The comedian and polemicist Pat Condell once called Western feminists who turn a blind eye to the excessive and sometimes lethal misogyny of Islam ‘Whores for Islam’. It was a very strong term to use and it’s one that may have shocked some individuals. However, when you see examples of the debilitating, demeaning and cowardly silence by academic feminists, who appear to dominate UK feminism, ignoring the plight of women living under Islamic rule, then it becomes clear that Mr Condell’s comments were more than a little justified.
Britain’s high profile ‘Establishment Feminists’ like Laurie Penny, and Caroline Criado-Perez, to name but two, spend an inordinate amount of time and effort on relatively minor issues such as getting famous women on UK banknotes or indulging in Leftist intellectual wanks about women’s position under capitalism. Unfortunately many UK feminists, especially middle class Leftist ‘progressive’ feminists, seem to be individuals who never seem to see the appalling and genuine problems of Islamic misogyny. This is even the case where the Islamic misogyny is right under the noses of these Leftist feminists.
The Brietbart site is carrying the story about how a Shariah Court in Warwickshire in England’s Midlands is shielding violent wife-beaters from the police. According to evidence given to a Parliamentary committee the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal (MAT) is ‘sabotaging’ criminal proceedings that the police are bringing against Muslim wife-beaters in order to protect suspects.
This is appalling news and something that should get all people, whether they are men or women, angry at such blatant misogyny and such an arrogant disrespect for Britain’s laws and customs. However as far as I can see there has been an ominous silence from Britain’s leftist feminist Establishment to this news. There have been no loud denunciations of such terrible sexism coming out of the women’s studies departments of our universities. The Guardian’s female writers have not gone into meltdown and Harriet Harman hasn’t popped up wearing a ‘this is what a feminist looks like’ tee shirt and a patronising smile.
The middle class oh so liberal feminist Establishment has said and done the square root of sod all to counter the growing threat of Islamic misogyny especially in the UK. It took a small group of Left leaning Asian and Black women, Southall Black Sisters, to tell Parliament what Britain’s Establishment feminists should have been telling our lawmakers for years. Southall Black Sisters told Parliament the truth. The truth is that Islam the belief system and Islam the culture is incompatible with the sort of societies that try to treat men and woman as being of equal worth. Southhall Black Sisters deal with women every day who are forced into marriage and forced to remain in marriages with men who adhere to cultural norms that value women as having only a bit more worth than a farm animal.
It’s these women, oppressed mainly by Islam it has to be said, who are the victims of not only the Establishment feminists who have said very little about the plight of Muslim women who are kept in thrall, but also of multiculturalism itself. Multiculturalism when taken to its illogical conclusion sees the backward highly discriminatory, racist and violent culture of Islam as equal to that of our own culture which is not backward, is aware of and tries to tackle adverse discrimination between genders, and has found ways other than personal violence to run our societies. The feminist establishment in an effort to ‘not offend’ Muslims in a multicultural political environment has become cowardly. It should be speaking out and speaking out very loudly about the position of women in Islamic culture but they are too frightened, mostly of ‘giving offence’, to do so.
Here’s the Brietbart article on the revelation that Muslim men are yet again taking the piss out of Britain’s law and culture and gives some inkling on the sheer scale of the piss-taking that is going on. As is usual policy for this blog the original text is in italics whereas my comments are in plain text.
Breitbart said:
One of the UK’s leading sharia courts “protects wife-beating suspects by sabotaging criminal proceedings against them”, a Parliamentary committee has heard.
The Muslim Arbitration Tribunal (MAT) in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, is just one of the UK’s 80 Islamic “councils”, set up in 2007 ostensibly to help resolve civil and family disputes in accordance with Islamic scripture.
This Shariah Court has been operating for nine years and has been dishing out misogynistic Islamic judgements and allegedly interfering with the criminal legal process and nothing it seems has been done to curb their activities by the authorities. This is not just appalling in itself but an illustration of the terrible double standards to which Islam and its followers are held in the UK today.
According to their own website, MAT cannot deal with criminal offences, but “parties can ask Mat to assist in reaching reconciliation” where “there are criminal charges such as assault within the context of domestic violence.
“The terms of such a reconciliation can then be passed on to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) through the local Police Domestic Violence Liaison Officers with a view to reconsidering the criminal charges”, the website adds.
