Seyran Ateş’ Der Multikulti-Irrtum [The Multicultural Fallacy], Berlin, Ullstein Verlag, 2007, hardback, 282 pages.

Susan Moller Okin’s prescient Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? (reproduced in the volume of the same name, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1999) asks a question that has become ever more prominent on the political agenda: “(…) what should be done when the claims of minority cultures or religions clash with the norm of gender equality that is at least formally endorsed by liberal states (however much they continue to violate it in their practices)?” (p9).

Before addressing the issues at stake, she first defines the terms in which her argument will be presented: “By feminism, I mean the belief that women should not be disadvantaged by their sex, that they should be recognised as having human dignity equal to that of men, and that they should have the opportunity to live as fulfilling and as freely chosen lives as men can.  Multiculturalism is harder to pin down, but the particular aspect that concerns me here is the claim, made in the context of basically liberal democracies, that minority cultures or ways of life are not sufficiently protected by the practice of ensuring the individual rights of their members, and as a consequence these should be protected through special group rights or privileges (…) In other cases, groups have claimed rights to govern themselves, to have guaranteed political representation, or to be exempt from certain generally applicable laws” (pp10-11, emphasis in original).

Individual and group rights may be discordant: “Suppose, the, that a culture endorses and facilitates the control of men over women in various ways (even if informally, in the private sphere of domestic life).  Suppose, too, that there are fairly clear disparities in power between the sexes, such that the more powerful, male members are those who are generally in a position to determine and articulate the group’s beliefs, practices, and interests.  Under such conditions, group rights are potentially, and in many cases actually, antifeminist.  They substantially limit the capacities of women and girls of that culture to live with human dignity equal to that of men and boys, and to live as freely chosen lives as they can.

Advocates of group rights for minorities within liberal states have not adequately addressed this simple critique of group rights, for at least two reasons.  First, they tend to treat cultural groups as monoliths – to pay more attention to differences between and among groups than to differences within them.  Specifically, they accord little or no recognition to the fact that minority cultural groups, like the societies in which they exist (though to a greater or lesser extent), are themselves gendered, with substantial differences in power and advantage between men and women.  Second, advocates of group rights pay little or no attention to the private sphere.  Some of the most persuasive liberal defences of group rights urge that individuals need ‘a culture of their own’ and that only within such a culture can people develop a sense of self-esteem or self-respect, as well as the capacity to decide what kind of life is good for them.  But such arguments typically neglect both the different roles that cultural groups impose on their members and the context in which persons’ sense of themselves and their capacities are first formed and in which culture is first transmitted – the realm of domestic or family life” (p12, emphasis in original).

The potentially adverse impact of setting aside a space within which group rights take precedence will be disproportionately greater for women: “First, the sphere of personal, sexual, and reproductive life functions as a central focus of most cultures, a dominant theme in cultural practices and rules.  Religious or cultural groups often are particularly concerned with ‘personal law’ – the laws of marriage, divorce, child custody, division and control of family property, and inheritance.  As a rule, then, the defence of ‘cultural practices’ is likely to have a much greater impact on the lives of women and girls than on those of men and boys, since far more of women’s time and energy goes into preserving and maintaining the personal, familial, and reproductive side of life.  Obviously, culture is not only about domestic arrangements, but they do provide a major focus of most contemporary cultures.  Home is, after all, where much of culture is practices, preserved, and transmitted to the young.  On the other hand, the distribution of responsibilities and power at home has a major impact on who can participate in and influence the more public parts of the cultural life, where rules and regulations about both public and private life are made.  The more a culture requires or expects of women in the domestic sphere, the less opportunity they have of achieving equality with men in either sphere” (pp12-13).

Although they are by no means perfect, Western liberal democracies have their merits nevertheless: “While virtually all of the world’s cultures have distinctly patriarchal pasts, some – mostly, though by no means exclusively, Western liberal cultures – have departed far further from them than others.  Western cultures, of course, still practice many forms of sex discrimination.  They place far more importance on beauty, thinness, and youth in females and on intellectual accomplishment, skill, and strength in males.  They expect women to perform for no economic reward far more than half of the unpaid work related to home and family, whether or not they also work for wages; partly as a consequence of this and partly because of workplace discrimination, women are far more likely than men to become poor.  Girls and women are also subjected to a great deal of (illegal) violence, including sexual violence.  But women in more liberal cultures are, at the same time, legally guaranteed many of the same freedoms and opportunities as men.  In addition, most families in such cultures, with the exception of some religious fundamentalists, do not communicate to their daughters that they are of less value than boys, that their lives are to be confined to domesticity and service to men and children, and that their sexuality is of value only in marriage, in the service of men, and for reproductive ends” (pp16-17).

