Dr.Nusrat Raza sent me her book about this exact thing some years ago. The woman rescued by a court order in the UK would have suffered a fate that thousands of Muslim women in Britain are forced to endure.
Rescued in a legal first, the Muslim girl whose father plotted her forced marriage to a stranger online
- 21-year-old feared ending up a slave and was told she would undergo FGM
- She is the first recipient of a court order saving her from a forced marriage
- Her family face five years in prison if they defy the ruling
- ‘Zara’ does not blame her parents, but faults the ‘community they were brought up in’
The 21-year-old, identified only as Zara, from Wolverhampton (pictured with PC Jody Edwards) feared ending up a slave and was told by her devout father she had to undergo female genital mutilation.
A Muslim whose father plotted to marry her to a stranger online has become the subject of a groundbreaking legal order to protect her from her parents.
The 21-year-old feared ending up a slave and was told by her devout father she had to undergo female genital mutilation.
But the student was brave enough to seek help and is now the first recipient of civil court orders saving her from forced marriage and barbaric circumcision.
Although both are already offences, the order allows police to stop them taking place at all. Her family faces up to five years in prison if they defy the ruling.
The woman, identified only as Zara, is said not to blame her parents and continues to live with them. Instead she faults the ‘community they were brought up in’.
Police believe that by revealing Zara’s plight they can save other women from the fate she only narrowly avoided.
Born abroad, she grew up in a run-down terraced house in Wolverhampton where she claims she was bullied for refusing to wear a face-covering burqa. ‘We would go to family gatherings and they would get up and sit elsewhere and refuse to speak to me,’ she said. At 17 she received her first marriage proposal from a college friend, but the offer was withdrawn when he discovered she had not been circumcised.
‘When I started getting proposals, they always asked if I was circumcised. I would say no and the marriage wouldn’t go ahead,’ she told the Mail.
‘This kept happening. I kept on getting rejected because I wasn’t circumcised. I was told I was not a Muslim and wasn’t respectable because I hadn’t had it done. But I am a good Muslim. I fast during Ramadan, I pray five times a day, I wear a hijab. And the Koran does not say that women should be circumcised.’
Zara’s mother, who cannot speak English, was herself circumcised and had warned her daughter against the procedure. But pressure from her community and her father made her decide to look into circumcision when she turned 21.
She is right, this is due to the ways the community were brought up in.
A person should always choose his future path. Parents should help them with guidance and advice.
I believe, in ISLAM, forcing a girl to get married without her own will is a sin and is an act of oppression
This girl seems to be honest and wise when she blamed the community in the they think rather than her parents who are overwhelmed by the wrong thoughts of the community that is not related to Islam in anyway