Report is ‘tip of the iceberg’, says Baroness Cox
A report by Aurat:Supporting Women, a West Midlands charity which supports victims of honour-based violence, seeks to expose the vulnerability which, it says, Muslim women living in Islamic 'marriages' in the UK are experiencing.
The report - Equal and Free? 50 Muslim Women's Experiences of Marriage in Britain Today - states that the widespread practice of polygamy has left Muslim women without legal rights upon 'divorce', entirely dependent on their 'husbands' for financial support, and often unable to leave sham 'marriages' for fear of social ostracism or bringing shame to their family.
According to the report, many Muslim women are unsure of their legal rights and some women were even left believing that 'marriage' ceremonies were valid simply because they had taken place in the UK.
The report cites examples from women who told their stories to Aurat, including many women who were married, by their parents, to men who later turned out to have as many as three 'wives' living in different households.
In her foreword to the report, Baroness Cox writes that the shocking situation described in the research is "just the tip of the iceberg". She says that "there are, literally, countless more women in similar predicaments" as the women who volunteered their testimony. [Family Law Week] Read more
