Islamic Misogyny

It must have taken a special effort for the Guardian to report on “honor based abuses” without mentioning the specific religious group that was responsible for all of them.

But, it was up to the task. The word Islam does not appear in its article about the alarming increase in honor-based offenses in Great Britain.

On the other side, we credit the Guardian for reporting the story. How many other news organizations are running the story of honor killings and female genital mutilation. By my count, the answer is none.

And, of course, given the flagrantly misogynistic attitude made manifest by the culture that encourages and supports honor killings and female genital mutilation, you are not surprised to know that feminist leaders are as silent as lambs. 

I trust you are not surprised. You recall that when one Mohamed Morsi, a leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, a group that did not merely support female genital mutilation, but that happily paid for it, was elected president of Egypt, the first foreign leader to drop in on him to legitimate his election was none other than Hillary Clinton.

Over the past five years, in Great Britain, the number of such offenses has soared. And they include rapes and assaults:

The number of “honour-based” abuse (HBA) offences recorded by English police forces has soared over the past five years, figures suggest.

According to data from 28 out of 39 constabularies – those that responded to freedom of information (FoI) requests – the number of HBA cases, including offences such as rape, death threats and assault, rose from 884 in 2016, to 1,599 last year – a rise of 81%.

And also,

Forced marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM) are other instances of HBA offences, committed according to the Crown Prosecution Service, “to protect or defend the honour of an individual, family and/or community for alleged or perceived breaches of the family and/or community’s code of behaviour”.

There are estimated to be 12 to 15 “honour killings” in Britain every year. Notorious cases include Banaz Mahmod, whose father, uncle and other relatives plotted to murder her after she left an allegedly abusive marriage and fell in love with another man, and Samia Shahid, from Bradford, who was killed on a trip to Pakistan. Shahid’s ex-husband and father were arrested in connection with her death but her father died while on bail and nobody has stood trial.

The Home Office has collected data from police forces on HBA offences on a mandatory basis since April 2019. Its first figures, described as “experimental”, showed 2,024 offences recorded in 2019-20, although as it is often a “hidden” crime, it acknowledged this was likely to be a “small proportion” of offences actually committed. Greater Manchester police (GMP) was excluded from the Home Office figures because it could not supply data due to installation of a new IT system and was unable to respond to the FoI request either.

Why are these crimes so often overlooked? Why are they so rarely prosecuted? Could it be that the British justice system, and especially the British legal profession is afraid? Is it filled with weak cowardly people who are afraid to accuse any Muslim of a crime, for fear of being called a racist. One has noted that the police in Rotherham allowed high school girls to be gang raped and sex trafficked by Muslim men, for fear of being called Islamophobic.

This is a failure of policing, but it is also a product of a culture that considers Islamaphobia to be a bigger problem than Islamic misogyny:

Natasha Rattu, the director of Karma Nirvana, acknowledged police identification of such crimes was better – albeit still with room for improvement – but said: “The fact that there are increases suggests that people are and have been feeling more desperate or more at risk.”

The charity wants a fresh review of policing of honour-based abuse by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary as it says many of the recommendations of the last report, in 2015, which found police were not doing enough to protect victims, have not been implemented.

A National Police Chiefs’ Council spokesperson said: “We acknowledge that these abuses are hugely under-reported and we remain focused on giving victims the confidence and come forward.