Taxi To A Forced Marriage
Women in Islam are basically property. They have half the rights of a man, which is why, under Islam, it takes two women's testimony to equal that of one man in court.

Many Muslim women, as the property of their fathers and families, are forced to marry men not of their choosing. Primary under Islam is not the women's wishes, but the public relations picture of the family: do they have an obedient little doggie of a daughter, who will marry the old man she's never met that Daddy has picked for her?

That's what Ayaan Hirsi Ali was told to do. Her father ordered her to marry a much older Canadian relative that she'd never met. She ran away to The Netherlands to avoid this forced marriage, and stayed free. Others aren't so lucky -- especially those who get picked up by this taxi driver in the UK, Zakir, a forced marriage bounty hunter. Nadeem Badshah writes for The Hindu:

Zakir's job was never to harm his targets, but to return them home to face their "destiny" of being made to marry someone their parents had chosen. Despite the fact that runaways can be beaten for having escaped, he sides with the families on the issue. The softly spoken driver, speaking on the condition his real name was not used, insisted: "I did it as a favour to the families, as I knew most of them. It wasn't about the money.

"It was about izzat [honour]. I saw the effect it had on them when their daughter ran away. The worry and the shame from the community talking about them. I was part of the 'taxi driver network', so we shared information about who we picked up and where they got dropped off.

"I didn't harm any of the girls: among aapnes [the Asian community; literally 'ours'] discipline is up to their families. Only a couple of occasions I had to speak forcefully to them because they wouldn't come home. But it is obviously not a career, so I stopped. I got tired of chasing people around." Zakir prowled the streets of Bradford, Huddersfield, Leeds and Sheffield.

According to women's groups, bounty hunters are more common in places such as Yorkshire and Lancashire because the large south Asian populations are more closely knit, entrenched in conservative values, and there is a better chance of finding women who disappear in the north than in London. The community grapevine is a powerful tool in those areas; word spreads quickly about a person's whereabouts and welfare. And while this can nurture a closer community and ensure everyone looks out for one another, it can also be used to patrol the behaviour of those who do not conform to the unwritten rules -- meaning young women may be ostracised by disapproving elders for wearing "western" clothes or speaking to a boy.

Immanuel Kant said that people are not means to an end but ends in themselves. This is an example of classic Western values -- autonomy for the individual, and equal rights for women. Do we really want to be so welcoming of people who stand for spreading Sharia law?

I'm not talking about ripping up the Constitution. What I think is urgently necessary is that everybody start educating themselves about the realities of Islam -- as I have been since 9/11. Once you do, you'll understand that it's not "Islamophobia" to fear the spread of Islam.

I mean, can any of you stand up and say we should be tolerant of what Badshah writes about above?