Last week, I commented on a German judge's ruling that the Koran gives a Muslim man the right to beat his wife. A few days earlier, I noted LGF's post on the "camel caravan" rule for Muslim schoolgirls' participation in field trips. A loyal reader recently emailed me about a long piece in Germany's Der Spiegel ("The Mirror") about these and related issues. It's entitled "Paving the Way to a Muslim Parallel Society." I've finally read all eight parts, and I highly recommend it. Here's the "executive summary":
A recent ruling in Germany by a judge who cited the Koran underscores the dilemma the country faces in reconciling Western values with a growing immigrant population. A disturbing number of rulings are helping to create a parallel Muslim world in Germany that is welcoming to Islamic fundamentalists.
Some of the evidence cited for this claim involves matters of headscarves, field trips, and swimming lessons. But some of it is much more grim:
In 2005, Hatun Sürücü, a young Berlin woman, was killed because she was "living like a German." In her family's opinion, this was a crime only her death could expiate. Her youngest brother executed her by shooting her several times, point blank, at a Berlin bus stop. But because prosecutors were unable to prove that the family council had planned the act, only the killer himself could be tried for murder and, because he was underage, he was given a reduced sentence. The rest of the family left the courtroom in high spirits, and the father rewarded the convicted boy with a watch.
Beatings and honor killings, often excused or treated leniently by the courts, are a growing problem in Germany. Even the apparently more innocuous matters supposedly involving "choice," like the field trip, swimming, and other female modesty issues, conceal the vicious reality: the "choices" being exercised aren't the apparent desire of the Muslim women and girls to be modest, they're the Muslim men's desire to subjugate and control their wives and daughters, treating them like property. Germany's women's shelters are increasingly seeing Muslim women and girls fleeing arranged marriages, slave-like living conditions, and savage beatings:
Ayten Köse, 42, who manages a shelter in the Neukölln Rollberg district, tries to help. She doesn't resemble most of the Muslim women here. Instead of a headscarf, she wears her hair uncovered. Köse knows how difficult it is for Muslim women in Germany to be courageous and rebel. …
The problem for many women, says Köse, is that they are completely alone, alone against their own family or their husband's family. "And if they haven't attended school in Germany," Köse explains, "they usually don't even know about human rights."
Besides the human rights issues, there are other lesser public policy implications for the mulitculturalists' acquiescence to a parallel Muslim society. Germany's massive social welfare system can ill afford some of the consequences:
In another letter from Absurdistan, the Federal Ministry for Social Affairs issued the following announcement to German health insurance agencies in the summer of 2004: "Polygamous marriages must be recognized if they are legal under the laws of the native country of the individuals in question."
What the policy statement boiled down to was this: In certain cases Muslim men from countries where polygamy is legal — like Morocco, Algeria and Saudi Arabia — could add a second wife to their government health insurance policies without having to pay an additional premium.
Read it, please. All eight parts. The Germans have a head start on us, but this is where we're headed, too, if CAIR and the like have their way.
