Being serious I think Dr. Khan makes SOME excellent points. (I wish she hadn't generalised though). 1. We are culturally pretty much Anglicised, especially we educated folks. 2. SOME marriages are undoubtedly forced. 3.SOME marriages are undoubtedly only to get visas for cousins etc. under parental pressure. 4. SOME of the people who come to the UK under such marriages are nasty pieces of work. 5. We DO have significant cultural differences and expectations of marriage compared to people from Pakistan (and India). 6. Pakistani culture IS patriarchal (but so is Islam and all 'traditional' cultures from the Red Indians to Japan.) 7. Islam DOES give the father the right to marry off his virgin daughter without her consent (at least in the Hanafi madhhab) as long as the person he picks is her kufu' ('equal'.) * * kafa-at has very defined conditions in fiqh. We might not like it but its a FACT. 8. The scientific evidence for the genetic undesirability of consangeous marriages is STATISTICALLY INSIGNIFICANT. 9. However, I think that though marriage is a personal CHOICE for both parties it is probably better to marry from within the UK or other European countries than from our parent's country for compatibility reasons 10. But the advantage of marrying someone compatible from pakistan is that the children are more likely to know Urdu/Punjabi and for some of us that is as important as them knowing English. If my own child doesn't know Punjabi I'll be devastated (even though I expect English to be his main language) since Punjabiness is as much a part of my culture as being British or Muslim. We should be as proud of Ghalib as of Shakespeare and Del-Boy!(Islam being the primary definer of course but by no means the only one). 10. The truth is that a lot of the fault is also of us British Muslims. We guys often expect to sleep around and go out as before we got married and the wife from back home is just expected to grin and bare it all and do all the housework like a cleaner and produce our babies. We are incredibly arrogant and expect her to just take blatant womanising and not giving a toss because we did her the 'favour' of marrying her and bringing her to England! (Generally, women there have what we'd consider old fashoned views on marriage and expect their husband to fulfil their rights and be the breadwinner and romance them. We think once we've married them as a favour to our folks its enough and they should be happy to be in the UK whilst we have fun outside with 'goriyaaN'. And a lot of girls here when they marry a guy from pakistan treat him with open contempt like he's a servant boy and expect him to sit back and accept it whilst they go clubbing with their male friends etc. i.e. it takes TWO to tango.) Discuss.
I could use better terms than 'pure tosh'! Can't believe that a PhD graduate would write such unsubstantiated codswollop! Education obviously hasn't taught her much. Talk about sweeping generalisations.....apart from some small truths, I actually find the article quite offensive!
I have to say that this article is a load of generalisations and logically unsound. There is an element of truth in what she says but this article overall is pure tosh. Its absurd to generalise about a coutry of 180 million on such small evidence... Yes there are crooks in pakistan and there a ppl who only marry for a chance of getting a British passport but doesn't mean they all do... I'm married to a Pakistani girl and am very happy thank you very much! And I know quite a lot of ppl who feel the same. At the same time I also know of the opposite case too. I think we should distinguish between arranged marriages and forced marriages. (I would agree that it is probably easier to marry a British girl since we ARE Anglicised but marrying a girl from Pakistan doesn't have to be a disaster as long as you are both compatible and willing to compromise. I love Only Fools and Horses and also like Umar Sharif's stage shows. These are stupid and trivial examples. Girls from Pakistan often have much more Islamic characteristics compared with British Pakistani girls...then again it depends on individuals...) Summary: she makes some very valid points but her mistake is to generalise from these incidents to the whole of the pakistani nation. if a white person was to say this we'd cry 'racist!'
