A problem with Muslim enclaves (in Western Europe)

Christian Science Monitor ^ | June 30, 2003 | Bruce Bawer

[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.

monitortalk

Weigh in on issues of the day in our forums.

E-mail this story

Write a letter to the Editor

Printer-friendly version

Permission to reprint/republish

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.

[stands2reason]

[BenR2]

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.

[jocon307]

"Let's hope it is not the last."

Let's hope you will not continue to editorialize in your "news" reports anymore!

[ellery]

Yeah, the author here did a weird mix of news reporting and editorializing.

[dennisw]

bttttttttttttt

[dennisw]

bttttttttttttt

[dennisw]

bttttttttttttt

[dennisw]

bttttttttttttt

[ellery]

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)?

[ellery]

Thanks for the bttts. Great quotes on your page, by the way:-)

[SevenDaysInMay]

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.

[cyborg]

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.

[dagnabbit]

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.

[dennisw]

Glad you like the quotes.

[jocon307]

"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.

[knighthawk]

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.

[dennisw]

This article is great!

[Travis McGee]

Radical Islam is an insane muder cult, "moderate" Islam is its Trojan Horse in the West.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Sounds about right. Thanks for posting this article.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Let's hope it will not be the last. Needs to be repeated ad infinitum.

Nothing wrong with stating OBVIOUS truths.

Where did you ever get the idea newspapers are objective?

[windcliff]

ping

[The KG9 Kid]

"... 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."

It's August's Marie Claire, out now. My girlfriend reads all these women's mags, and I read the article. Quite shocking, but nothing new to FR readers. I have also seen other great articles about the 'War on Terror' in previous months in several women's mags. I have to say that some women's mags are doing their part in warning women about what Islam has to offer.

Laugh it up, gents. I read my girlfriend's wimmen mags for the articles.

... Okay, and the underwear model pics. I admit it.

[jocon307]

"I have to say that some women's mags are doing their part in warning women about what Islam has to offer."

Good,I'm glad to hear this. I stopped reading all those magazines, years ago, one by one, because of their pro-abortion views. If I really craved to read one these days I suppose I'd have to take up Ebony, at least they still have respect for traditional values. Allure, is not too bad, IIRC. My daughter went through a stage of wanting to read those mags, and I would search assidously for non-offensive ones to get for her. Allure is, obviously, beauty oriented, but more from a fitness point of view. The models are not rail thin, and exercise is emphasised as much as cosmetics. I found it nicely refreshing and not sex-obsessed, from the couple of issues I saw.

[onedoug]

What's left of secular-socialist Europe will soon be praying to God to free them from Allah.

Kevin McCarthy: "They're already here! You're next!!!"

[BabaOreally]

I am certain we will soon see rightous agitation on the part of the mohammedans to protect their "special" culture and restrict the ability of woman's shelters and other such places to harbor westernized woman who wish to exercise their free will and escape from that idiocy.

Think the euros will kiss ass and give in? If they do , it'll spell the end of europe as we have know it in 25 years.

Poor saps.

[Mamzelle]

Another magazine touts a romance between a Pali and an Israeli Jewish woman. "One Arab who doesn't want to kill us" is the inset blurb.

It is quite acceptable, even traditional, for a Muslim man to marry an infidel woman, but a Muslim woman doing likewise would disgrace her family.

[DoctorMichael]

Ahhhhhhhhh.........The joys of Multiculturalism!

[DTA]

>>>>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<<<

Ten years ago, Norway was in the first lines of suport to islamic terrorists tearing former Yugoslavia apart.

Poor Bosnian Muslims. And several years later Poor Kosovo Albanians

Norwegians and Serbs have common shared history from WWII. But they refused to hear Serb side. They preffered Muslim lies instead. Not only this, but in 1999 Norwegian jets were killing Serb civilians because Serbian Army and police fought against against Al-Qaeda Allies.

This was capital crime for multi culti crowd bent on destroying Europe with by muslim force multiplier. One reaps what he sows. Norway now faces their and sons turned into junkies by poor innocent muslims

Norway so eagerly aided diplomatically, politically and militarily.

What goes around, comes arround. Norwegians have Kosovo in their own yard now.

[DTA]

>>>>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<<<

Ten years ago, Norway was in the first line of suport to islamic terrorists tearing former Yugoslavia apart.

Poor Bosnian Muslims. And several years later Poor Kosovo Albanians

Norwegians and Serbs have common shared history from WWII. But Norwegians refused to hear Serb side. They preffered Muslim lies instead. Not only this, but in 1999 Norwegian jets were killing Serb civilians because Serbian Army and police fought against against Al-Qaeda Allies.

This was capital crime for multi culti crowd bent on destroying Europe by muslim force multiplier.

One reaps what he sows.

Norway now faces their daughters being raped and sons turned into junkies by poor innocent muslims Norway so eagerly aided diplomatically, politically and militarily.

What goes around, comes arround.

Norwegians have Kosovo in their own yard now.

[rageaholic]

9 out of 10 wife beaters prefer Islam to the other leading brands of religion.