We should therefore proceed with caution in assessing the merits of claims: “It is by no means clear, then, from a feminist point of view, that minority group rights are ‘part of the solution’.  They may well exacerbate the problem.  In the case of a more patriarchal minority culture in the context of a less patriarchal majority culture, no argument can be made on the basis of self-respect or freedom that the female members of the culture have a clear interest in its preservation.  Indeed, they might be better off if the culture into which they were born were either to become extinct (so that its members would become integrated into the less sexist surrounding culture) or, preferably, to be encouraged to alter itself so as to reinforce the equality of women – at least to the degree to which this value is upheld in the majority culture.  Other considerations would, of course, need to be taken into account, such as whether the minority group speaks a language that requires protection, and whether the group suffers from prejudices such as racial discrimination.  But it would take significant factors weighing in the other direction to counterbalance evidence that a culture severely constrains women’s choices or otherwise undermines their well-being” (pp 22-3, emphasis in original).

We should also ensure that the group spokespersons with whom we engage in dialogue are genuinely representative of the community as a whole: “Moreover, policies designed to respond to the needs and claims of cultural minority groups must take seriously the urgency of adequately representing less powerful members of such groups.  Because attention to the rights of minority cultural groups, if it is to be consistent with the fundamentals of liberalism, must ultimately be aimed at furthering the well-being of the members of these groups, there can be no justification for assuming that the groups’ self-proclaimed leaders – invariably composed mainly of their older and their male members – represent the interests of all of the groups’ members.  Unless women – and, more specifically, young women (since older women often are co-opted into reinforcing gender inequality) – are fully represented in negotiations about group rights, their interests may be harmed rather than promoted by the granting of such rights” (pp23-4).

Against this backdrop, Seyran Ateş’ brutally honest and courageous warning about the deficits of multiculturalism could hardly have been better timed.  Living in Berlin since the age of six (in 1969), Ateş made the trip back to Turkey on holiday almost every year with her Kurdish father and Turkish mother, both of  whom were convinced that they would one day return for good, a sentiment that has been passed on to the third generation.  They never felt that their period of residence would be anything other than transitory, regardless of how many years went by.  Germany was always perceived by them as resolutely foreign and Turkey remained the focal point of their emotional attachment.

Like many Turkish immigrants before and after them, her parents never really felt at home in Germany and acquiring such a sense of belonging was not exactly made easy for them.  For today’s young people, gloomy job prospects exacerbate such underlying tensions.  Under these circumstances, many members of the third generation now cling tenaciously to the culture of a distant homeland they were not born in and its religion as the only things of value they possess.  They do not so much confidently straddle cultures, as feel exiled from both.

Ateş formerly practiced as a lawyer, but closed down her practice in the summer of 2006 after being assaulted by a defendant.  Because of her uncompromising stance on the plight of Muslim women and girls in contemporary Germany, she has been forced to remove her name from both doorbell and post box and has no official address.  As she pointedly writes, she lives in a country where freedom of expression enshrined in the Constitution, yet she has no choice but to live in hiding, punished for speaking her mind with overt hostility and even death threats.  Intimidation is thus the penalty for truthfulness and honesty, accusations of being a traitor to her community, undermining its image and contributing to animosity against immigrants have not deterred her from speaking out.

When honour killings and forced marriages are discussed in media, community representatives immediately go on the defensive.  However, little by way of effort is made to wean them off antiquated traditions, help them find their place in modern world and thereby set a process of change in motion in the Turkish-Muslim world.  Without this, justified criticisms make no impact whatsoever.

Ateş describes her book as an appeal for genuine tolerance, which she defines as the opposite of indifference and ignorance.  Instead, it involves becoming familiar with and accepting the other, their social milieu and culture: “Many Germans, particularly those of the Left, still continue to believe that the dream of a multicultural society will at some stage become a reality if things are simply left to run their course.  This is a mistake, however.  Multiculturalism, as it has been practiced thus far, is organised irresponsibility” (p9).

One of her primary endeavours is to demonstrate to the cultural relativists that they are committing a grave error of judgement with serious implications, when they trivialise the atrocities perpetrated in the name of Islam or even blame the West for them (p10).

