Recent events in Western countries combine to necessitate a serious examination of that question.
In BC, two South Asian immigrant women have been murdered and another remains in hospital suffering from gunshot wounds. All are believed to be victims of domestic violence.
At a public forum two nights ago, several South Asian women spoke of the abuse they had suffered at the hands of their husbands. Margaret Wente reports:
On Thursday evening in Surrey, B.C., there was a remarkable scene. A string of South Asian women stood up at a public meeting to speak out. Their stories weren't pretty. One woman, speaking in Punjabi and English, recounted 20 years of punches, slaps and taunts from the husband with whom she still lives. "If I can improve one girl's life, it is worth my husband's anger," she said.
After several high-profile cases of grisly domestic violence, people in British Columbia's Indo-Canadian community are finally saying the unsayable. There is a bias in South Asian culture that condones violence against women.
. . .
For years, it has been all but taboo to point out that the abuse and demeaning of women is a significant problem among certain immigrant groups. It has been absolutely forbidden to suggest that women in the South Asian immigrant communities of Surrey or Brampton are treated any worse by their fathers, their husbands and their mothers-in-law than are women who live in Westmount or Rosedale. And if they are, it has not been acceptable . . . to name the main reasons why. Official explanations typically lean heavily on narratives of Western racism, colonialism, economic failings, and class exploitation. "There is increased understanding that a person's vulnerability to abuse may be increased by factors such as dislocation, colonization, racism, sexism, homophobia, disability, poverty and isolation," goes one classic government report. You'd scarcely guess from these accounts that deep-seated anti-female religious and cultural attitudes imported from the old country had anything at all to do with it.
In Australia, public outrage followed misogynistic statements from Muslim clerics Sheikh Taj Din al-Hilali and Abdul Jalil Ahmad. Yet, over 5000 Muslims, including many women, visited Sheikh al-Hilaili’s mosque to show their support.
Muslim Canadian Congress President Farzana Hussan says, "The entire onus of responsibility for male behaviour is on the women." No wonder a Times of London columnist asked a few days ago, “Can’t Muslim men control their urges?”
It is now blindingly obvious that Western multicultural policies clash with women’s rights. Western feminists who speak loudly in support of the rights of their compatriots fall strangely silent when women from other cultures in other parts of the world are abused and silenced by their husbands, brothers, and fathers.
I’m with Margaret Wente. The South Asian community in Canada must be challenged to forego its cultural norm of excusing and permitting abuse of females in the home. Women need to be supported and encouraged to speak out.
“Men know that, no matter how much they abuse a woman, nobody in the community will come out and condemn him,” says Ms. [Sadeqa] Siddiqui. She and others who counsel abused South Asian women are regarded as home wreckers.
The Western cultural norm that regards all persons as equally worthy of protection from unfair and unjust violence is clearly superior to other cultural norms that regard some persons as subordinates deserving of arbitrary and capricious abuse.
It’s time to stop turning a blind eye to cruel cultural practices in our midst. It’s time to insist that immigrants living in the West act accordingly.
For access to Ms Wente’s two recent columns on these issues, click here and here.
Previous related posts:
Posts
The Rev Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester and the Church of England’s only Asian-born bishop, has criticised Muslims who simultaneously seek “victimhood and domination”. He said such Muslims have a “dual psychology” that makes it impossible to satisfy all their demands.
Christian singer