Went to bed last night wondering what Jess Phillips is thinking. How is she sleeping?
Warning: long post
I can’t remember at which academic conference it was that I said I was not surprised at all to learn of the so-called (at that time) “grooming gangs” that featured Pakistani men and young white girls.
I based that on my reading of the book Kinship and Continuity: Pakistani Families in Britain published in 2000. I was asked to review this book, and did, for an academic journal.
It is a very well-written book, based on sound anthropological research. It’s that kind of research where the researcher often becomes invisible and the research participants become quite ready to talk.
The research began way back in 1979, and the findings published in a book in 1988. The 2000 publication is an extensively revised edition based on newer research, and the author was therefore able to speak of the “continuity” bit.
I knew very little about the Pakistani community when I first read that book. But one of my closest new mums in the post-natal group is Pakistani and she embodies the spirit of western modernity although you would never find her wearing a skirt or dress. For her, Pakistani trousers (a shalwar) were de rigueur.
She was suitably impressed when I talked, for example, about female lenā-denā networks of reciprocity after reading the book, thus validating the accuracy of the Pakistani culture documented in the book.
Something in the book was quite prescient of the current debate re: rape gangs.
First is the idea of purdah (women avoiding contact with unrelated men). Sure, my brothers were very keen to observe the behaviour of the men who sent me home after a date, but they did not have to worry about my loss of ‘honour’, did they?
But in Chapter Six, we read of the emphasis on izzat (honour). The author could not avoid (I can’t remember whether there was a lot of beating around the bush) acknowledging the ‘double standard’ when evaluating izzat: women are guarded to ensure their purity and honour, but though it is against Islamic teaching, male promiscuity could be justified by saying that ‘men are like that’, and worryingly, some (white) girls make themselves available (this was all in the book).
The sums do not add up. You can’t have sexless women on one side, and rampant promiscuity amongst (but not between)the males on the other.
Translation: Men must do everything to protect their sisters (hence purdah), but it’s OK to violate someone else’s sister, especially if they are white. Why? Because men are allowed to have sex with whomsoever they want.
Translation: It is because of this uncontrolled/uncontrollable and permitted male sexual appetite that their womenfolk have to be locked up (purdah).
You see, while my brothers checked out the men who went out with me, my brothers weren’t about to go and demand sex from any lone woman walking home at night (maybe after a shift as a nurse, doctor, IT engineer, etc). My brothers, like most people I grew up with are able to, unlike animals, control their sexual urges.
I was very disturbed that izzat is often reduced to the Pakistani woman’s sexual practices. In short, purdah is necessary only because these men had not been taught how to control their own sexual urges.
In the chapter on ‘Public Faces’, we read about the significance of patronage within this group because patronage leads to privileges, and the higher you get on the totem pole of power, the greater amount of privilege you amass. Cue the in-fighting within the welfare and mosque organisations. Again, in the book.
On this alone I had become very, very sceptical of anyone who claims to be a community representative, not just of the Muslim, but of any community as they choose to define themselves.
You and I think of a representative as one who re-presents the interests of that community, and especially of the weaker ones, to a higher authority. In reality these “representatives” are people who have succeeded in grabbing power from others, especially those weaker than themselves.
Yet, we read of government representatives (MPs, Councillors, mayors) who kowtow to these community leaders. Did no one actually understand the concept of a patron-client relationship?
I have yet another concern, that of first cousin marriages which thrive as a demonstration of migrants’ continuing obligation to their birādarī (which could mean anything from descent to kinship group) purity that still remained in Pakistan.
In the UK we hear the excuse for these marriages being the need to keep property within their family groups. What constitutes this property? How much property do our Pakistani migrants own?
Remember purdah? Many of the women do not participate in the wage economy as a result. On account of having children they can legitimately claim all sorts of child benefits. This is not the £25-odd pounds a week that some people think is the case.
There is (was) a pretty generous Child Tax Credit which could add thousands of pounds to a household for each child. (The more children, the higher the income. This was capped to two children in 2017, amidst a huge outcry.) This is being replaced by Universal Credit, if I understand the very complicated benefits system correctly.
Still, there is a very high reward for families with disabled children. So where is the incentive to avoid first cousin marriages? (A Muslim MP recently argued against its proposed ban, notwithstanding the fact that these disabilities have an inevitable impact on the NHS.)
Sure, they might produce children with severe disabilities, but there are also significant financial benefits, thanks to the taxpayer. There is also the free NHS.
Do these welfare benefits constitute the “property” that they are so desperate to maintain within their families?
Where does Jess Phillips come in?
I have a lot of respect for her. But on this, I felt it was wrong that she had refused a nation-wide inquiry into the failings of the police and other services to safeguard the welfare of children, particularly children of already disadvantaged family backgrounds.
I was a ten-year-old once. I was twelve. I was fourteen. Try as I do, I cannot see HOW I could have chosen a life to be passed around and violated by older men like so many young white girls had been. A choice???
Final question. Questions. Where are the Pakistani women standing up for these girls? Where are the mothers standing up to say “I did not raise my sons to rape young white girls”? Where are the fathers who say “This cannot carry on if we want our sons and daughters to be respected as equals by the wider British public of every hue and faith?”
In the Gospel of John, Jesus was confronted by a group of religious scholars and Pharisees about a woman who had been “caught in an act of adultery”, literally “caught red-handed in the act of adultery”.
Excuse me, why did they not also bring the man to Jesus? Just stop to think about that. How could the woman be “caught”, “red-handed”, “in the act”, all on her own?
Indeed as Jesus went on to say, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”
My prayers for Jess Phillips (and everyone else in government) is that she would find it in her to do the right thing. So what if she loses her seat at the next election? She’d go down in history as one of the bravest women MPs we have had.
On the other hand, she might not lose, because those people who did not come out to vote this time might come out in force to vote for her.
If only she would do the right thing.
