Gina Khan knows the horrors of polygamy. Her mother was married off at 15 and only when her father took his new bride to the other side of Pakistan did Gina’s mother discover that he already had another wife and five children. Later he married a third woman, but when Gina’s parents came to Britain, her mother made him divorce the third wife: “She knew that there was a law in this country that protected her. He never did it again.”

Gina’s mother was traumatised, though, and would burst into tears at the recollection. But the family brush with polygamy doesn’t stop there. Gina’s sister suffered the same fate and ended up being sectioned under the Mental Health Act. And Gina, when happily married to a Pakistani man, had to endure him being forced by his family to take a second wife: his 16-year-old cousin. With reluctance, she divorced him.

I interviewed Gina for The Times a year ago, and she was determined to highlight the plight of Muslim women living in an utterly male-dominated community. She has had to endure persecution, including a brick through her window and threatening phone calls. But she won’t give up. “We are in the 21st century; we’re not in the 7th century.” Yet, even though polygamy is illegal here, the Government still pays extra benefits to men with more than one wife, as long as the marriage was conducted in a country where polygamy is allowed. When John Hutton was Work and Pensions Secretary, he demanded a review: the conclusion, last December, was that it should remain.

Why, when ministers claim to be trying to empower Muslim women, do they support a barbaric tradition that is against women’s interests and against the law? The DWP tries to play down the number of people able to claim such benefits, but its guidance still talks about “valid polygamous marriages”. How can a polygamous marriage be valid in any circumstances here? This is just one example of Muslim women being denied the same rights as other women, in the name of respecting different faiths. The exaggerated attempt to embrace “diversity”, exemplified by the Archbishop of Canterbury, is disastrous not just for social cohesion, but for many members of the Muslim community too, most of them female.

It is one thing to respect Muslims’ need for halal butchery or for Sharia-compliant mortgages: these are genuine religious differences that harm nobody. But polygamy, forced marriages and (dis)honour violence are practices more cultural than religious. They are rooted in the culture of South Asian communities, often deeply rural, and have no place in modern Britain. They do not deserve respect or even toleration.

Yet still there are schools that refuse to put up posters giving warning of the dangers of forced marriages, according to a recent report by the Centre for Social Cohesion. Shazia Qayum, team leader at Karma Nirvana, a refuge in Derby, claims: “We approached schools to get posters up that let children know that there was help available. This was just before the holidays, which is the most critical time, because this is when girls get taken off to Pakistan or Bangladesh to be married. Unfortunately, none of the schools would let us put them up because they said it would offend the parents.”

And still there is often collusion within the Asian community to prevent women running away from forced marriages. Taxi drivers taking battered women to refuges will sometimes report their whereabouts to their abusive husbands. John Paton, manager of the Lancashire Family Mediation Service, says: “It’s extremely difficult for an Asian woman to go to a community worker or an agency where she knows that there are potentially people there who will report back to her family what she has said.”

There have even been complaints about local councillors intimidating Asian women’s groups. As the chair of a women’s project, who wants to remain anonymous for her own safety, explains: “We have a lot of pressure from the local councillors in Bradford; they are the bad ones, because they abuse their power by trying to get details on who is staying with us and what they are doing. They give us a hard time, until we have to complain to the police and they back off. They are dominant males who are trying to bully us.” Unfortunately, Britain’s Asian community is full of dominant males, and unless we work actively to resist them, Asian women will continue to be bullied. Giving them the “choice” of using Sharia, when such a choice is likely to be forced on them by their husbands, fathers or brothers, is no help at all.

You don’t just have to be concerned about women’s safety to be alarmed. According to Nazir Afzal, the Crown Prosecution Service’s lead on such matters: “If you had a map of the UK showing the location of Islamist groups – or terrorist cells – and you had another map showing the incidence of honour-based violence and you overlaid them, you would find that they were a mirror; they would be almost identical. It could be that this is simply because this is where South Asians live or it could suggest there is a strong link between these two attitudes.” So we should all be concerned that life in Britain can be miserable for South Asian women. They are at least three times more likely to kill themselves than white women of the same age. We should not be encouraging them to use Sharia courts run exclusively by men, even for civil matters. Nor should we be worried about offending cultural sensitivities by standing up for their rights. We should be telling their menfolk that the traditions of rural Pakistan, Bangladesh and India are unacceptable enough over there. They are completely intolerable in this free country.

We are not amused

Has anyone noticed the propensity of US presidential candidates to use the royal “we”? On Super Tuesday, John McCain declared: “We must get used to the idea that we are the Republican Party front-runner for the presidency.” Even Barack Obama is not immune. There was a reason, he said, why the polls show him to be the strongest candidate against McCain. “It’s because we’ve done better with independents in almost every single contest we’ve had.” Forgive my naivety, but wasn’t America rather keen to get rid of the monarchy a few centuries ago?

Obama, you ain’t

On the same subject, I was amused to see Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, trying to sprinkle glitter on her boss by comparing him to Barack Obama. I wish I were well enough qualified to paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen’s fabulous put-down of vice-presidential candidate Dan Quayle when he had the audacity to compare himself to John F. Kennedy: “I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.” I should love to meet Obama, but probably will never have the chance. I do, however, know Gordon Brown and have sat through his interminably uninspiring speeches. After that, I reckon I can say with confidence: “Prime Minister, you’re no Barack Obama.”

As you don’t like it

My esteemed fellow columnist, Michael Gove, had a crack at his least favourite English phrases on this page last week. I would love to add another: “If you like.” BBC correspondents have a maddening habit of introducing this meaningless phrase and I find myself shouting at the radio or TV: “No, I don’t like!” Pointless, I know, but at least it makes me feel better.

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