Child Brides

IN a series of articles this week, An Australian newspaper has drawn attention to the problem of Muslim girls and young women being bullied into early marriage by their parents – or, worse, being tricked into going overseas and married off there. The latter is, in fact, a criminal problem. Seven of the 12 women who have approached the Australian embassy in Lebanon during the past two years, seeking help to return to Australia to escape arranged marriages, have been minors, too young to marry legally in Australia or Lebanon. Moreover, the people trafficking laws that came into effect as part of the federal criminal code yesterday make it illegal to trick any person into travelling overseas, adult or minor, for the purpose of exploiting them, sexually or otherwise. These are crimes that can be punished with 25 years in prison.
But the issues raised in our articles speak to the larger problem of maintaining a shared system of values in a multicultural society, and especially the acceptance of that system within the Islamic diaspora. One reason parents are trying to arrange early marriages for their daughters, or even sending them "home" to marry young, is their fear their children will become too acculturated in the values and habits of mainstream secular Australia. That is an anxiety that has been shared, to a greater or lesser extent, by the waves of immigrants from Europe and Asia since World War II who preceded the more recent influx of Muslims. Eventually it is overcome, and a new, assimilated middle-class emerges among the second- and third-generation migrants. The tensions that have emerged between Muslim minorities and broader national cultures in the West since 9/11, and especially since the tragic recent events in London last month, have likely retarded what was already a slow process of integration where Muslim communities are concerned: certainly, those tensions are a reason some parents are paranoid about their daughters leaving the fold. The danger of criminalising the problem of arranged marriages and prosecuting parents in extreme cases is that we will ratchet up the level of paranoia and make the whole problem worse.
The real issue, once again, is whether the multicultural framework we have established places too much emphasis on diversity and not enough on shared values. Immigrants who come here from the Middle East or Pakistan or North Africa must accept certain core Australian values, including the right of women to the same opportunities as men. The circulation of fatwas in Australian Muslim communities forbidding women from studying or exercising their right to vote, also revealed in Australian newspapers, is not an expression of multiculturalism, but an affront to it. Perhaps the most depressing detail in the newspapers stories on arranged and early marriages, however, is that Muslim girls in Year 10 (so ave age is 14 or 15) are telling their career advisers not to bother, because their iron-clad destiny is early engagement and marriage. And far from being bullied by their parents, some of these girls, who may have no idea what married life really entails, are acting against their wishes.
till next time, Michelle.