Forced Child Marriage and the Problem of Islam

Author: John Stonestreet and Dr. Timothy D. Padgett

According to a recent report in The Independent, at least 100 preteen children in the United Kingdom have been forced into marriages in the last five years. This includes 62 who were under the age of 11 years old and 27 who were under the age of six. According to Dame Jasvinder Sanghera, who ran away from home as a child to avoid a forced marriage and now runs a charity, the actual numbers are likely even higher given how UK authorities failed to act to stop the widespread grooming gangs. As she was quoted in the article:  

I know that when schools open in September, there will be missing children. . .. Is somebody going to ask where they are, or are they simply just going to go off the school roll? Or children will come back engaged or even married. 

In fact, all the way back in 2005, the British government established the Forced Marriage Unit to coordinate a response to the crisis between schools, family members, and law enforcement. Though a good sign the government wants to take the issue seriously, how did British society devolve to the point they need such a task force? 

According to the government department responsible for immigration enforcement, no particular culture should be blamed. Forced marriage, they said, is “not a problem specific to one country, religion or culture; there is no archetypal victim or perpetrator, and no 2 cases are the same.”  

In reality, forced child marriage is not a general British problem. It is a problem unique to various Muslim communities within the UK. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali noted, while it’s good that some media outlets called on the government to increase its efforts, they have practiced “self-censorship” when it comes to describing who’s doing it: “In its coverage of the ‘dark underbelly of modern, multicultural Britain,’ the words Islam or Muslim never appear. Why not? Who else is marrying off five-year-olds?” 

A similar tactic was taken by several prominent media outlets reporting on the 25th anniversary of 9/11. The New York Times published a piece entitled “After 9/11, Islamophobia Shaped a Generation of Muslim New Yorkers.” Some school curricula equivocated on whether Osama bin Laden was behind the attacks or asked students to question why he hated the West so much. 

In a brilliant article in Tablet, Ayaan Hirsi Ali argued that what media coverage of Muslims often neglects to mention is what Muslims actually believe. Instead, acts of terrorism are described as being motivated by poverty or oppression, American imperialism, or Israeli aggression. This is the case with 9/11 terrorist leader Mohammed Atta, for example, despite the fact that he wrote down what motivated him. As Ali put it:  

There is no political program and no mention of foreign policy or economic grievances in the document. There is only a young Muslim man, in a German apartment, arranging to sacrifice his life to Allah in the confidence that Allah will reward his martyrdom in the life to come.  

Ali further noted how, in the wake of 9/11, well-meaning politicians like George W. Bush and Tony Blair insisted that the attacks had nothing to do with Islam. Perhaps hoping to tamp down the violence, they instead reinforced a misunderstanding held by many secular Westerners—that religion is a private, secondary matter, and that real causes are socio-economic. Downplaying religious zealotry is not only to misunderstand what motivates Islamic terror, it has led us to foolish responses.  

As Ali concluded: 

It is frankly insane to demand that the West recognize the right of our enemies to destroy and replace the civilization that we built according to the values of the Reformation and the Enlightenment with the values of other cultures distinguished by centuries of stagnation and decay. To deny the radical and positive importance of Western culture to the human inheritance is more than a form of historical and individual blindness; it is a death wish that we can no longer afford to indulge.