• Why Jihad Watch?
  • About Robert Spencer and Staff Writers
  • FAQ
  • Books
  • Muhammad
  • Islam 101
  • Privacy

Jihad Watch

Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Pakistan, U.K. target forced marriages

Aug 30, 2006 12:36 am By Marisol Seibold

Anti-dhimmitude from the British High Commission, as it steps in to protect British citizens’ right to self-determination. From AP:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Her father said it would be a two-week holiday to learn about her Pakistani heritage. But the British woman soon found herself captive in a remote tribal village for over a year and promised in marriage to a first cousin she’d never met.

With the British High Commission’s help this month, the woman escaped Pakistan shortly before her planned wedding, avoiding the phenomenon of forced marriage that befalls scores of foreign women, including Americans, annually in this deeply conservative Islamic country.

“My dad made me believe it was just a holiday,” said the 20-year-old woman, who declined to reveal her actual name and asked to go by Shazia for her own protection. “But the weeks turned into months and months. I never believed my own father would have a plan to marry me to someone I didn’t know, but I was wrong.”

More than 100 British nationals of Pakistani descent — 20 percent of them males as young as 14 — have been rescued in each of the past two years after being forced into marriages here. Americans with links to Pakistan are also made to marry against their will but in fewer numbers, the U.S. Embassy said.

But this could be just the tip of the iceberg, officials say, as many women forced to marry live in isolated communities or at the mercy of authoritarian families.

Reasons abound for foreigners being forced to wed here. Britain is home to more than 800,000 Britons of Pakistani descent. Many of the first Pakistani migrants to Britain came from rural, conservative backgrounds and oppose letting their children —
particularly daughters — marry into the more liberal British society.

“It is unacceptable for such fathers living in Britain to allow their daughters to grow up in an emancipated society with more freedom where they could possibly meet men,” Sumaira Malik, Pakistani minister for women’s affairs, said Monday. “So they force their girls to come back here and marry boys from their
village.”

[…]

Rape features prominently in forced marriages of foreigners, said Helen Feather, head of consular affairs at the British High Commission. Women forced to wed against their will are often raped so they become pregnant, produce children and, in
turn, cement themselves in an unwanted family union.
Obtaining British nationality is also sought after by the husband in a bid to improve his economic situation.

In Shazia’s case, she was accompanied to Pakistan last year by her father, who was born in Pakistan but migrated with his parents to Britain as a child. After a short time here, her father returned to Britain but ordered Shazia to remain with his family here, despite her protests. “I didn’t know what was going on. He never told me anything. But he told all his relatives that the plan was for me to marry some guy in the village,” Shazia said during an interview at the British High Commission in Islamabad.

Then for more than a year, Shazia was made to live as a rural Pakistani villager in the North West Frontier Province — wearing local clothes, cooking food, cleaning the house, fetching water from a nearby well and milking cows.

But all the while, she said she was treated as an outsider by suspicious relatives who were accomplices to the plan to marry her off to a cousin in the same village so he could eventually gain British citizenship.

“They didn’t care at all about me, they just cared about that little red (U.K.) passport,” she said. “My year here was horrible. I didn’t like the food, the way they dressed. I rarely left the house and whenever I did, I was always followed by 20 relatives in case I tried to make a run for it.”

About a year later, Shazia’s 18-year-old sister was also forced to travel to Pakistan to join elder sibling, believing it would be a short trip. But she too was being groomed for a village marriage.

“I arrived with only British clothes. I don’t even own any Asian clothes,” said the sister, who also declined to identify herself.

But she was prepared in other ways. She had heard that British authorities had a dedicated team in Pakistan to help British nationals forced to marry here. Once in Pakistan, she got word to British High Commission officials of her and her sister’s whereabouts.

At an arranged time, a team of British officials, backed by local police, drove to the house where the sisters were kept and ordered an uncle to give back their passports before driving them away to safety.

They have since returned to Britain and vowed to not contact their father. British authorities are assisting them with initial housing and a loan.

Khalida Salimi, director of the Pakistani anti-domestic violence NGO Struggle for Change, said her workers have retrieved numerous foreigners, including young boys chained in village homes, who had been married against their will.

“It will take some time to make people understand that parents can’t treat their children as commodities,” Salimi said. “But in Pakistan, women and children are generally considered as possessions, not people.”

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Skype (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)

Follow me on Facebook

Filed Under: Uncategorized


Learn more about RevenueStripe...

FacebookYoutubeTwitterLog in

Subscribe to the Jihad Watch Daily Digest

You will receive a daily mailing containing links to the stories posted at Jihad Watch in the last 24 hours.
Enter your email address to subscribe.

Please wait...

Thank you for signing up!
If you are forwarding to a friend, please remove the unsubscribe buttons first, as they my accidentally click it.

Subscribe to all Jihad Watch posts

You will receive immediate notification.
Enter your email address to subscribe.
Note: This may be up to 15 emails a day.

Donate to JihadWatch
FrontPage Mag

Search Site

Translate

The Team

Robert Spencer in FrontPageMag
Robert Spencer in PJ Media

Articles at Jihad Watch by
Robert Spencer
Hugh Fitzgerald
Christine Douglass-Williams
Andrew Harrod
Jamie Glazov
Daniel Greenfield

Contact Us

Terror Attacks Since 9/11

Archives

  • 2020
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2019
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2018
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2017
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2016
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2015
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2014
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2013
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2012
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2011
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2010
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2009
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2008
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2007
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2006
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2005
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2004
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2003
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • March

All Categories

You Might Like

Learn more about RevenueStripe...

Recent Comments

  • Keith O on India: Police make first arrest for ‘love jihad’ under new law
  • observer on Iranian Kurdistan: Muslim brothers behead their sister in honor killing over her romantic relationship
  • Infidel on Iranian Kurdistan: Muslim brothers behead their sister in honor killing over her romantic relationship
  • Infidel on Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, France and UAE conduct joint military exercises amid rising Turkish threat
  • Keith O on Islamic Republic of Iran: Turkey’s Erdogan champions Islam only as a tool to further his own interests

Popular Categories

dhimmitude Sharia Jihad in the U.S ISIS / Islamic State / ISIL Iran Free Speech

Robert Spencer FaceBook Page

Robert Spencer Twitter

Robert Spencer twitter

Robert Spencer YouTube Channel

Books by Robert Spencer

Jihad Watch® is a registered trademark of Robert Spencer in the United States and/or other countries - Site Developed and Managed by Free Speech Defense

Content copyright Jihad Watch, Jihad Watch claims no credit for any images posted on this site unless otherwise noted. Images on this blog are copyright to their respective owners. If there is an image appearing on this blog that belongs to you and you do not wish for it appear on this site, please E-mail with a link to said image and it will be promptly removed.

Our mailing address is: David Horowitz Freedom Center, P.O. Box 55089, Sherman Oaks, CA 91499-1964

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.