Her aim is that all women, with or without the help of Islam, should have the opportunity to live the lives they want to, in dignity and freedom, but she is aware that in issuing this plea in public, she is fighting against people who do not want to engage in discussion, but prefer to silence their opponents by murdering them (p9).

In spite of the hardships she has encountered, she remains firmly convinced that cultures, languages and religions can live peacefully side by side, but that the precondition for this to happen is a genuine exchange.  Integration will only be possible if its objective is to establish a stable identity, when the majority culture does not demand that the immigrant community abandon wholesale the culture it has brought with it from its country of origin and when parallel societies that seek to subvert the way of life of the majority have ceased to exist.

Ateş concentrates primarily on the Turkish and Kurdish communities, partly because she has the greatest personal experience of them, and partly because they constitute the biggest contingent of “foreigners” residing in Germany.  Her focus is on Islam because religion represents a further problem.

She begins by tracing the origins of the multiculturalism debate in Germany.  Valid concerns blighting the lives of women have been deliberately pushed into the background.  I wholeheartedly agree with her condemnation of the abdication of the Left in the debate, which combines haughty dismissiveness with culpable neglect.  This almost total capitulation is not confined to Germany alone, and smacks of a cowardice, which serves only to perpetuate the sufferings of the most vulnerable in our society.  By ostracising anyone who voices reservations about the wisdom of prevailing orthodoxy, the Left has permitted racists to monopolise the debate, contenting itself with regurgitating truisms rather than examining the less savoury aspects of a more complex reality.  An impeccable example of just how difficult it has become for the Left to speak up in defence of the Western liberal democratic model is afforded by Balibar’s essay Is There a ‘Neo-Racism?’, (in Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class, London, Verso, 1991, pp17-28), which employs P.A. Taguieff’s concept of differentialist racism: “It is a racism whose dominant theme is not biological heredity but the insurmountability of cultural differences, a racism which, at first sight, does not postulate the superiority of certain groups or peoples in relation to others, but ‘only’ the harmfulness of abolishing frontiers, the incompatibility of lifestyles and traditions” (p21).

This form of racism insidiously swathes itself in the language of its opposite: “It is granted from the outset that races do not constitute isolable biological units and that in reality there are no ‘human races’.  It may also be admitted that the behaviour of individuals and their ‘aptitudes’ cannot be explained in terms of their blood or even their genes, but are the result of their belonging to historical ‘cultures’.  Now anthropological culturalism, which is entirely orientated towards the recognition of the diversity and equality of cultures – with only the polyphonic ensemble constituting human civilisation – and also their transhistorical permanence, had provided the humanist and cosmopolitan anti-racism of the post-war period with most of its arguments” (p21, emphasis in original).

Balibar debunks its propositions: “(…) if insurmountable cultural difference is our true ‘natural milieu’, the atmosphere indispensable to us if we are to breathe the air of history, then the abolition of that difference will necessarily give rise to defensive reactions, ‘interethnic’ conflicts and a general rise in aggressiveness.  Such reactions, we are told, are ‘natural’, but they are also dangerous.  By an astonishing volte-face, we here see the differentialist doctrines themselves proposing to explain racism (and to ward it of)” (p22, emphasis in original).

What we witness is a displacement of the problematic (p22): “Prophylactic action against racial mixing in fact occurs in places where the established culture is that of the state, the dominant classes and, at least officially, the ‘national’ masses, whose style of life and thinking is legitimated by the system of institutions; it therefore functions as a unidirectional block on expression and social advancement.  No theoretical discourse on the dignity of all cultures will really compensate for the fact that, for a ‘Black’ in Britain or a ‘Beur’ in France, the assimilation demanded of them before they can become ‘integrated’ into the society in which they already live (and which will always be suspected of being superficial, imperfect or simulated) is presented as progress, as an emancipation, a conceding of rights.  And behind this situation lie barely reworked variants of the idea that the historical cultures of humanity can be divided into two main groups, the one assumed to be universalistic and progressive, the other supposed irremediably particularistic and primitive” (pp24-5).

