The Cherished Abducted
Parents cherish their children, do they not? Not, perhaps. It's entirely likely they cherish, for example, tradition, their expectations, family honour, and religious precepts. Forced marriages as a result of parents' inability to imagine without a distinct sense of horror and personal tragedy, a child's choice that runs counter to parental, customary and religiously obligatory expectations, render some women, and girls, victims of their families' intentions for them to conform.
In Bangladesh, as occurs elsewhere in the Muslim world, women and girls are expected to marry the man of their parents' choice. Bearing in mind, needless to say, that the parents, in the goodness of their hearts, have the very best interests of their female offspring at heart. Which is precisely why they prefer, hugely, monumentally, on pain of distraction and death, to have their girls marry a Muslim man. It is so ordained and so shall it be.
Even if that man happens to be inordinately unappealing to their daughters, even if he is aged and decrepit. For customs and traditions and religious imperatives are not to be denied. All are sacred. A girl's desires and hopes for her own future are distinguishing characteristics to be sure, but hardly aspirational fodder to be sustained in a society whose customs are not to be denied, lest family honour be irremediably tarnished.
Britain has undertaken to arm itself legally with the means by which its courts can successfully thwart the intentions of such parental obligations to their offspring. There have been, latterly, a number of young girls who have been spirited out of Britain by their parents for the purpose of marrying them off to parental-approved men of suitable heritage. Once a reality, presumably, the girls will submit to their fate and become, as their parents and their society wills them to; submissive wives. Tradition demands no less.
And here's the case of a 32-year-old Bangladeshi woman, one with a mind of her own, and a very distinguished one at that, having acquired a medical degree. She studied in England and was undergoing an internship there when she received an emergency call from her parents to return home to Bangladesh as her beloved and loving mother was ill. Dr. Humayra Abedin did as any devoted daughter would; she returned and the ruse commenced to play out according to the fate her parents designed for her.
When she arrived at her family's home in August, she was physically bundled by a group of very determined parental helpers into a room and locked in there. She was not permitted to leave the house, and was supervised by guards, up to five at a time. Little did they imagine she had her own, modern SOS resources, sending text messages to friends in Britain, to appeal for their help in rescuing her from an unwanted fate.
When her tactic for rescue was discovered she was informed she was expected at the local police station for a passport inspection. Her captors instead installed her in an ambulance, where, her head covered, she was gagged and taken to a clinic, the Hi Tech Modern Psychiatric Hospital. Nice; in socially backward, religiously strictured Bangladesh, there exists a "hi tech, modern" psychiatric hospital. Talk about doublespeak.
There she was kept, in a drugged condition until November, injected with what she surmised were mood stabilizers and anti-psychotic drugs which she was helpless to struggle against. Her parents helpfully informed her that she had been dismissed from her position in Britain and would be barred from re-entry to the country. Shortly afterward she was taken to another house, and from there to Khuina for her wedding.
She was married, according to custom and tradition - under medication to ensure compliance - to a very respectable and educated man, a good Muslim, and just incidentally, another medical practitioner, Dr. Khondokar Mohammad Abdul Jalal. Dr. Abedin, it would appear, had astonished, offended and distressed her parents greatly by informing them that she had a relationship back in England, with a practising Hindu Oh, heaven forfend!
British justice to the rescue! Under the Forced Marriage Protection Act, in effect in England, Wales and Northern Ireland as of last month, British nationals, along with those resident in Britain are protected from forced marriages being imposed upon them. Bearing in mind that, despite Dr. Abedin's more mature age of 32, young Muslim girls are often forced into such arranged marriages, a situation seen by the authorities in Britain as unlawful and harmful coersion.
When an injunction was issued by a British justice against Mohammad Joynal Abedin, and Begum Sofia Kamal, the young woman's parents, as well as against an uncle, and the man whom she was forced to marry, a Bangladeshi court saw fit to obey the British High Court order. Dr. Abedin has made it abundantly clear she is relieved to have been removed from her ordeal, but she has no wish to have her parents punished.
She has taken steps to have her lawyers see that her marriage is annulled. She also feel it it within her rights to instruct her lawyers to take "whatever steps they think appropriate" against the clinic that held her by force, against her wishes, complicit with her parents' desires. "If they can do that to a trained doctor, God knows what they could do to a 19-year-old", said one of her lawyers.
