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Sunday 9 November 2008

You can give the missus a good kicking – if you're Muslim

It’s OK to beat hell out of the missus if you’re a Muslim. That, anyway, seems to be the perception among Muslims, if a headline in the UK’s Daily Telegraph is to be believed when it says, Muslim men “think they have God-given right to beat wives”, claims female Muslim medic.

But this is happening here in the UK, not merely in some benighted Muslim theocracy whose religious observance ensures it remains in the seventh century. The paper says domestic violence is more common in Muslim households because the male members of this “religion of peace” think wives are OK to use as a punchbag.

At least your average non-Muslim wife beater can blame it on the booze (not that that is an excuse – for any type of violence), but your Muslim man can’t. All he can say is that it’s part of his cultural tradition, informed by his religion.

The Telegraph tells it from the point of view of Fatima Husain, a consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology, who “has told how she sees Muslim women coming for treatment with strangle marks around their necks and bruises on their pregnant bumps”.

The paper goes on, “She also claimed that problems develop because many followers of Islam are fearful of discussing sex, contraception and infertility.”

Dr Husain, who works at Heatherwood and Wexham Park Hospitals in Berkshire, told the Muslim News that many women ask to be referred to her specialist clinics because she is a hijab-wearing Muslim, allowing her to discover the true scale of domestic violence in her religious community.

She said: “I’ve seen injuries on some of my patients that I wouldn’t dream would happen to pregnant women.

“I’ve seen strangle marks, finger marks on their necks and bruises on their pregnant abdomens.

“Domestic violence is supposedly equally divided amongst the various groups but I get the impression it is more common in Muslims.

“Some Muslim men think they have a God-given right to be physically violent to their spouses. I see the result of all this when they are admitted as my patients.”

Dr Husain went on: “I feel that it is important to talk about issues that are often avoided, especially by Muslims. These often cover areas to do with advanced fertility treatments, contraception issues and psychosexual problems.

“Unfortunately, many misconceptions have developed as a result of a lack of accurate medical information as well as the religious perspective.”

And this problem can only get worse if we allow domestic matters to be settled in sharia “courts”, as the second extract in this previous Pink Triangle blog post testifies.

No doubt our politicians will just throw more money at Muslim “community leaders” and trust them to come up with some “initiative”, instead of tackling it head-on and simply doling out the appropriate punishment for men who are violent, whether to their wives or anyone else, and thus getting the clearest of signals out to these people that violence will not be tolerated, whatever your religion.

The PC brigade would no doubt say that this is something that has to be tackled with a softly-softly approach, for the sake of the (failed) multiculturalism experiment, that it’s something that has to be tolerated for now, until we can spend millions on the “education” of these morons.

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