants who arrived by
train at Hegyeshalom on the Hungarian and Austrian border walk the four
kilometres into Austria in September last year
This
influx in particular — these poor souls who risk life and limb to cross
icy seas in pursuit of something, anything, that is not the brutality
of war — are some of the most traumatised people on the planet.
Back
home, many of them were doctors, nurses, teachers, artists. But after
being cooped up in a rotting boat on the dangerous seas, they are like
desperate animals, wild-eyed and shivering in the glare of the TV news
camera lights.
How can we, as a compassionate, generous nation, not be alive to their plight?
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Their
tragedy makes philanthropists of us all. People organise food parcels,
schoolgate mothers co-ordinate lorries full of clothes, celebrities
pledge their support, pop stars make fund-raising records.
We invite them in, we offer them hospitality. We bask in the reflected warm glow of our good deeds, foreign aid and fine words.
No
wonder we’re so hurt and angry when, instead of falling to their knees
in gratitude and embracing our way of life, they too often remain
segregated within their own communities, refuse to engage with
mainstream Western culture and — in extremis — commit acts of barbarity
towards some of the most vulnerable in our societies.
Refugees - some with children - walk towards the Serbian border from a nearby transit centre on Friday
I’m
talking, of course, of the gangs of Arab and North African men who
rampaged through Cologne on New Year’s Eve, accused of terrorising and
raping German women.
Of the asylum-seekers accused of attacking girls at a teenage rock festival in Sweden last summer.
Of
the gang of Afghan migrants filmed attacking two German pensioners on a
train who intervened to stop them harassing a young woman.
Of
the Somalian ‘teenager’ recently charged with stabbing to death a
Swedish woman helping to run a young asylum- seekers’ hostel in
Gothenburg. (This week, a migration agency ruled that the 6 ft migrant
is an adult, not the 15-year-old child he claims to be.)
And it is not just the actions and cultural practices of some of the most newly arrived that gives us cause for concern.
In
Britain, we have read about case after case of the wicked grooming
rings of predominantly Muslim men who preyed on vulnerable white girls
in Rotherham, Oxford, Bristol, Lancashire and Manchester.
Last
week, three men from Manchester’s Somalian community were jailed for
the gang rape of a white teenage girl (none of them showed a scrap of
remorse — quite the opposite, in fact).
And this week a gang of 12 men of Pakistani origin were jailed for gang-raping a 13-year-old white girl in West Yorkshire.
Here
and across Europe, too, we’ve seen countless examples of forced
marriage, female genital mutilation, honour killings and the many
injustices perpetrated by Sharia courts — particularly against women.
How we arrived at this unhappy state of affairs in this country is a tale of cultural imperialism in reverse.
Starting out with the best of intentions, over the past century we have invited many other nationalities to the UK.
It
most cases, this has been all to the good. British cultural and
economic life is all the richer for it. But there are, sadly, a few
exceptions. And I’m afraid the most troubling is Islam.
Refugees arrive by train at a transit
centre near northern Macedonian village of Tabanovce before continuing
their journey to Serbia on Friday
Neither
at peace with itself nor with the rest of the world, there are aspects
of Islam that seem irreconcilably at odds with the British way of life.
In
particular, they run counter to what we believe about the freedom of
the individual to practise his or her sexuality and the right of women
to equality.
As
a woman and the mother of a 12-year-old girl growing up in London whose
godfather, one of my oldest friends, is gay, what’s going on frightens
me.
My
daughter is nearly the same age as some of the young girls so
appallingly abused in Rotherham and, indeed, the girls from the Yazidi
community of northern Iraq who were raped and sold as sex slaves by
Islamic State fighters.
And
you can imagine what her godfather thinks of the barbarians of Islamic
State who throw from rooftops young men accused of being homosexual.
I
know full well that were I not blessed with a British passport, were I
unlucky enough to have been born in such war zones, I would probably be
dead by now, having been deemed too old for use. My daughter would have
been defiled and my son pressed into becoming a murderer.
It’s awful to have to say it like that, but it’s true.
The
fact that there are hundreds of millions of sane, decent, perfectly
civilised followers of the Prophet Mohammed in this world should not
make us blind to this reality. Like it or not, there is an ugly side to
Islam.
Now, slowly but surely, it is beginning to insinuate itself into our culture.
Yet
even now, with these realities brought into sharp focus by the sex
attacks in Germany and Sweden, there are many, particularly on the Left
and in the liberal media, who impose an insidious political correctness
that prevents us from discussing any of this like grown-ups.
Acknowledging
the nature and origin of one particular threat we face in Europe is not
intended, nor should it be interpreted, as a slander on the majority of
Muslims. It is simply a long-overdue reality check.
Some migrants clutched yellow plastic bags as they left the Macedonian transit centre and made their way into Serbia on Friday
So
what is that threat? It’s brutally simple: a culture of misogyny that
Western feminists have worked so hard to eradicate within our own
societies is starting to re-assert itself. It is invading our shores via
individuals and groups who hail from parts of the world — much of
Africa and swathes of the Middle East — that are still stuck in an
atavistic, patriarchal way of life.