Hence Balibar is reluctant to concede that Western democracy might exhibit any virtues whatsoever: “The difference between cultures, considered as separate entities or separate symbolic structures (that is, ‘culture’ in the sense of Kultur), refers on to cultural inequality within the ‘European’ space itself or, more precisely, to ‘culture’ (in the sense of Bildung, with its distinction between the academic and the popular, technical knowledge and folklore and so on) as a structure of inequalities tendentially reproduced in an industrialised, formally educated society that is increasingly internationalised and open to the world.  The ‘different’ cultures are those which constitute obstacles, or which are established as obstacles (by schools or the norms of international communication) to the acquisition of culture.  And, conversely, the ‘cultural handicaps’ of the dominated classes are presented as practical equivalents of alien status, or as ways of life particularly exposed to the destructive effects of mixing (that is, to the effects of the material conditions in which this ‘mixing’ occurs).  This latent presence of the hierarchic theme today finds its chief expression in the priority accorded to the individualistic model (just as, in the previous period, openly inegalitarian racism, in order to postulate an essential fixity of racial types, had to presuppose a differentialist anthropology, whether based on genetics or on Völkerpsychologie): the cultures supposed implicitly superior are those which appreciate and promote ‘individual’ enterprise, social and political individualism, as against those which inhibit these things.  These are said to be the cultures whose ‘spirit of community’ is constituted by individualism.

In this way, we see how the return of the biological theme is permitted and with it the elaboration of new variants of the biological ‘myth’ within the framework of cultural racism” (pp25-6, emphasis in original).

I fully accept Balibar’s call to vigilance against a racism in disguise, yet am deeply concerned about how such ideas have been translated into the vulgate of public opinion where any questioning of difference is automatically deplored as racism.  Is defending the achievements of the West, one of the most important of which is the recognition that there is no justification for treating women as the inferiors of men nothing more than cultural imperialism?  Is it racism to believe that minimum standards of decency and justice should apply to all ethnic groups within our society?  Shrugging our shoulders and invoking cultural difference is not going to stop women from having their clitoris and labia hacked off as a pre-emptive remedy to promiscuity.  The Berührungsängste [aversion to tackling the issue] of the Left is one of a series of disappointments and downright betrayals of its emancipatory origins.  The insufferable air of self-righteousness the Left adopts when at its most doctrinaire is in this instance directly harmful, stifling debate with an intellectual laziness matched only by its moral bankruptcy.  Small wonder that hardly anyone dares to speak up in a context where ceding ground has lent force to the charge that only racists harp on about cultural difference.

Timothy Garton-Ash, in What does a free society require of believers and non-believers alike? (The Guardian, 29^th November 2007), resists the creeping censorship spawned by the aversion to a serious engagement with the issue of where tolerance should end: “Among the essentials is freedom of expression, which has been eroded to an alarming degree, both by death threats from extremists and by misconceived pre-emptive appeasement on the part of the state and private bodies.  Freedom of expression necessarily includes the right to offend; not the duty, but the right.  We must, in particular, be free to say what we like about historical figures, be they Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Churchill, Hitler or Gandhi (and then let our claims be tested against the evidence).  We may not agree with what controversialists say about these figures but we must defend to the death their right to say it.  There should, for obvious reasons, be limits to what we are free to say about living people, but these limits must be very tightly drawn.

Among the liberal essentials is equality before the law, including equal rights for men and women.  Among the essentials is also freedom of religion.  Since a core liberal notion is that we must be free not just to pursue our own version of the good life but also to question and revise it, it follows that we must be free to propagate, question, change or abandon our religion.  In a free society, proselytisation, heresy and apostasy are not crimes.  This – and apostasy in particular – is not accepted in many versions of Islam, but it is a liberal essential on which there can be no compromise.

In order to secure these freedoms, we need a secular public sphere.  But what exactly do we mean by that?  To say “Enlightenment values” begs the question, “which Enlightenment”?  The Enlightenment of John Locke, which claimed freedom for religion, or that of Voltaire, which aspired rather to freedom from religion?  (I deliberately simplify a complex history.)  A liberal order in which the devotees of all Gods are free to try their hand in the public square, on an equal footing with those who insist – correctly, in my view – that there is no God?  Or a liberal order in which all gods are kept as far as possible out of the public square?  (The French republican understanding of laïcité is closer to the latter, the United States‘ first amendment tradition to the former.)  I’m more of a Lockean myself, but I don’t think this debate is best pursued at the abstract, theoretical level of “which Enlightenment”?  Better to tackle specific issues: faith schools, new mosques, the teaching of evolution, the hijab, Muhammad cartoons and so on.

