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September 6, 2006

Germany: Muslim Death Threats Force Woman Lawyer To Quit

Seyran Ates (pictured), aged 43, is a lawyer, specialising in women's rights. From a practice in Berlin, she had become well-known and her skills were eagerly sought by Muslim women. In 2005, she was named "German woman of the year". She has long campaigned for forced marriages to be made illegal in Germany. Most of her clients have been Muslim women who have been trapped into forced marriage and other demeaning aspects of Muslim "honour" culture that persist. Many of these women are, like herself, from Turkish/Kurdish backgrounds. She also campaigned against the ultimate aspect of Muslim "honour" - Muslim honour killings.

Seyran was born in 1963 in Istanbul, and moved to Berlin with her family when she was 6. She has lived in Berlin since then. As she stated last year: "I grew up in a Turkish family. My parents are Turkish. My father is Kurdish, my mother is Turkish, and I grew up in a very traditional family and I ran away when I was 17 years old because I can't stand this very hard traditional life and living in a very modern surrounding in Germany and living in a very traditional Turkish family was not so easy for me. So I grew up with this idea of women have to stay home, they have to marry someone some time and they get children and live very traditionally. You see, this is also the idea that also German people have all over the world, we have this traditional structure that women have to live in the house and men live outside the house."

Speaking in English, she said of honour killings and Muslim women in Germany: "And I think that more than 50 percent live in such a situation of fear of honor killings or to be killed. Many of my clients, I am working as a lawyer here in Berlin and I make family and criminal law, many of my clients, women, they say they are feared to divorce because their men say, "If you divorce, if you go to court to divorce, I will kill you."

"So we have a very high number who are very silent, who stay home and don't go out, don't ask for divorce, because they are in fear of being killed because of honor."

She has attacked Germany's bland acceptance of "multiculturalism", and has said that it keeps Muslim women in slavery, rather than forcing the Muslim community to adhere to the same standards as other people living in Germany.

But sadly, news comes from the Telegraph today and from Monday's Deutsche Welle that the constant death threats which have been made against her by Muslim men have become too much. After two decades of defending the rights of Muslim women from abuse, Seyran Ates has finally announced that she has closed her practice.

She has blamed the German authorities, saying that she had asked the police for protection, but had her requests ignored. The police have denied this, and claim that they were never asked to help.

The threats have come from the husbands and male relatives of the Turkish women whom she has defended.

20 years ago, Seyran was shot at by a man in the Berlin suburb of Kreuzberg. Last year she was representing a Muslim woman in a divorce case. Outside the court, the Muslim husband first physically attacked the woman, and then tried to assault her. This was the beginning of the end of her career.

She told the newspaper Der Tagesspiegel: "I'm withdrawing from professional life as a lawyer, my client is living in a women's shelter, but the assailant is running around scot-free....my life and that of my young daughter have priority."

She wrote on her website: "It's once again clear to me how dangerous my work as a lawyer was and how little I was and still am protected as an individual."

Though Seyran has been a member of the SPD (Social Democratic Party) for two years, she has criticism of that party too, blaming its immigration policies which try to tone down the real extent of abuse which goes on within immigrant communities.

Since she has announced her resignation, and the reasons for doing so, politicians are now rushing to defend her publicly. The interior minister, Erhard Körting, has said her resignation is "an alarming sign" and says he has "high respect for Ates' work". Some politicians have called for a petition, to ensure protection for people in her position.

The Berlin Lawyers' Association has said that lawyers "must demonstrate solidarity".

But though Seyran Ates will no longer be handling individual cases in courts of law, she has said she will continue to give lectures and interviews to make people aware of the situations of forced marriages and honour killings.

She has written books and numerous articles, but most of these are in German. There is one translated article available on the web in English, called "Tolerance for the tolerant." In this article, Seyran argues that by giving minority rights protection to Islam, this will inevitably be at the expense of the basic rights of women. This is an extract:

I want to know, and many thousands of Muslim girls and women have a right to know, why understanding and infinite tolerance is practised with particular cultural traditions that are clearly oppressive of women. Human rights are universal and unconditional. And that goes most certainly for religious objectives.

It is only girls and women who are forced to wear head-scarves. And it's also a majority of girls and women who are affected by forced marriage. I don't want to enter into the debate about women and schoolgirls who wear the headscarf of their own free will, or about the difference between arranged and forced marriages. Just one note: silence cannot be understood as assent. But very many girls are brought up to be silent on such topics. This is very much in the spirit of a certain reading of the Koran where it's written:

5137, Aisha, may Allah be pleased with her, reported: I said: "O messenger of Allah, a virgin is abashed!" And he responded: Your consent is your silence."

Girls are excused from swimming class, field trips and sex education. The coeducational approach, the idea of using mixed classes to convey equal rights between the sexes, is undermined in the name of religion. It is Muslim schoolgirls who bear the brunt of this.

Of course, we mustn't forget the boys and men. They too are affected by these archaic traditions. They are forced to play the man, the protector of morals and family honour. They bear the responsibility for keeping the sexuality of the female members under control. A free, autonomous life, the esteem for a person's individuality is seen to endanger the far more important community feeling, the group identity. In extreme cases, men are turned into murderers because the social system demands this of them. Because otherwise, they cannot live after their honour has been violated. What will become of the Muslims who don't have the personal strength to defend themselves against the community and the clan because of this outmoded tradition? What will become of the little machos who already play the Pascha in kindergarten and grade school?

It is saddening to hear that a brave woman such as this, prepared to stand up to the sexism, oppression and violence at the heart of Islam, has been so let down by the German system. Her message of the evils of multiculturalism, coming from a woman who knows about multiculturalism from the inside out, is a stark reminder to all the bland leftists who think they are "doing good" by encouraging "Muslim culture". To do so is, as Seyran states, to suppress women who would otherwise be full and equal members of our societies.

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Footnote - the quote above in the article is actually a Hadith, and an error has been made in translation. Aisha is only referred to twice in the Koran, and never by name. The Hadith appears to be this from Sahih Muslim, Book 8 (Book of Marriage - Kitab Al-Nikah), chapter 9:
Book 008, Number 3303:
Abu Huraira (Allah be pleased with him) reported Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) as having said: A woman without a husband (or divorced or a widow) must not be married until she is consulted, and a virgin must not be married until her permission is sought. They asked the Prophet of Allah (may peace be upon him): How her (virgin's) consent can be solicited? He (the Holy Prophet) said: That she keeps silence.

Or it is this from Sahih Bukhari, Book 62 (Wedlock - Nikaah),
Volume 7, Book 62, Number 68:
Narrated 'Aisha:
I said, "O Allah's Apostle! A virgin feels shy." He said, "Her consent is (expressed by) her silence."

Repeated by Bukhari in Volume 9 (Speaking Under Compulsion - Nikraah), Book 85 , Number 79:
Narrated 'Aisha:
I asked the Prophet, "O Allah's Apostle! Should the women be asked for their consent to their marriage?" He said, "Yes." I said, "A virgin, if asked, feels shy and keeps quiet." He said, "Her silence means her consent."

And repeated in Book 86 (Tricks) Number 101:
Narrated 'Aisha:
Allah's Apostle said, "It is essential to have the consent of a virgin (for the marriage). I said, "A virgin feels shy." The Prophet; said, "Her silence means her consent." Some people said, "If a man falls in love with an orphan slave girl or a virgin and she refuses (him) and then he makes a trick by bringing two false witnesses to testify that he has married her, and then she attains the age of puberty and agrees to marry him and the judge accepts the false witness and the husband knows that the witnesses were false ones, he may consummate his marriage."

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at September 6, 2006 7:54 PM

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