And
that instead of standing up for our hard-won freedoms, we allow
ourselves to be bullied into ceding ground by an achingly liberal media —
particularly the BBC — and cowardly politicians who are running scared
of minority pressure groups and fearful of being branded racist.
You
have only to look at the response of the German authorities to the New
Year’s Eve attacks to realise how real that threat is.
They
downplayed events almost to the point of covering up the truth, wary
that the situation was too ‘sensitive’ for the public to deal with.
Indeed, worrying evidence is emerging that the German media acted in cahoots with the authorities to censor such stories.
Similar
things are happening here. You only had to listen to an absurd
apologist on Radio 4’s Today programme, who tried to argue these sorts
of attacks were ‘common in many cultures’.
Or
the Labour transport shadow minister Jess Phillips, who said that
Cologne-style sex attacks are only the kind of thing that goes on in
Birmingham every week.
Consider,
too, the Labour councillors who, fearful of losing the crucial support
of Pakistani voters, failed to act upon what was going on under their
very noses in the Rotherham child grooming scandal, in which 1,400
vulnerable girls were routinely exploited by gangs of Asian men for 16
years.
In
the words of the former Victims’ Commissioner, Louise Casey, who almost
a year ago published her report into the abuse: ‘By failing to take
action against the Pakistani heritage male perpetrators . . . in the
borough, the council has inadvertently fuelled the Far Right and allowed
racial tensions to grow. It has done a great disservice to the
Pakistani heritage community and the good people of Rotherham as a
result.’
The truth is that multiculturalism — the philosophy that all religions and cultures are equal — has so far not worked.
Allowing
very closed immigrant communities to take over parts of cities and, in
some cases, entire towns, has not been healthy for the integration of
all Britons.
Worryingly, it too often results in racism and the re-emergence of the foul prejudices of the Far Right.
Trevor
Phillips, the former head of the equalities watchdog, said recently
that Muslim communities are not like others in Britain, that the country
should accept they will never integrate and that it is disrespectful to
assume Islamic communities would change. Yet isn’t that absolutely the
wrong message?
Many
indigenous Britons love the thought of living in a vibrant, multiracial
Britain; what they don’t love is the idea of having their own
traditions and freedoms undermined.
That
is why, when we hear of Sharia courts undermining the British rule of
law and depriving Muslim women of their rights, we should not simply
chalk it up to ‘cultural differences’.
We should denounce such behaviour as wrong and unacceptable in a modern, civilised society.
And
when schoolgirls of African heritage are flown to that continent in the
summer holidays to have their genitals cut or their Pakistani
contemporaries are kidnapped and pressed into forced marriage that, too,
must not be tolerated. Not because these are traditions practiced by
Muslims. But because they are, quite simply, wrong — whatever belief
system you happen to espouse.
And yet anyone who dares to point this out is immediately accused of bigotry.
But
if we cannot discuss, openly and honestly, how we feel about the
growing presence in society of a group of people who openly despise our
way of life, how can we hope to find a way through our differences?
It
is time to accept the facts, unpleasant as they are, and ask: why is
misogyny endemic among certain sectors of Muslim society — and what can
we, as women, do about it?
David
Cameron was recently heavily criticised when he said it was important
for Muslim women in this country to learn English. Yet surely he is
right that if the tens of thousands of women who can’t speak English —
whether they are 16 or 60 — aren’t helped to learn it, they will not
have opportunities in education and employment that should be open to
them in our liberal society.
Of
course Islam is not the only religion built on misogyny. Christianity,
and in particular Catholicism, has historically had a warped attitude to
women at its heart.
We
venerate the Virgin as the only truly good woman who ever lived, a
woman who conceived a male savior in chastity to deliver us from the
actions of Eve, that wicked, weak-willed temptress whose lust and
betrayal brought misery upon the world.
When you think about it, that’s pretty anti-women.
French gendarmes patrol the 'Jungle'
migrant camp in Gande-Synthe where 2,500 refugees from Kurdistan, Iraq
and Syria live on Thursday
But
the key difference between the misogyny in the Bible and that in the
Koran is that no one in their right mind would interpret the former word
for word.
Those
who do — Christian fundamentalists — are rightly seen as bonkers by the
rest of the Christian community, a remnant of a bygone age.
It took hundreds of years for feminists — male and female — to extricate society from the clutches of the medieval Church.
The
efforts of the Suffragettes and the work of 20th-century feminism was
the culmination of that lengthy process, bringing about a permanent
change in cultural, legal and social attitudes, and a shift in the
balance between the sexes from one based on the innate superiority of
men to the present uneasy state of equality.
It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot better than it used to be.
The problem with certain Muslim communities is that they have not yet made that step.
In
powerful countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, the Koran is not so
much a manual on how to live a civilised and fulfilling life as a set of
immutable instructions.
Women in those countries may still be under the thumb of their male oppressors, but we in Europe are not.
We
cannot allow our liberal and tolerant instincts to obscure the fact
that many Muslim men in our midst simply do not approve of our way of
life.
That attitude, ultimately, is the origin of the attacks on women in Germany.
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