We do, however, need to be clearer about the difference between secularism and atheism.  Secularism, in my view, should be an argument about arrangements for a shared public and social life; atheism is an argument about scientific truth, individual liberation and the nature of the good life.  Today’s debate around Islam is bedevilled by a confusion between the two.  Atheists must be free to say to Muslims, Christians or Jews: ‘Your mind would be much more free if you gave up your ridiculous belief in God’.  Believers must be free to argue back: ‘You would have a more profound sense of personal freedom if you did believe’.  But neither is entitled to demand that of the other as a condition for participating as a citizen in a free society.  The public policy argument about freedom for religion and the private conviction argument about freedom from or in religion should operate on different levels.

That distinction would, of course, no longer hold if being a devout Muslim were in fact incompatible with being a full citizen of a free society.  I feel this is what quite a few participants in the current debate, both atheist and Christian, really believe, while seldom spelling it out so clearly.  Yet the thought keeps peeping through, for example in the formula ‘Islam is incompatible with democracy’.  But as a non-Muslim I can only agree with the author Edward Mortimer who, in his book Faith and Power, concluded that there is no single, unchanging Islam, ‘there is only what I hear Muslims say, and see them do’.  What Muslims say and do in the name of Islam has varied enormously through history, and varies enormously today.  Yes, of course, there is the Qur’an and the Hadith, just as there is the Bible. But, as in all great religions, these are complex texts, subject to diverse interpretations”.

Joan Smith, likewise taking inspiration from the Gillian Gibbons teddy bear case in Islam and the modern world don’t mix (The Independent, 28^th November 2007), more clearly stresses the gender dimension: “The stark fact is that the notion of “honour” and the violence linked to it cannot co-exist with the modern idea of universal human rights.  It encourages men to create oppressive laws which do not recognise individual liberties, and to break the law in states where those liberties have been acknowledged.

I have never claimed that Islam is the only religion that does this, and there are anomalies in British law – the archaic offence of blasphemy is an example – which reminds us of a time when Christians reacted just as violently to what they perceived as “insults”.  In the past, Catholics and Protestants took turns to slaughter each other as Sunni and Shia are doing now, but Christianity has to a large extent been secularised. Not as much as I’d like – there’s still a way to go on homosexuality and abortion – but there is no doubt that the influence of Christian churches has dramatically declined.

At the heart of this process is an alteration in the status of religious texts.  The Old Testament is full of hair-raising injunctions and barbaric punishments but I don’t know anyone, apart from a few extremists on the Christian right, who takes it seriously.  The idea that a single book written centuries ago has unique authority – in effect, a veto over all other ideas – makes no sense in societies where intellectual curiosity is valued and encouraged”.

She elaborates further: “No book or person has a monopoly on truth, and I certainly don’t regard Muhammad, Jesus or Marx as beyond criticism.  But while Muslim scholars are prepared to argue about interpretation, they have this in common: they all agree on the primacy of the Qu’ran and the hadith.

Even the suggestion that the text needs to be reformed, which she has denied making, was sufficient to force Taslima Nasreen to flee her home country, Bangladesh, and seek refuge in Sweden.  She recently moved to India, hoping to find more tolerant attitudes among Indian Muslims, and is now being hounded from one city to another by angry mobs.

It is not enough in these circumstances to claim that Islam is a religion of peace, and dismiss all the things non-Muslims don’t like – honour killings, relentless assaults on free speech, and now an accusation of blasphemy related to a teddy bear – as aberrations.  The mores of the seventh century have no relevance in modern life, especially in the arena of sex where decisions about who to sleep with are widely regarded as a personal matter.

The damage that is being inflicted daily on the image of Islam doesn’t come from people like me, who are constantly accused of Islamophobia, but practices such as forced marriage, honour killings and heated denunciations of ‘Western’ values.  I can’t think of any secular country where a rape victim or a well-meaning British teacher would find themselves threatened with flogging”.

Ateş unflinchingly confronts the Left and Liberals with their share of the blame for the coming into being of parallel societies by elevating multiculturalism to the status of an unchallengeable ideology.  The result is that people of different ethnic origins lead hermetically sealed lives with virtually no contact or crossover.  At the same time the unwitting instigators of this segregation are astonished that such separate spheres have come into existence, as if they had been conjured up from nowhere.  They are, quite simply, oblivious to their own share of the responsibility: “I mean the variety of Leftists and Liberals who appear to be of the opinion that they enjoy a monopoly on being good, the so-called multiculturalists [Multikultis].  I would even go so far as to designate some of them as multicultural fanatics because they are downright obsessed with their vision of a multicultural society.  They propagate it with missionary zeal, are blind to reality and respond to doubt and divergent opinion with abrupt intolerance” (p14).

