People have the right to make the decisions that the may see as the best for them and their best interests, but that does not mean that those who make what look like spectacularly bad decisions, should escape criticism. One particularly bad decision, made by all too many Western women, is to trust the blandishments of Muslim men. Because of Islam’s hyper-misogyny and aggressive patriarchy it may be difficult for Western women, brought up with the concepts of equality before the law for both men and women, to understand just how deeply gyno-hatred is in Islamic culture·
Now I’m not of course saying that relationships between non believers of Muslim backgrounds and Western women cannot work or be successful, far from it, some of these cross background relationships can be perfectly fine. However, what should be realised is that Western women hooking up with believing Muslims may be setting themselves up for heartbreak, exploitation and even abuse. Male attitudes to women in Islamic cultures are remarkably and starkly different from the view of women held by many Western men and some Western women do not realise the extent a and implications of this difference.
There has been a particularly tragic story of a marriage between a Muslim man and a Western women that went horribly wrong which has been featured by Australia’s Channel Nine News (h/t ROP). This story has many of the wearisomely familiar aspects to it as other similar stories have contained. There is the seemingly charming Muslim man, the whirlwind romance and marriage, the conversion to Islam and eventually, as is so often the case, the Shariah approved child-snatching.
Channel Nine News said:
Jodie Bilborough is a long way from home, fighting a foreign man in a foreign land to bring her nine-year-old son Laith back to Australia.
In a story reminiscent of the 1991 Sally Field movie Not Without my Daughter, Jodie says she was duped by a Muslim man who swore on the Quran he would do the right thing.
For Jodie, a holiday to the Middle East turned into a honeymoon after she met and fell in love with Ismat, a Jordanian lawyer. The two lovebirds returned to Sydney where Jodie gave birth to Laith.
The marriage became rocky and Ms Bilborough agreed to go to Jordan with her husband for a trial period. Whilst there Ms Bilborough’s husband allegedly burned their son’s Australian passport in order to keep him in Jordan. Ms Bilborough ended up living with her husband in a small Islamic village in Jordan where she realised that she had made ‘the biggest mistake of my life’. Ms Bilborough tried in vain to persuade her husband to come back to Australia with their son but her husband refused. Things got so bad that Ms Bilborough started to fear for her own safety and saw no alternative but to return to Australia to try to fight for custody of her son from there.
She returned to Australia without her son, who was left with her Muslim husband. This must have been a completely heartwrenching and heartbreaking decision to have to make and will give the reader some idea as to how much fear Ms Bilborough may have been under.
Channel Nine News continued:
Over the next couple of years, Ismat promised to bring Laith to Australia, even filming himself swearing to the commitment on the Quran.
Jodie sought help from the Australian government, writing to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and the Attorney-General’s Department. However, her application for financial assistance from the Overseas Child Abduction Scheme was rejected.
It’s taken Jodie almost three years to build herself and her finances back up to return to Jordan, rent an apartment, hire a local lawyer and battle for custody of Laith in Amman’s Sharia Court.
Although Islamic experts quoted by Channel Nine News suggest that she will have a good chance of winning her Shariah court case, because she has not renounced Islam, it needs to be noted that Shariah courts are notoriously biased towards men when it comes to family law issues. I would not bet my life on her getting a fair and just hearing in this Shariah court unless coming down on her side would be politically expedient for the Jordanians or their government.
Ms Bilborough’s case is without doubt a terrible tragedy, it’s always such when you get cases like this where one parent is denied custody because the other parent has taken shelter in a country where seventh century rules apply. However, despite this being a tragedy, this case should also serve as a warning as to what might happen to Western women and their children when they get involved with superficially charming and plausible Muslim men. Although I feel deep sympathy for Ms Bilborough and her plight, she did bring many of her problems down on herself by getting involved with a Muslim man and converting to Islam. I believe that Ms Bilborough may have been totally naïve in shacking up with this Muslim man and getting involved with him. This was an incredibly poor decision on Ms Bilborough’s part and now her and her son are suffering the consequences of her choice.
Western women who become romantically involved with Muslim men are laying themselves open to subjugaton, abuse and exploitation and also to potential problems regarding the custody of any children of the relationship. Women thinking of getting into relationships with Muslim men need to wake up and smell the halal coffee and realise that once they become involved with Islam and with Muslims, getting out and returning to more civilised cultures may be more difficult than they may think. Women, if you want to be in a relationship where you are treated as an equal then you will not find such a relationship with those who are psychologically and spiritually wedded to the ideology of Islam.
