Polygamy on the Rise in Britain

A growing number of young British Muslims are taking second or third wives in an unexpected revival of polygamy.

The new wave of polygamy is revealed in a special report by the BBC Asian Network using findings from the Islamic Sharia Council.

The council, which provides legal advice and guidance to Muslims, said it was receiving an unprecedented number of inquiries about polygamous marriages.

Its most recent figures show that, for the first time, polygamy is now among the top ten reasons cited for divorce, as wives decide that they can no longer tolerate competing with one another.

Polygamy is illegal in Britain, but Muslim men can take a second, third or even a fourth wife under Sharia law in a religious ceremony known as the nikah.

These wives are not recognised by British law, but are considered legitimate within many Muslim communities.

Out of 700 applications for divorce in 2010, 43 cited polygamy as the reason.

Three main reasons are being given for the growth in polygamy. The first is the growing number of young Muslim men who want to practise a more orthodox and conservative form of the religion.

Young men who have come into a more radical understanding of faith know it is illegal to marry more than once under British law, but do it to spite the system.

These marriages have the lowest record of succeeding.

The second and biggest group are men whose first marriage has failed.

Typically their wife does not want a divorce, there are children involved and the father wants to carry on seeing and supporting the children. Rather than carry on living together and biting each other’s heads off, the husband takes a second wife. That is the model which works best, largely because it is a pragmatic arrangement.

Everyone is happy, he says, apart from his parents, who are appalled.

There is a small third group of men whose parents live in the country of origin, say Pakistan, and need help in old age, so they marry a woman from the community there.

Perminder Khatkar, who carried out the investigation by the BBC, said there was also growing concern that wives in polygamous marriages are unaware that they have no legal rights.

The Muslim Council of Britain has urged all those who marry only under Sharia law to have a contract in place setting out who is entitled to what. However, these contracts require the consent of all parties, and may be challenged in a British court.

Why Pakistanis are Easy to Identify?

• Everything you eat is savoured in garlic, onion and tomatoes.
• You try and reuse gift wrappers, gift boxes, and of course aluminum foil.
• You are always standing next to the two largest size suitcases at the Airport.
• You arrive one or two hours late to a party – and think it’s normal.
• You peel the stamps off letters that the Postal Service missed to stamp.

• You recycle Wedding Gifts, Birthday Gifts and Anniversary Gifts.
• You name your children in rhythms (example, Shameem, Naeem, Ajmal ,  Akmal
• All your children have pet names, which sound nowhere close to their real names.
• You take snacks anywhere it says ‘No Food Allowed’
• You talk for an hour at the front door when leaving some one’s house.
• You load up the family car with as many people as possible.
• You use plastic to cover anything new in your house whether it’s the remote control, VCR, or new couch.
• Your parents tell you not to care what your friends think, but they won’t let you do certain things because of what the other ‘Uncles and Aunties’ will think.
• You buy and display crockery, which is never used. As it is meant for a special occasion that never happens.
• You use vinyl table cloth on your kitchen table.
• You use grocery bags to hold the garbage.
• You keep leftover food in your fridge in as many numbers of bowls as possible.
• Your kitchen shelf is full of jars, varieties of bowls and plastic utensils (got free with purchase of other stuff)
• You carry a stash of your own food whenever you travel (and travel means any car ride longer than 15 minutes).
• You own a rice cooker or a pressure cooker or both.
• You fight over who pays the dinner bill.
• You live with your parents and you are 40 years old. (And they prefer it that way).
• You don’t use measuring cups when cooking.
• You never learned how to stand in a queue.
• You can only travel if there are 5 persons at least to see you off or receive you whether you are travelling by bus, train or plane.
• You only make long distance calls after 11pm
• Your conversation is laced with constant references to God even while talking about t he most mundane and insignificant matters.
• You call an older person you never met before Uncle or Auntie.
• When your parents meet a stranger and talk for a few minutes, you discover another distant cousin.
• You have bed sheets on your sofas so as to keep them from getting dirty.
• Its embarrassing if you’re invited to a wedding with less than 600 people.
• You have mastered the art of bargaining in shopping.
• You don’t engage in dialogue. You don’t pay the slightest attention to what the other person is saying. You impatiently wait for them to stop speaking so you can blurt out your piece.
• You have strong opinions on everything under the sun. But when it comes to decision making, you allow issues to reach a crisis point and panic set in before you decide to act

Sierra Leone: 15-Year Old Raped by Her Uncle Pastor

One Girl’s Courage

By Nicholas D Kristof

Early one morning, I came across the actress Eva Mendes, crying. She said that she was overwhelmed by all the girls she had met here in Sierra Leone who had been raped — and by her inability to help.