Ateş convincingly argues that leaving as much room as possible for cultural peculiarities and avoiding arrogance in dealings with other cultures is one of the cornerstones of the rule of law.  There are limits to tolerance, however, and these are set out in the Constitution.  Neither a fundamental nor a human right to culture is recognised.  Culture ends where racism begins.  This cuts both ways, though, applying to majority and to the disparate minority cultures alike.  Ateş does not object to the idealism of the multiculturalists, but to their lack of realism.  When they feast on other cultures, they fail to appreciate that they are projecting on to them all that is positive, embracing them with boundless admiration, reserving their ire/disdain for their own, impoverished, degenerate, led-astray culture (the complaints are familiar: materialism run riot, absence of spiritual values, lack of respect for the elderly).  In short, the multiculturalists glorify the foreign at the expense of their own culture, which they devalue (perhaps from a guilty conscience).  They are, however, looking at the minority culture from the outside, with the inevitable bias such a vantage point entails: “The reason why I call the multiculturalists irresponsible is that they are indulging in a non-binding tolerance of other cultures.  As long as they are not influenced by other ways of life, ‘the others’ can do what they like.  Since the true multiculturalist is in essence an opponent and in some instances an outright enemy of the state, it is very difficult to convince him if at all that the welfare state can no longer sustain a putative integration policy in the form in which it has existed hitherto” (p15).

The multiculturalists are not consciously aware of their hypocrisy: “The tolerance of classical ‘multiculturalists’ towards foreigners has clear limits, however.  As soon as offspring are on the way, he very soon seeks out another area to live in with fewer ‘foreigners’.  Because his progeny are supposed to have decent chances in life.  The multicultural fanatic on the other hand, you have to give him credit where it is due, even manages to remain faithful to his multicultural part of town.  When his children do not settle down in school because proper teaching is impossible when the majority of pupils in the class barely speak German you start hearing slogans, such as ‘I sacrificed my child on the altar of multiculturalism’” (pp15-16).

With her straight talking, Ateş breaks through the obfuscations and hand-wringing anxieties that hamper debate: “This does not mean treating minorities with kid gloves in a spirit of cultural relativism due to the all-pervasive fear of offending them.  Such behaviour is every bit as racist as the opposite, in other words, perceiving minorities as barbarous and acting as if they had a monopoly on all the nastiness that exists in dealings between human beings.  Irrespective of whether a deplorable state of affairs is played down or projected onto the culture of ‘the other’, both prevent equal treatment.  And equal treatment is precisely what I am after (…)

For that to happen, however, we first have to ascertain how much the majority society composed of native-born Germans actually knows about ‘other cultures’ in Germany and about what their circumstances and living conditions actually look like within this society because only once I am familiar with the particular features of the communities can I provide effective victim protection.  At the same time, agreement needs to be reached about being allowed to criticise, condemn and combat as contemptible traditions everything that contradicts universal human rights” (p107).

This presents many feminists with the dilemma of where to seek allies.  Multiculturalists and Islamic fundamentalists make strange bedfellows, their coalition as unlikely as one between feminists and the Right.  Nevertheless: “When dealing with topics such as integration, Germany as a country of immigration and Islam, the old dividing lines between Left and Right don’t operate any more.  All of a sudden as a left-wing feminist I find myself allied with Conservatives.  I feel that they understand my positions and concerns and take them seriously.  Whereas many Leftists are ideologically blinkered and unaware of the questionable alliances they occasionally enter into” (p249).

Immigration began in earnest over 40 years ago in Germany, but the response of politicians until very recently was to ignore it, Sleeping Beauty-style, as Ateş puts it.  Being in denial can have pernicious consequences, which she charts.  The ethnic composition of certain districts within German cities changed rapidly, a process accelerated by reunification, leaving some blocks of rented flats with no “native Germans” [I am painfully aware of the limitations of this translation of Urdeutsche, since the main objection to the conceptual and linguistic inadequacy of the terms hitherto used to describe the Turkish population in Germany is that they bracket out, or overtly deny the fact that many of them were born in Germany] and certain school classes almost exclusively (80-100%) made up of the children of immigrants.  Thus parallel societies have gradually come into being: “By this I do not mean the many subcultures, which have emerged within an increasingly differentiated society, such as the gay scene in Berlin for example, or the community of football fans or carnival enthusiasts, ballroom dancers, singletons, single mothers, etc.  What I actually mean is an alternative society, which delineates itself in contradistinction to and as a rival of our majority society and which pursues the declared aim of altering structures within majority society that are incompatible with its own culture.  Majority society is supposed to adapt or even subordinate itself to the traditions and customs of the minority.  We are dealing with a very strong, self-confident and in part extremely arrogant Muslim (regardless of whether they actively practice their religion) community, who have created a world independent of that of the majority with its own legislative, executive and judiciary powers.  Contact with native Germans is no longer necessary in this separate world and often not even deemed desirable” (pp16-17).