As for Dr. Abedin, now back in Britain, her life re-commences.
In Bangladesh, as occurs elsewhere in the Muslim world, women and girls are expected to marry the man of their parents' choice. Bearing in mind, needless to say, that the parents, in the goodness of their hearts, have the very best interests of their female offspring at heart. Which is precisely why they prefer, hugely, monumentally, on pain of distraction and death, to have their girls marry a Muslim man. It is so ordained and so shall it be.
Even if that man happens to be inordinately unappealing to their daughters, even if he is aged and decrepit. For customs and traditions and religious imperatives are not to be denied. All are sacred. A girl's desires and hopes for her own future are distinguishing characteristics to be sure, but hardly aspirational fodder to be sustained in a society whose customs are not to be denied, lest family honour be irremediably tarnished.
Britain has undertaken to arm itself legally with the means by which its courts can successfully thwart the intentions of such parental obligations to their offspring. There have been, latterly, a number of young girls who have been spirited out of Britain by their parents for the purpose of marrying them off to parental-approved men of suitable heritage. Once a reality, presumably, the girls will submit to their fate and become, as their parents and their society wills them to; submissive wives. Tradition demands no less.
And here's the case of a 32-year-old Bangladeshi woman, one with a mind of her own, and a very distinguished one at that, having acquired a medical degree. She studied in England and was undergoing an internship there when she received an emergency call from her parents to return home to Bangladesh as her beloved and loving mother was ill. Dr. Humayra Abedin did as any devoted daughter would; she returned and the ruse commenced to play out according to the fate her parents designed for her.
When she arrived at her family's home in August, she was physically bundled by a group of very determined parental helpers into a room and locked in there. She was not permitted to leave the house, and was supervised by guards, up to five at a time. Little did they imagine she had her own, modern SOS resources, sending text messages to friends in Britain, to appeal for their help in rescuing her from an unwanted fate.
When her tactic for rescue was discovered she was informed she was expected at the local police station for a passport inspection. Her captors instead installed her in an ambulance, where, her head covered, she was gagged and taken to a clinic, the Hi Tech Modern Psychiatric Hospital. Nice; in socially backward, religiously strictured Bangladesh, there exists a "hi tech, modern" psychiatric hospital. Talk about doublespeak.
There she was kept, in a drugged condition until November, injected with what she surmised were mood stabilizers and anti-psychotic drugs which she was helpless to struggle against. Her parents helpfully informed her that she had been dismissed from her position in Britain and would be barred from re-entry to the country. Shortly afterward she was taken to another house, and from there to Khuina for her wedding.
She was married, according to custom and tradition - under medication to ensure compliance - to a very respectable and educated man, a good Muslim, and just incidentally, another medical practitioner, Dr. Khondokar Mohammad Abdul Jalal. Dr. Abedin, it would appear, had astonished, offended and distressed her parents greatly by informing them that she had a relationship back in England, with a practising Hindu Oh, heaven forfend!
British justice to the rescue! Under the Forced Marriage Protection Act, in effect in England, Wales and Northern Ireland as of last month, British nationals, along with those resident in Britain are protected from forced marriages being imposed upon them. Bearing in mind that, despite Dr. Abedin's more mature age of 32, young Muslim girls are often forced into such arranged marriages, a situation seen by the authorities in Britain as unlawful and harmful coersion.
When an injunction was issued by a British justice against Mohammad Joynal Abedin, and Begum Sofia Kamal, the young woman's parents, as well as against an uncle, and the man whom she was forced to marry, a Bangladeshi court saw fit to obey the British High Court order. Dr. Abedin has made it abundantly clear she is relieved to have been removed from her ordeal, but she has no wish to have her parents punished.
She has taken steps to have her lawyers see that her marriage is annulled. She also feel it it within her rights to instruct her lawyers to take "whatever steps they think appropriate" against the clinic that held her by force, against her wishes, complicit with her parents' desires. "If they can do that to a trained doctor, God knows what they could do to a 19-year-old", said one of her lawyers.
As for Dr. Abedin, now back in Britain, her life re-commences.
Labels: Human Fallibility, Religion, Traditions
posted by Pieface | 7:30 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home