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A problem with Muslim enclaves (in Western Europe)
Christian Science Monitor ^ | June 30, 2003 | Bruce Bawer

Posted on 06/29/2003 8:36:22 PM PDT by ellery

A controversial study in Norway says forced marriage among immigrants prevents desired integration.

OSLO – Western Europe is increasingly a house divided. While non-Muslim Europeans live in democracies, most Muslims in the same countries inhabit theocratic enclaves where they are expected to tread a narrow path - or suffer the consequences. Muslim women have it the worst. They are subject without exception to the authority of their husbands, fathers, and community leaders. And if they seek to escape that tyranny, they can expect little help from government authorities, who are loath to "intrude" and show "disrespect" for someone else's culture.

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Many European officials have long assumed that such problems would be resolved gradually through intermarriage, integration, and the consequent fading away of ghettos. But intermarriage and integration are not happening as expected - and the consequences of this failure are grievous.

Such is the conclusion drawn by "Female Integration," an explosive new book making headlines and the talk-show circuit here. It's based on a recent report to the Norwegian parliament by the Oslo-based Human Rights Service (HRS) and is being viewed as a window on larger Muslim immigration patterns in the rest of Europe.

The book's comprehensive statistical analysis of immigrant marriage patterns in Norway shows that members of most non-Western immigrant groups are, in overwhelming numbers, not only marrying within their own ethnic groups, but marrying partners - often their own cousins - from their countries of origin.

These marriages - which are invariably arranged, and often forced - have two chief motivations. One is to provide the foreign spouse with Norwegian residency rights under the "family reunification" provision of immigration law. The other is to resist integration by injecting into the European branch of the family "traditional values" - among them a hostility to pluralism,tolerance, democracy, and sexual equality.

As "Female Integration" shows, the systematic abuse of "family reunification" has dramatically transformed the way in which spouses are chosen within the Muslim community. This has made real integration all but impossible, and resulted in a pattern of exploitation of young women that Hege Storhaug, author of the book, describes as "the greatest political disgrace in contemporary Norwegian history."

While Norwegian Muslims of both sexes are forced into marriages, the situation is particularly brutal for girls. As female Muslims, they already get short shrift in the social power balance. Add to this the facts that they are often married off at extremely young ages (many in their early teens, for example) and that their imported husbands tend to be untouched by any notion of sexual equality, and one can begin to grasp why Ms. Storhaug calls them "living visas in a new form of human commerce." They have grown up in Norway and had a taste of freedom, but they are forced into marriages with men who take for granted a wife's total subservience.

There are, naturally, no statistics on forced marriages in Norway. But HRS's figures for henteekteskap, or "fetching marriages" - in which one spouse is "fetched" from the other's ancestral country - are startling. Between 1996 and 2001, 82 percent of Norwegian daughters of Moroccan immigrants who got married, married Moroccan citizens. For Norwegian daughters of Pakistani immigrants, the corresponding rate was 76 percent.

Indeed, among immigrant groups from Muslim countries, the prevalence in Norway of "fetching marriages" actually increased between 1996 and 2001.

The trend, in short, is toward increased segregation, not increased integration.

These findings are important not just for Norway but for the West, generally. Anecdotal evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the trends shown in HRS's report are representative of the situation in Muslim communities throughout Western Europe.

What to do? Among HRS's proposals for reform of this situation: prohibition of marriages between cousins (with provision for waivers when a genuine romantic relationship can be documented) and waiting periods between applications for "family reunification" within a single family.

Storhaug notes that most forced marriages end up being abusive ones. What if a wife in such a marriage wants out? Officially, of course, European men and women have equal divorce rights. But among Muslims, only Islamic divorce counts; and while Muslim men enjoy divorce on demand, Muslim women - even in cases of chronic domestic violence - have restricted options. It's possible, however, in a Muslim marriage contract, for a groom to grant his wife the right to divorce. And the Norwegian parliament has just adopted a law stipulating that no family reunification through marriage will be permitted unless the wife has been granted this right. Norway is the first nation in Europe to introduce such a law. Let's hope it is not the last.

These proposals won't solve everything, or please everybody. But they're a start - and the Norwegian government's apparent openness to them is encouraging. To be sure, some public officials still fret about "interfering" in Muslim family matters.

Yet increasing numbers of political leaders are finally recognizing that the alternative to "interference" is a Norway with two distinct systems of governance - a democracy for Westerners and an autocracy for Muslims. A country - and a continent - that accepts such a state of affairs is headed for disaster. Norway's neighbors ought to take note.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Extended News; Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: balkans; religionofpeace
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1 posted on 06/29/2003 8:36:35 PM PDT by ellery
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Comment #2 Removed by Moderator

To: knighthawk

3 posted on 06/29/2003 8:49:47 PM PDT by stands2reason
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Comment #4 Removed by Moderator

To: RLK
Why would anyone want to integrate with this pestilance?

///////////////
LOL. While you have a point, the other side of the coin is that SOME of these poor people would LOVE to ESCAPE Islam's cruel grasp, but are NOT PERMITTED to, even though they live in a free Western country.