Within these communities you can find a Turkish greengrocers on every street corner, halal meat is easily obtainable, any Turkish speciality, no matter how exotic can be found with minimal effort, services are provided in Turkish, problems are resolved in Turkish and according to Turkish tradition.  Marital disputes often never make it as far as court because the family takes care of them instead.  The multiculturalist might welcome Turkish bakeries as a colourful addition relieving the monotony of the street landscape, but Ateş is acutely aware of the unhealthy isolationism in the Turkish neighbourhoods: “Very many Turks and Kurds live today in Germany without any kind of contact with native Germans even though they live in the same building or street.  Majority society has long ignored the existence of such parallel societies.  The multiculturalist bought his vegetables at the ‘Turk’s’, his kebab at the Döner shop and was fiercely proud of his first-hand multicultural credentials and anti-Germanness.  In the meantime he did not demonstrate the slightest interest in the culture of the greengrocer or the owner of the kebab shop who might well have been a patriarch filled with contempt for the native German and his way of life.  The blinkered multiculturalist didn’t even notice.  He was convinced that the ‘Turk’ must adore him because he was, after all, ‘foreigner-friendly’.

Ultimately this meant that the multiculturalist had formed a bond of solidarity with the Turkish or Kurdish patriarch, although he would never have dreamed of doing the same with his uneducated, rough and ready German fellow citizen who beat his wife and drank away the housekeeping money down the local or squandered it in fruit machines” (pp17-18).

She distinguishes between three groups: the advocates of the notion of a multicultural society, multiculturalists and multicultural fanatics.  The first lack the power and the majority backing to set the agenda politically and are slowly moving towards a concept of transculturalism.  The latter two have accumulated a burden of culpability, which they ought to face up to and modify their views accordingly.  For Ateş, multiculturalism is outdated.  In its place, she promulgates transculturalism, which we have been drifting towards unawares as it is.  In her opinion, the fatal shortcoming of multiculturalism is to be found in its assumption that in a single country different cultures would be able to live together peacefully side by side, all acknowledging and submitting to the authority of the same state.  Each one of these cultures would remain fairly distinct and self-contained.  Indeed, this very separateness and exclusion were allegedly the hallmark of multiculturalism as cultures that insisted on their uniqueness/individual distinctiveness excluded difference whether intentionally or not.  Today, however, we inhabit a globalised world in which people constantly shift or migrate between the most disparate cultural domains and are therefore exposed to the most diverse cultural influences.  From this arises a blending of cultures and a new set of identities far more complex than those produced in sealed off, monocultural environments.

These processes are far from unique to Germany alone and Ateş provides an objective and illuminating survey of the evolution leading up to the situation that prevails today.  Germany has long been a favoured destination for immigrants, without ever having put in place the legislation to merit such status.  Immigration has almost exclusively taken place through family reunification or asylum-seeking and has always been tightly regulated for employment purposes.  Her historical overview of the vocabulary used to describe immigrants exposes the underlying lack of acceptance on the part of the majority as well as the presumed transitory nature of sojourn, not seen as a permanent putting down of roots.  The drearily literal designations constitute a clear and succinct illustration of everything that has gone wrong.  In the1950s a labour shortage in Germany attracted 700,000 or so foreigners from Portugal, Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia and Turkey who were lumped together under the term Gastarbeiter [literally guest workers], the implication of that word being that they would, sooner or later, pack their bags and go home, even though their willingness to take on the menial tasks the Germans turned their noses up at meant they were greeted with open arms.  This was a particularly strong assumption concerning the Turks and Kurds: Muslims would harbour no desire to stay in a Christian country longer than absolutely necessary.  In fairness, the Turks and Kurds thought in identical terms.  If asked, representatives of the first generation would proclaim that they would spend a year in Germany tops earning a good living.  Thus twenty years were allowed to elapse with no integration policy worth the name.