Ms. Mendes and I had just arrived here in West Africato collaborate on a PBS documentary on some inspiring women around the world. In our first full day of reporting, we had met 3 and 4 year-old girls who had been raped.

It was heartbreaking, yet we ultimately found a hint of progress, partly because of the grit of a 15-year-girl, Fulamatu. A ninth grader and star of her class, Fulamatu dreams of going to university and becoming a bank manager.

Living right next door is Victor S. Palmer, a 41-year-old Pentecostal pastor and friend of her family, so close that Fulamatu calls him “uncle.” Yet, one day in May, Fulamatu says, the pastor threw her on his bed and raped her.

“I was scared, so I didn’t tell my parents,” Fulamatu remembered. He continued the attacks, she said, and she became sick and lost weight. Finally, after two other girls reported that the pastor had tried to rape them, her parents confronted her. Fulamatu told them that she had been repeatedly raped, and a doctor determined that she had a severe case of gonorrhea.

Fulamatu wanted to prosecute the pastor, and I watched as she made her statement to the police. She was scared and embarrassed but also determined. The police set out to arrest the pastor, but they couldn’t find him.

That’s when Fulamatu had an idea: If I, as a foreigner, called his cellphone, he might agree to meet. After concluding that it would be a mistake to let an alleged rapist go free if I could prevent it, I telephoned the pastor. I introduced myself and asked to see him that afternoon. When he showed up, the police grabbed him.

The pastor firmly denied all charges. At the police station, he told me that he had never had sex, forced or consensual, with Fulamatu or tried to rape the other girls. He could not explain why the girls would say that he had attacked them.

That evening, the neighborhood celebrated outside the police station. One girl after another came up to me and described how the pastor had been preying on girls. Fulamatu was thrilled at the prospect of justice. Impunity seemed to be eroding.

Yet progress is agonizingly slow, and the International Rescue Committee says that only one-half of 1 percent of the rapes it deals with inSierra Leone lead to convictions. I soon saw the challenges first hand.

After Mr. Palmer was arrested, his family members came calling on Fulamatu’s family. They prostrated themselves before Fulamatu’s feet and begged forgiveness.

Under pressure, Fulamatu’s father announced that he forgave the pastor. Fulamatu’s mother told me that the family would not testify against Mr. Palmer at a trial.

The police moved on their own and released the pastor. He is now free again.

Then it got worse. Fulamatu’s father, humiliated by the furor surrounding his daughter, threatened to evict her from their house. Her mother prepared to send Fulamatu to a remote village with no school. It looked as if Fulamatu would be forced to end her studies and have her life’s hopes destroyed.

I left Fulamatu my cellphone so that she could contact me for help if necessary. That evening she phoned: Her father had kicked her out on the street. Then her parents confiscated the phone.

It’s because of girls like Fulamatu that I want Congress to pass the International Violence Against Women Act. It wouldn’t solve all the problems, but it would encourage countries likeSierra Leone to take sexual violence more seriously. And shining a light on oppression helps overcome it.

For Fulamatu, the situation is in flux. Under pressure, the family grudgingly took her back in, and the International Rescue Committee is helping her. Ms. Mendes is hoping to pay for her to go to a boarding school, where she could get an education and be safe.

There is so much in this case to shed angry tears about. Yet Fulamatu herself, while utterly humiliated, is dry-eyed and strong. She misted only when I grabbed her by the shoulders and told her that she had done nothing wrong.

It’s worth emulating her toughness and resolve as the path to change. As more girls show Fulamatu’s courage, we can some day break taboos about sexual violence and inch toward a global recognition that it is more shameful to rape than to be raped.

Balochistan Being Treated as East Pakistan in 1971

The situation of Balochistan is no different to that of the former East Pakistan (Bangladesh) when the military carried out operations and killed more than 300,000 people in the guise of protecting ideological boundaries.

The government does not consider extrajudicial killings anything out of the ordinary and one of the reasons for this is that they have lost all control over the military, para-military forces and state intelligence agencies that control the province. These military forces brook no interference into their affairs and use ‘national security’ and the protection of ideological boundaries to justify the killings and disappearances of innocent persons, particularly students.