This must not stand.
5 posted on 06/29/2003 8:55:25 PM PDT by BenR2 ((John 3:16: Still True Today.))
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To: ellery
"Let's hope it is not the last."

Let's hope you will not continue to editorialize in your "news" reports anymore!
6 posted on 06/29/2003 9:14:35 PM PDT by jocon307 (You think I exagerate? You don't know the half of it!)
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To: jocon307
Yeah, the author here did a weird mix of news reporting and editorializing.
7 posted on 06/29/2003 9:17:55 PM PDT by ellery
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To: ellery
bttttttttttttt
8 posted on 06/29/2003 9:20:03 PM PDT by dennisw (G-d is at war with Amalek for all generations)
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To: ellery
bttttttttttttt
9 posted on 06/29/2003 9:20:08 PM PDT by dennisw (G-d is at war with Amalek for all generations)
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To: ellery
bttttttttttttt
10 posted on 06/29/2003 9:20:12 PM PDT by dennisw (G-d is at war with Amalek for all generations)
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To: ellery
bttttttttttttt
11 posted on 06/29/2003 9:20:16 PM PDT by dennisw (G-d is at war with Amalek for all generations)
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To: RLK
This is just more evidence that radical Islamists are basically holding hostage everyone else from their country of origin/religion. It's scary that these groups have been permitted to basically set up their own system of government/"law" all over Europe. Is this happening here (e.g., are there communities that are basically enforcing Sharia law right here in the US)?
12 posted on 06/29/2003 9:23:05 PM PDT by ellery
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To: dennisw
Thanks for the bttts. Great quotes on your page, by the way:-)
13 posted on 06/29/2003 9:26:49 PM PDT by ellery
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To: ellery
The womb is Islam's winning weapon.

The weapons cached in mosques need "citizen" young men to kill every Jew, aka spawn of pigs and monkies, and destroy the Jewnited States of America, aka The Great Satan. Any infedel will do as each formerly sovereign nation submits.

Women are chattle, prized by "devout" bullies for the recreational procreation for Allah's war against the West.

Allah is proud of his men protecting the family with "honor killings."

Europians' war with Islamists is already lost. The womb is not a single shot weapon.

Norway's girls will be prized by the Islamist's bride industry. Blonds look good in basic black (black and blue, when they fail to obey their men).

Paris will be Eurabia's capital city.
14 posted on 06/29/2003 9:38:45 PM PDT by SevenDaysInMay (Federal judges and justices serve for periods of good behavior, not life. Article III sec. 1)
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To: ellery; All
One of the women's magazines, I believe it is either Marie Claire or Allure, has a feature article about muslim girls who marry Europeans. There's this one girl who married a white Englishman and her family is trying to hunt them to chop them to bits. Also, I do not understand why we consider Saudi Arabia to still be our friends when they are MOST guilty of this same issue.
15 posted on 06/29/2003 11:09:00 PM PDT by cyborg (I'm a mutt-american)
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To: ellery
Every Norwegian PM who has permitted this poison to enter that previously wonderful country should be...(deep breath)...in a prison cell today for treason. WHY WHY WHY ? have they let these people into the country. They didn't have to for economic reasons (oil), they didn't have to for reasons related to their colonial past (did't have one). Other than leftist white guilt, what in the name of G-d possesed these leaders?

I lived in Oslo for about two years a decade ago. On visits now it's sad to see what's happening now in the city.

16 posted on 06/29/2003 11:15:26 PM PDT by dagnabbit (George Bush - Why did we legally immigrate 70,000 muslims last year?)
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To: ellery
Glad you like the quotes.
17 posted on 06/30/2003 4:33:21 AM PDT by dennisw (G-d is at war with Amalek for all generations)
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To: dagnabbit
"WHY WHY WHY ? have they let these people into the country."

Yes, I too am very puzzled by these reports of tons of Muslims in Scandanavia. I venture they have done it for the same reasons most Euro countries have done it, they want cheap labor, and they want tax payers, and they are too selfish and lazy to have their own children.

For 30 years the white race has bought into the idea that we are bad and that our civilization is bad. And that every primative, backward, disease ridden, oppressive society is better than ours. The self-hatred of those on the left is perverse and without rhyme, reason, or end.

If we don't stop thinking this way, take pride in our way of life, regain hope for our future (in the form of progeny) we are doomed, here as well as in Europe.
18 posted on 06/30/2003 8:02:21 AM PDT by jocon307 (You think I exagerate? You don't know the half of it!)
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To: dennisw; watchin; VOA; harpseal; timestax; xJones; justshutupandtakeit; TopDog2; ThomasMore; ...
Muslim women have it the worst. They are subject without exception to the authority of their husbands, fathers, and community leaders. And if they seek to escape that tyranny, they can expect little help from government authorities, who are loath to "intrude" and show "disrespect" for someone else's culture.

Islam-list

If people want on or off this list, please let me know.

19 posted on 06/30/2003 8:50:47 AM PDT by knighthawk (We all want to touch a rainbow, but singers and songs will never change it alone. We are calling you)
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To: knighthawk
This article is great!
20 posted on 06/30/2003 9:07:06 AM PDT by dennisw (G-d is at war with Amalek for all generations)
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