Am I alone in feeling a bit cynical about the new provisions to criminalise forced marriage? I do wonder whether the new crime of forced marriage will be like that of laws prohibiting female genital mutilation in that they will be on the statute book but not enforced?
Although forced marriage is something that can afflict many different communties the forced marriage problem we face in the UK is mostly an Islamic one. It is mostly Muslim girls who are being forced into often underage marriages. Forced Marriage is also a problem that like FGM has been ignored for years by people so fearful of giving offence that by their silence they condemn thousands of individuals have suffering.
The effectiveness of this new law will not be measured by how many extra civil servants the Forced Marriage Unit employs nor by verbose reports on the matter compiled by experts. The new law should only be regarded as effective when everybody speaks up and nobody shrugs their shoulders and says: ‘It’s sad but it’s their culture isn’t it?’ Such a phrase was said to me back in the 1980’s by a teacher, a committed socialist, and someone who should have respected the right of women and girls to live their lives without fear. A Muslim girl in her class, one of her best and brightest students and someone who could have gone on to great things, disappeared in late July and didn’t appear back on the school roll in September. When I questioned this teacher on the disappearance of this girl she said: ‘she’s probably been taken to Pakistan to be married. It’s sad, but it’s their culture isn’t it. What can we do?’ She was right that at this time forced marriage was not against the law and there wasn’t much legally that could be done for this girl, but she could and should have had a greater sense of outrage than she showed when this girl disappeared.
The new prohibitions against forced marriage will not be successful until we can get cowards like the one in the example above to not make excuses for the sort of bestial ‘cultures’ that treat women as property. That is not to say that I’m am opposed to all examples of arranged marriages where all parties to the marriage agree with the matrimonial union, but in some cultures especially Islamic ones, women do not have any say in the matter whatsoever.
The lawmakers will have created a statute that will be all sound and fury signifying nothing unless we all cease with the ‘culture’ excuse and see forced marriage for what it is, which is an abuse that afflicts mostly young women.