This bunch of bearded medieval Islamic mental patients who make up the MAT group should never, ever be allowed anywhere near the prosecution process. They should certainly not be allowed to make submissions to the Crown Prosecution Service with the intention of getting criminal cases dropped. If the allegations that they’ve had such an influence on the CPS then it may indicate that a culture of ‘Islamopandering’ is very widely spread in CPS circles.
However, Southall Black Sisters (SBS) – a left-leaning, all-Asian group – said the court is actively working to shield allegedly violent and Muslim husbands from criminalization. The claim came in evidence submitted to a Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry into sharia courts.
Unfortunately, knowing the nature of Islam and Islamic theological and cultural misogyny, it doesn’t at all surprise me to find that Shariah Courts are protecting violent wife beating men from justice.
In 2008, the Sunday Times revealed that MAT had intervened in six cases of domestic violence, leading to complaints lodged with the police being withdrawn by the women. MAC told the men to undergo anger management classes and mentoring from “community elders”.
In other words the thuggish Muslim husbands and the problems that they are causing for women are being swept under the carpet. This is similar to the way that Islamic Rape Gangs that operate in Britain are also having their crimes swept under the carpet by the police and prosecution authorities.
“The Mat actively involves itself in criminal proceedings on domestic violence. It uses its position of power to persuade the [Crown Prosecution Service] CPS to drop charges and to encourage women to reconcile with abusive partners without reference to court orders they may already have or to risk assessments and safety planning,” SBS’s submission insists.
They are now asking the CPS to “reconsider” certain cases described as an “attempt to sabotage criminal proceedings”.
In a sensible country groups like MAT would have their rights to interfere in the prosecution process removed double quick. Unfortunately in Britain the primary aim of the CPS seems to be to make themselves ‘relevant’ and ‘helpful’ to Britain’s Islamic community, even if it means that women of Muslim background continue to be treated as second or third class citizens or even as punchbags for their husbands.
On their website, SBS added: “Our concern is that religious arbitration forums are gaining power and significance as parallel legal system in which women are treated unfairly, especially in relation to divorce, maintenance, custody over children, inheritance and property matters.”
I have no problem with Religious Courts existing per se for such reasons of determining religious status or administering dietary laws where they exist or even for solemnising marriages. However these Religious Courts need to confine their activities to within strict boundaries. The Anglicans, non conformist Christians, Roman Catholics and Jews have had their own internal tribunals for decades and in some cases millennia and their judgements very rarely impinge on those who choose not to be bound by them. These tribunals only deal with very limited matters such as ‘who is a Jew’ or ‘who is a Catholic’ etc. This sort of judgement has little or no effect on the wider society. There is also very little in the way of coercion when it comes to modern non-Islamic religious courts. OK a Roman Catholic divorcee cannot marry again in a Roman Catholic church but this sort of ecclesiastical ruling doesn’t rob the person of their right to marry per se or impinge on the person’s other rights such as to property or inheritance or to the protection of the criminal law.
A Roman Catholic is highly unlikely to be set upon by other Catholics for being a lapsed Catholic or for wanting to divorce an abusive partner. Shariah Courts such as MAT do use coercion and do impinge on a persons rights and it is an utter scandal that the feminist establishment in the UK don’t say and do more about this problem.
Britain’s Establishment feminists, many of whom live in a privileged bubble are very good at speaking very loudly about stuff that in the great scheme of things is not very important. However, they are not so good at speaking out loudly enough, or often enough, about the enslavement, for that is what it is, of women who have the misfortune to be born Muslim.
Whilst feminist campaigners are busying themselves with what ever is the touchstone cause of the day, they are ignoring women who are in real distress in the UK. They are failing to take note of women oppressed by Islam and choose other, safer more politically comfortable campaigns to take part in. Whether the campaign be about the public representation of women or breastfeeding in restaurants or the bikini clad models in adverts on London’s Tube system, you can guarantee that Britain’s feminists will make a loud noise about it. Sadly there not nearly as much noise made about the genuine oppression of women by Britain’s hate-filled and dangerously misogynistic Shariah Courts.
Those feminists who shout loud about inconsequential matters whilst ignoring the real problems of Islamic misogyny demean feminism and its history. They also debilitate it and show the world how ineffective it is against Islamic misogyny. These feminists who say nothing and do nothing about Islamic gyno-hatred are also cowards of the worst sort. They pick easy targets for their anger but fail, because of a fear of both social opprobrium by their peers and Islamic violence itself, to take on the culture of Islamic misogyny that will eventually oppress all women, including those who say that Islamic misogyny is ‘nothing to do with me’.
