Deborah Orr: It's all very well to be sensitive to Islam, but we cannot ignore the suffering of women
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Wednesday, 13 February 2008
Whatever the Archbishop of Canterbury may or may not have said, or may or may not have meant, when he spoke last week, one thing is clear. There is broad consensus that fairness can be achieved only if everyone in Britain lives "under the rule of law". That principle, it is understood, must be jealously guarded.
Another thing is also clear, as many commentators have noted. Whatever the Archbishop may or may not have said, or may or may not have meant, he has done us a favour in drawing a storm of attention to the unpalatable fact that sharia courts are already operating in Britain.
Whatever else in his much-derided speech we may want to unceremoniously dump, though, it is important to think about how we can act on one thing that Rowan Williams said. He warned that even the level of "supplementary jurisdiction" this country already hosts "in some areas, especially family law, could have the effect of reinforcing in minority communities some of the most repressive or retrograde elements in them, with particularly serious consequences for the role and liberties of women".
Much retrospective attention, since last Thursday's speech, has been paid to Masood Khan's documentary film, Divorce: Sharia Style, which graphically displayed, in operation in Britain, elements of the discrimination against women for which the worldwide application of sharia has become notorious. The rule of law is already inadequate in protecting the rights of Muslim women in Britain, for precisely the unwelcome reason that Dr Williams pointed out. They are caught between the "stark alternatives of cultural loyalty and state loyalty", whether we like this or not. The instinct of feminists is to "do something about it". What we must consider now, is what that something might be.
This is not an easy area. One cannot simply tell people that it is all their own daft fault for being silly enough to be a devout Muslim, however tempting that might be. Nor, in reality, can we adopt the line promulgated by many in the blogging community – that people who want to live under Muslim law can go and live in a Muslim state and see how they like it. Not if we all really do want to "live under the rule of law" anyway.
Ayesah Khan, a reporter on the film that exposed the inadequacies of sharia divorce, herself has warned, in The Guardian, that: "For many, there is an instinct to fight for the rights of the women that are perceived to be undermined or abused by Islamic law. That is an admirable instinct. But those women who need our help most will not seek our assistance if we refuse to take seriously their religious and cultural preferences and practices."
Even when those religious and cultural practices are taken seriously, as they were during the debate in 2006 over veiling, it is hard to see how progress can be made. Full veiling, it is now widely understood, is the product of an interpretation of the Koran that is rejected by many or even by most British Muslims.
It has its basis in nothing other than a vignette that confirms that the Prophet Mohamed required in later life that his own wives should address the men of his court only through a screen. Little has been done since the debate exploded to ascertain just how excluded from the mainstream of British life women who adopt the full veil might be.
It is fairly obvious that conducting one's daily business from inside a back tent might be a little bit restrictive. But, for all the furore, the matter has been dismissed as an individual cultural choice, and anyone who dislikes it is displaying unseemly and un-British prejudice.
There may no longer be much in the way of ideological enthusiasm for what can be described as multiculturalism. But in practice it gathers pace anyway, and there remains an unwillingness to take even a normative stance against it. Tony Blair may have declared that he considered the veil to be "a sign of separation". But there is little sign of any appetite for issuing any formal guidance that might suggest that such dress is not in keeping with the values and aspirations of modern British life. Anyway, as it was learned then, the venting of any disgruntlement over strict Islamic practice in Britain tends to give courage to those who prefer to vent their disapproval personally, and with little regard themselves for that beloved "rule of law".
In a report for the now-defunct Equal Opportunities Commission in 2005, into some pilot projects investigating the practicalities of enforcing the public sector gender duty, it was noted that the rights of Muslim women might "be termed a high-awareness, low-action area". Never a more true word was said. The Independent on Sunday reported this weekend that the police estimate that there may be as many as 17,000 acts of violence perpetrated in the name of "honour" against Muslim women each year. Yet, for all its supposed commitment to the rights of women, the Government shied away from framing legislation designed to tackle so-called "honour" violence, even though the mainstream of Muslim opinion seeks to distance itself from such barbarism.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission is headed by Trevor Phillips, who has sagely warned that if Britain does not get a grip on issues like these, we will continue "sleepwalking towards separation". But this week, when I requested information from the commission about the work it is doing or has done on the interplay between gender inequality and adherence to Islam in Britain, all that was available was an old report by the Commission for Equal Opportunities into the level of discrimination that Muslim women faced in the workplace. I was advised by a press officer that "we probably don't have enough of an evidence base to talk about this" and was referred to a global organisation called Women Living Under Muslim Law. Quite a different matter.
Meanwhile, a group called Empowering Muslim Women, under the auspices of the University of Oxford, was awarded a £3.75m grant by the Government in 2006 to run a five-year research project into systematic and sanctioned discrimination against women by political Islam. There is nothing to disagree with in this project, save to note that it is concerned only with Muslim women abroad "in indigenous contexts". It is clear that the same theological and cultural trap applies to women living here "under the rule of law" as well.
Government efforts to tackle the problem are being carried out under the auspices of the Department for Communities and Local Government, which seeks to combat extremism through community cohesion. At the end of last month, it launched the National Muslim Women's Advisory Group, led by 19 Muslim women, all of whom have impressive credentials and are committed to shaping a positive climate for Islam in Britain. Their number is small and their task is enormous. But the group is something, at least. It needs all the help and support it can get.
