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Sweden: Proposed legislation to outlaw forced marriages Via The Local : Anyone in Sweden who forces someone else to get married against their will can be sent to prison, according to proposed legislation presented Thursday which aims to criminalize forced marriages. "We want to criminalize child marriage and forced marriage. It should also be a punishable offence to take a child out of the country and marry them off there," G�ran Lambertz, who heads the government inquiry tasked with drawing up new legislation, told Sveriges Television (SVT). ( source )

Sweden: Mosques advise women not to report abusive husbands Via the Local : Six out of ten mosques in Sweden gave women advice about how to deal with spousal abuse and polygamy that contradicted Swedish law, a media investigation has revealed. Using hidden cameras and telephone recording equipment, two women posing as abused spouses visited ten of Sweden's largest mosques as part of a report put together by Sveriges Television (SVT) investigative news programme "Uppdrag granskning". The women then asked leaders at the mosques for advice about how to address issues such as polygamy, assault and non-consensual sex. Six out of the ten mosques visited by the women, who had also claimed that their husbands had multiple wives, told them that they should nevertheless agree to have sex with their husbands even if they didn't want to. Six of the mosques also advised the women against reporting spousal abuse to the police. Leaders at another mosque were divided on the issue, wh...

Scotland: Forced marriage campaign targets mosques Via the BBC : A Muslim scholar has launched a groundbreaking campaign against forced marriage in Scotland. Shaykh Amer Jamil says the practice has no place in Islam. During the next few weeks leaflets and sermons are being given in mosques as part of an initiative to educate the community. "In the Muslim community there's a misconception amongst some people that religion allows this, that parents have an Islamic right to choose partner of their children, and that they don't have a choice in this," says the Glasgow-based Imam. ( source )

Flanders: Muslims upset at Danni Lowinski episode Via HBvL (h/t RR): A recent episode of the Danni Lowinski series upset Muslims in Flanders.  In the episode, a Turkish girl wanted help as she was being forced to marry her cousin.  One of the characters, bicycle dealer Fuat, said: 'The Koran says that singles MUST marry.' Columnist Bahattin Kocak: "It's not in the Koran!  This is fiction, but I think it's a pity that something like that is proclaimed as truth.  This way a million viewers, of whom just a minority know the Koran, get a negative opinion about its content." VTM apologized if they didn't always show 'a nuanced image of the Turkish community'.  The broadcaster stressed that Danni Lowinski is a fictional show which exaggerates issues, people and problems.

Germany: 'Gender (in)equality not linked to Islam' Via DW : Equality between Muslim men and women has little to do with religion, says G�n�l Halat-Mec. DW's Klaudia Prevezanos spoke to the family lawyer and member of the of the annual German Islam Conference. Deutsche Welle: What's the situation regarding equality between Muslim men and women in Germany? G�n�l Halat-Mec: You have to differentiate: It always depends on the social background of the people we're talking about. What we've worked out in the Islam conference is that many issues are not linked to religion or Islam, but are rather rooted in traditional patriarchal structures of society. And that depends on the social situation of the women � are they working, are they independent? At the conference, we've realized that no matter how religious a woman or a couple is � equality is more a social problem that needs to be looked at separately from religion. Of course, we also have a situation in Islam wh...