MUST READ: FORCED MARRIAGE TROUBLES

Forced Marriage Troubles
By Stephen Brown

She said she was too young to marry. But for honestly expressing her opinion with upright, civilized dignity against her impending forced marriage, the 15-year old Muslim, Turkish-German girl was rewarded with a vicious blow to the head that knocked her nearly unconscious to the floor. Her savage assailant? Her own father.

The parent of the unwilling bride-to-be had returned to his native Turkey with his teenaged daughter, who had grown up in Germany, to arrange her marriage to a cousin 12 years her senior. The cousin was present with his whole clan when his intended received the brutal chastisement. No one reacted. She should have known better. Like many women in traditional, patriarchal, Muslim-Turkish families, she has nothing to say about her marital fate. Moreover, previously in Germany, her father had already beaten her many times for refusing to answer her cousin’s letters, until she relented.

Having washed her face after the blow as ordered, the subdued teenager took her place again with the others, now silent and sullen under watchful eyes, and listened to the negotiations over the ‘bride-price’, in which property, money and houses were mentioned as well as her attributes. In addition, the wedding date, the number of children she was to bear and the date of their arrival were also discussed. However, since no deal was reached, the young woman was able to return to Germany unmarried to await her next "suitor."

It is estimated that 30,000 women among Germany’s 3.2 million Muslim population, of which 2.7 million are of Turkish origin, are subjected to forced marriages every year. Hundreds of young Muslim girls disappear annually from their German elementary and high schools to travel to their native Turkey and other Muslim countries, never to return. Many are told they are going on holidays and do not realize they are to be married until after their arrival, after which their passports, jeans and freedom are taken away and replaced with head scarves and confinement. Moreover, it is only on their wedding day that some see their husbands for the first time.

But not all the Muslim girls – and men – who return to their countries for a spouse remain there. Some later bring their marital partners to the Federal Republic as part of a family reunification program to live in the ever expanding Muslim ghettos present in every large German city. In 2003, from Turkey alone, 10,003 women joined their husbands in Germany, while 7,769 men were sponsored by their wives, according to German foreign office statistics.

But while forced marriages are bad enough, violating the basic Western precept concerning an individual’s right of choice as well as the woman’s personal dignity, it is the inhuman way the women in these unwanted unions are treated afterwards that has drawn the special ire of human rights groups. In many cases, the new wives live a slave-like existence for years in their new families, toiling long hours at housework under the rule of an oppressive mother-in-law, while suffering extensive physical and emotional abuse, sometimes from the day after their wedding, at the hands of their husbands. It is estimated that thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Muslim women in Germany endure daily such barbaric conditions.

Needless to say, freedom of movement, to come and go as they wish, also does not exist for the female newlyweds. Even Muslim girls who grew up in Germany and had enjoyed this basic right in their outwardly integrated families are now confined to the home of their new husbands and may not leave unless accompanied by a male.

But it is worse for the “import-brides” (called ‘gelin’ in Turkish). The only glimpse some will ever have of their new country is from the window of the car that takes them from the airport to the apartment where they will live, and sometimes never leave, for years. One female German social worker in Munich, who deals with Muslim women fleeing abusive, forced and arranged marriages, said they are “overwhelmed” with their first view of the city from high up on a television tower. They never knew Munich was so big and had such things as train stations and a zoo.

“Many women do not know where they have been living for years,” said the social worker, saying most had never left their Muslim neighborhood, and even their apartments. Some of these women, she added, are astounded to learn that rape is a crime in Germany, which indicates their isolation from German society and the brutality they had fled. Indeed, one observer correctly stated these ‘gelin’ may have arrived in Germany but had never really lived there.
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1) Forced Marriage Troubles

2) FrontPageMag.com