Author: Bruce Bawer
Publication: International Herald
Tribune
Date: June 27, 2003
Arranged marriages prevent integration
Oslo Western Europe is increasingly
a house divided against itself. 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 worst. Not
only are they subject to the often tyrannical authority of husbands,
fathers and community leaders, if they seek to escape that authority,
they cannot necessarily expect support from the police and other
government agencies, which often feel that "intruding" in such matters
would show disrespect for immigrant culture.
Many European officials have long
assumed that such problems would be gradually resolved through intermarriage,
integration and the consequent fading away of Muslim ghettos. But
intermarriage and integration are not happening as expected - and
the consequences of this failure are grievous. Such is the conclusion
drawn by "Feminin Integrering" (Female Integration), a new book from
the Oslo-based organization Human Rights Service that is based on
a recent report to the Norwegian Parliament. The book's focus is
on Norway, but there is no reason to believe that the situation elsewhere
in Europe is appreciably different. (Full disclosure: I have done
research and translations for HRS.)
The book presents the results of
a study of immigrant-group marriage patterns in Norway that is probably
the most comprehensive statistical analysis of its kind in Europe.
The study shows that members of most of Norway's non-Western immigrant
groups are, in overwhelming numbers, not just marrying within their
own ethnic groups but are marrying spouses - often their own cousins
- from their countries of origin.
These marriages - 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 a
fresh dose of "traditional values" - among them a hostility to pluralism,
tolerance, democracy and sexual equality.
As "Feminin Integrering" shows,
the systematic abuse of "family reunification" has dramatically transformed
the way in which spouses are chosen within the Muslim community.
This has not only made real integration all but impossible; it has
also 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
on girls. As female Muslims they are already powerless. Add to this
the fact that they are usually married off extremely young, and that
their imported husbands tend to be untouched by any notion of sexual
equality, and one can begin to grasp the predicament of these young
women, whom Storhaug calls "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.
Human Rights Service figures for
henteekteskap, or "fetching marriages" - in which one spouse is "fetched"
from the other's ancestral country - are staggering. From 1996 to
2001, 82 percent of the men marrying the Norwegian granddaughters
of Moroccan immigrants were themselves Moroccans; another 14 percent
were of Moroccan origin. For Norwegian granddaughters of Pakistani
immigrants, the corresponding rates were 76 percent and 22 percent.
In that five-year period, only three granddaughters of Moroccan immigrants
married ethnic Norwegians; only one granddaughter of a Pakistani
immigrant did so.
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. Among Human Rights Service's
proposals for reform of this situation are prohibition of cousin
marriages (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 says most forced marriages
end up being abusive ones. What if a wife in such a marriage wants
out? Officially, men and women in Norway 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 very restricted options. It is possible
in a Muslim marriage contract, however, for a groom to grant his
wife the right to divorce. Human Rights Service has thus proposed
- and the Norwegian Parliament has just adopted - a law stipulating
that no family reunification through marriage be permitted unless
the wife has been granted this right. Norway is the first nation
in Europe to introduce such a law.
These proposals will not solve everything,
but they're a start - and the Norwegian government's apparent openness
to them is encouraging. Some officials still fret about "interfering"
in family matters. Yet leaders seem to be recognizing that the alternative
to "interference" is a Norway with two systems of governance: democracy
for Westerners and an oppressive, misogynist autocracy for Muslims.
A country - and a continent - that accepts such a state of affairs
is headed for disaster. Norway's neighbors should take note.
(The writer is author of "Stealing
Jesus," a book about Christian fundamentalism.)