Not a single day goes by without an extrajudicial killing. In the recent years a new phenomenon has been introduced in the cases of disappearances where the victims are extrajudicially killed in order to destroy any evidence of wrong doing.

The Voice of Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP), an organization which collects data about the disappearances and extrajudicial killings has compiled a list of 206 persons from July 2010 to date from different districts of Balochistan. The victims were extrajudicially killed and their mutilated bodies which bore marks of torture were found on the roadside. Amongst the 206 corpses 32 of them were not identified as their bodies were too badly decomposed. Many persons were identified by their clothes, shoes and personal effects.

The provincial government and Federal Minister for Interior Affairs claim that the Balochis were agitating against the government and were killed as a result of their ‘illegal’ actions. They do not accept the claim by activists that the deceased were extrajudicial killed. The media has been prevented from covering the incidents of disappearances and killings by the state forces. However, they do produce reports that anti-state activists were killed due to their militancy or in-fighting between militant groups. It has become increasingly dangerous for the people of Balochistan, particularly students to travel outside the province as they are arrested or taken out from the vehicles and kept in incommunicado and after some time their bullet riddled bodies are found.

The month of October 2011 was selected for dumping the bodies of the missing persons in the province as the PM was visiting to the province. This act shows the arrogance of the military forces and intelligence agencies operating in the province that no civil authority should question their power.

To substantiate their arrogance a massive military operation has been launched in the Chamalang areas of Balochistan. The Pakistani Air Force have pounded the villages with heavy bombardments resulting in the deaths of two women and a child besides the destruction of several homes and live stock. Jet fighters, helicopters and heavy artillery have been deployed and they are constantly pounding area indiscriminately. Fear of more deaths and destruction is likely to increase in the affected areas, which is out of bounds to foreign and local media.

If words of students and activists and journalists offend Pakistan’s army or go against the intelligence agencies they face death. In many cases, the abducted persons were not even political activists but were only Baloch civilians.

The people of Balochistan are generally termed as the anti-state elements by the law enforcing agencies and the federal ministry of interior and whenever any citizen of the province talks about their rights he or she has to face the brutal action of the law enforcement agencies who are alien to Balochistan and have no concept of the local culture and traditions. The situation is very much similar to that of former East Pakistan (Bangladesh) where troops from other parts of the Pakistan unleashed terror against the local population and who were totally unaware of the local culture and tradition, which resulted in the killings of more than 300,000 Bengalis and the dismemberment of the country. In Balochistan the local people are treated as agents of India as Bengalis were accused of being so many years ago. The Federal Ministry of the Interior always blames the nationalist as being Indian agents but he rarely visits the province.

Ironically, this same ministry never takes any action against the Jihadis or sectarian militant organizations that kill the people on a daily basis in bomb blasts, terrorist activities or sectarian violence against the religious minority groups. It is said that religious militant groups and Jihadis have the patronage of Pakistani military and the ministry.

In his latest visit to Balochistan, the PM ignored the issues of the Balochi people and allied himself with the army forces.

The Supreme Court and the judicial commission formed to investigate forced disappearances have proved totally impotent and more concerned with appeasing the military than providing justice to the families of the disappeared. In the hearings the judges and conveners made loud pronouncements for the sake of the media but do not have the courage to call the military officers and others identified by the victims and their families to appear.

The entire country of Pakistan is on the brink of a violent movement which may prove more than they can handle. The government has the option of reining in the military and intelligence agencies and providing justice to the victims. However, it would appear that it concerned only with its own survival. What the government must realise is that the people of Balochistan will only be pushed so far before they start pushing back and that will lead to untold horror and bloodshed.

The acceptance of the government of the absence of the rule of law and the ongoing human rights abuses is not going unnoticed by the electorate. The international community is taking notice of this and the government will not be able to sweep this under the carpet by denying knowledge of what is going on.

The government must come to its senses and put a stop to the endless extrajudicial killings of the citizens of Balochistan and order the immediate release of all those who have been forcibly disappearances. Also, it must urgently pass legislation to make forced disappearances a crime under the laws of the country. The military presence in Balochistan must be withdrawn and a tribunal formed to investigate the human rights abuses perpetrated by the military and punish those persons found guilty.