Western Resistance

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May 26, 2006

UK: Marry A Muslim Girl - Hide For 13 Years

There used to be a time when mixed race couples were rare, but that time has passed in most cosmopolitan cities. But mixed faith marriages are more common. Muslim men frequently marry non-Muslim wives, and often the wives become Muslims. The extinction of the faith identity of the wife in these cases has been warned against by the Catholic Church.

As we reported recently, the reversal of roles, where a Muslim woman marries a non-Muslim husband, is strictly condemned in shari'a law. Abdul Fattah Idris, professor of comparative religious laws at Al-Azhar University in Cairo claims: "Muslim women are prohibited by the Shari'a (Muslim law) from marrying people of the book (i.e., Jews and Christians).

I once knew a couple in Oxford, where a Muslim girl was living with a Hindu trainee doctor. They had to have at least one person staying in the house at all times, because the girl's Muslim relatives had previously tried to have them killed. Most relationships, subjected to such external pressures do not survive.

But for one couple, Jack and Zena Briggs (pictured), the threats of violence meant they had to live for 13 years in hiding. They have finally come out of their closet, and their stories appear in the Daily Mail and also the Times. Though they are now open about their situation, they are still living in fear. They cannot have children, and not even a pet, as at any time they may have to flee, for their safety.

They have lived in countless apartments in various towns and cities, Huddersfield to Cleethorpes to Grimsby to Lincoln to the Isle of Wight to Portsmouth and more, and are never fully secure.

They met in Leeds, where they both lived, in 1992. A relationship gradually developed, but the relationship seemed to have no hope. Zena's Pakistani Muslim father had decided that his daughter was going to marry a man from Kashmir. In true romantic style, they eloped in 1993. Zena lowered herself down from her bedroom window by a rope made of sheets, while her father slept.

They fled south by train, and Zena phoned her father to say she was all right. He said that she was thenceforward dead to him. However he told her that he had hired a private detective and bounty hunter to track them down. Zena's brothers told Jack he would end up "in bin bags". The brothers hacked into social security computers to find their addresses - they even smashed the windows of Jack's mother's house.

Various agencies which could have helped failed them. The stress became unendurable at times. At one stage, Jack became an inpatient at Ticehurst House psychiatric hospital in East Sussex with a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Few people took their plight seriously. But a tragedy actually helped their cause. In 1998, a 19 year old woman from Derby, Rukshana Naz, had become pregnant. The father of her child was not her arranged husband. Her mother held her down and then her brother strangled her.

After this case drew publicity to the potential savagery that lay in wait for girls and their partners from Muslim homes, who spurned their arranged marriages, more people realised what a dire predicament Jack and Zena were in.

Mark McCrum wrote their story, in a book entitled Runaways, (now with a foreword by former hostage John McCarthy). Published in 1998, it sold around the world, and the pair received messages of support.

The couple have to move house every six months. As Jack says: "When we look for a place it's not a case of whether the master bedroom is en-suite or not. The first thing I do is look at the window and see if we can escape from it." He sleeps with a baseball bat and knife by his bed.

Now, Special Branch have told the couple that they are no longer in excessive danger, but still they are on their guard. The newspaper articles do not state in which town they live.

But this is what it takes if a non-Muslim man has a relationship with a Muslim girl. A marriage vow does not usually involve considering threats of death from psychotic Muslim relatives. Surviving pressures which would have crushed most people, Jack and Zena Briggs are still together, a testament to the true bonding power of love. But this love has meant she can never see any of her family again.

The book, published by Orion, is available from Amazon.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at May 26, 2006 4:51 PM

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Posted by: Cleopatra at October 29, 2007 4:13 PM

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