Sunday, September 28, 2008

UK:Child Brides on the Rise




Islam continues to tarnish the United Kingdom, as more and more cases of forced marriages are coming to light. Girls as young as nine years old have been forced into marriages by their own parents. My initial reaction when I read this story is what kind of sickos would do this? But what can I expect coming from an ideology that condones this type of behaviour?

Islam allows pedophilia video.


Nine-year-old brides saved by authorities from being married off in Muslim weddings
By Matthew Hickley
28th September 2008

British children as young as nine are being forced to marry against their will by their families, campaigners have warned.

Charities supporting victims of forced marriages report growing numbers of young teenagers and children seeking help.

They are urging schools to take tougher action where they suspect pupils are at risk, and to monitor their rolls carefully and raise the alarm when children disappear.

Thousands of Britons - mainly young women from the Asian communities - are thought to be victims of forced marriage each year, but concerns are increasingly focused on the plight of underage girls who are being offered for marriage to foreign men when they have barely left primary school.

No accurate figures exist for the scale of the problem, although the Government's Forced Marriage Unit has helped rescue around 60 children aged 15 or under in the past four years - including 11 so far in 2008 - and experts fear that may represent only the tip of the iceberg.

Typically victims are taken overseas by their families on a false pretext and forced to marry. Extreme cases where women rebel against their family's plans and try to run away have led to so-called 'honour killings' or suicides.

Ministers angered campaigners two years ago by dropping plans to make it a criminal offence to force someone to marry, after Muslim groups objected strongly to the plans.

A charity operating a national helpline on forced marriage, Karma Nirvana, yesterday highlighted one incident where a nine-year-old girl from a Pakistani family in the east Midlands was taken into care after her parents told her she was to be married.
Director Jasvinder Sanghera said that on average one child a week aged under 16 had sought assistance since the helpline launched in April.

'The youngest child we have dealt with was nine years old,' she said. 'The girl told her teacher she was going to be forced to marry someone and initially she was not believed.

'Ultimately, with the help of the Forced Marriage Unit, she was dealt with through child protection procedures. She was assessed and, thankfully, taken into foster care.'

The Forced Marriage Unit, jointly funded by the Home Office and Foreign Office, deals with around 5,000 calls and 300 known cases a year, while a third of all inquiries come from under-18s. Some 15 per cent of cases involve boys being forced to marry.

The youngest victim rescued and repatriated to Britain by the unit was an 11-year-old girl who was flown back from Bangladesh last year after her parents tried to make her marry a local man.

Ms Sanghera, who herself fled home after being threatened with forced marriage at the age of 15, said: 'I currently have cases involving four children aged 11 to 14 who were forced to marry or were at risk, and have now been made wards of court.

'You don't just get forced into a marriage at 16 or 17. This is happening to very young children. We certainly have had cases of minors being sexually abused.

'But we have no idea how many children under 16 are at risk, and this is compounded by a reluctance of schools to engage with the issue. Many schools shy away due to supposed cultural sensitivities.'

She added: 'These marriages can be prevented by identifying the signs in school or teachers believing pupils when they raise it.'

The problem is believed to be particularly prevalent in Pakistani communities, she said, where many parents arrange to marry their children to first cousins.

The charity is calling for a formal system of headcounts before and after summer holidays, so that schools can identify children who disappear without explanation.

A report by Parliament's Home Affairs Select Committee earlier this year said more than 2,000 pupils were unaccounted for in just 14 local council areas across England and Wales.

Plans to make forced marriage a specific crime were dropped by ministers in 2006 following a Muslim community backlash, although new laws passed last year gave courts new powers to issue injunctions preventing a young person from marrying or being taken abroad - any breach of which by parents would constitute a crime.

Link to Article

15 comments:

Iftikhar Ahmad said...

Salaam

The number of teenage pregnancies and abortions are on the increase in Britain. Sex education and school clinics are not the answer.

Forced marriages and honour killings will keep on occuring as long as Muslim children keep on attending state schools with non-Muslim monolingual teachers. Muslim children need state funded Muslim schools with bilingual Muslim teachers a s role models.

Christopher Logan said...

Bullshit. This is common across the Islamic world so save the poor Muslims are the victims nonsense.
No one here is buying your Islamic propaganda.

The state should not fund any religious schools. You just want them to because it would help spread Islam. You think you are smart, but are not.

Christopher Logan said...

Those that need to live under Islam need to move to an Islamic country and stop telling non-Muslims how to live or what needs to be done to make Muslims happy. All Muslims are doing is pissing off the rest of the world.

Anonymous said...

Muslim seperate schools are not the answer, there was one such school a while ago that was raided for terrorist activity.
These seperate Muslim institutions, should they be Mosques or schools will be a hub for such activity against us.
what is needed is a curb on immigration, reasonable numbers will produce no need for such measures.
Muslims cannot pick up their culture and bring it to the UK just as we cannot do likewise to a Muslim country, we would be quickly told if we did.

Joan

Always On Watch said...

I beg to differ with Iftikhara.

I am a teacher whose background is bilingual, so I do know that advantages of same. However, I also know how to pantomime and thereby communicate with those students who can't speak to me in one of the two languages I know.

Muslim only schools will only serve to exacerbate the problem now facing the UK -- a problem involving pedophilia, for God's sake.

Anonymous said...

Also there have been Muslim boy's school's in the UK raided for terrorist activities.
All Muslim only building need to be monitored carefully and to give even more Muslim only building's is adding to a growing problem, of policing those buildings, as it is obvious Muslims are not trustworthy enough to do this themselves.

Joan

Christopher Logan said...

Always on Watch,
Just so you know iftikhara is an Islamic propagandist who goes around the net posting trying to get support for Islam.

Anonymous said...

Iftikhara posted an incitement to Jihad post on an American site for pandenic flu preparedness, the site was called
Avian Flu Talk
It was deleted and he was banned, i have also seen his posting on quite a few British newspapers,
The Daily Mirror
in particular, where he makes many pro Muslim posts, usually one to start a thread, causes trouble then never returns to that thread.

Joan

Christopher Logan said...

Thanks Joan.

Anonymous said...

Christopher, I'm Muslim, but I love your blog :) Every time I visit it I find some good news, MashAllah. Keep doing it.

Except for this post. To be honest, I didn't read it till the end, but let me say smth - forcing girl (whether she's 9 or not) to marry someone she doesn't what is forbidden in Islam. Parents who make their daughter marry without her agreement will be punished.

Safia

Christopher Logan said...

Safia,
Obviously you love Muslims imposing Islam on non-Muslims.

No 9 year old knows who they want to marry, that is just a lame excuse.

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