The oil crisis in the 70s put an end to the recruitment drive abroad, but this did not mean that the flow of immigrants dried up.  Many of the Gastarbeiter availed themselves of the right to bring their families to join them once it dawned on them that the likelihood of their returning home in the near future was slender.  By the 80s, the number of Gastarbeiter had reached some 4.7 million.  The demand for their labour had diminished and the climate towards them became increasingly hostile.  Why did they not just go back home?  Ateş quite rightly retaliates with the question of why, if Germany was only interested in workers, did its politicians not opt for fixed term contracts for the incomers without making provision for their spouses and children to join them?

In the meantime, the workers had moved out of the hostels and into flats of their own, if they were fortunate enough to have found a landlord willing to rent out rooms to “foreigners”.  They moved into areas dominated by the working class and formed mini communities of their own, mirror images of the villages or towns they had left behind.  The number of foreign-born occupants of such streets swiftly rose.  By this stage they were referred to, starkly, as Ausländer [foreigners].  Earlier predictions about the Muslims proved erroneous.  How to get rid of them became the main preoccupation of the majority.  They couldn’t simply be deported as most of them were in possession of a residence permit of unlimited duration or an entitlement to stay and carry on independent activity (self-employed).  Some were even holders of a German passport.  At this juncture, some bright spark reasoned that since they had come to Germany in the first place to make money in order to establish themselves comfortably in Turkey later on they could be given an incentive to leave Germany.  On 1^st December 1983 the law on encouraging foreigners to return entered into force.  Financial assistance to the tune of approximately 5,300 Euros was to be put on offer to those willing to go back.  In addition, their pension contributions were to be paid out.  In 1988 Ateş’ parents availed themselves of the measure, but not as many as had been hoped by the initiators of the legislation followed them.

By the end of the 80s it was no longer politically correct to call the resident immigrant population “foreigners”, and so the unwieldy substitute ausländische Mitbürger [foreign co-citizens], which coincided with the discovery of ethnic diversity and a debate on the merits of multiculturalism, was coined to replace it.  This new term soon fell out of favour, because it emphasised the alien, the coming-in-from-the-outside-aspect.  “Migrant” and “immigrant” did not appear fitting either, as the Chancellor was at pains to stress that Germany was not an immigrant country.  In the mid-90s the latest effort to express difference came in the shape of türkeistammig [originating from Turkey], türkischstamming [of Turkish origin] and Deutsche türkischer Herkunft [Germans of Turkish extraction].  As Ateş remarks, the plethora of linguistic innovations did nothing to alter the fact that neither side had a clear image of how to relate to each other.  She draws the comparison with an open relationship in which the partners are wary of entering into a full commitment, yet neither do they wish to split up altogether.

Following reunification, tensions erupted and houses occupied primarily by immigrants were burned down, people were hunted down and executed.  Although shunned by the politically correct, the designation “foreigner” was used liberally by the media (little has changed in that respect according to Ateş), particularly when reporting on riots by right-wing extremists.  The September 11^th attacks have instigated a further terminological modification: Arabs, Turks and Kurds are now subsumed under the heading “Muslims” and have been placed under blanket suspicion of terrorist sympathies.

Her conclusion: “The 40-year history of migration from Turkey into Germany is the history of an absence of social acceptance.  This lack of social acceptance, the social devaluation and exclusion of people from Turkey – for the most part people of other nationalities do not fare much better if they do not happen to belong to the European community – is reflected in the difficulty of finding an appropriate term for them.  As long as these people are not accepted as an integral part of this society they will continue to be perceived, denoted and excluded as foreigners.

In my opinion it is of the utmost significance to find a term that can be used to describe those of us who are not of native German extraction with which we can identify and which will enable us to feel as if we are part of German society.  The kind of term I am looking for is one that does not in itself contain implicit discrimination, such as “foreigner”, “foreign co-national” etc.  All of the terms used up to now suggest that the people they refer to are different, foreign and not native to Germany.

“Deutschländer” [as opposed to Deutsche, which would translate as “Germans”; an approximation might be “Englanders” for English.  I propose to leave it in the original rather than render it as German-Turks analogous to, for example, British-Asians] is what (…) the Turks living in Germany are called in Turkey.  The term bore a primarily negative connotation, but I find it very fitting for people whose lives are centred in Germany without being able to look back on a long family history in that country.  You can always start filling it with positive meaning.  At any rate I prefer “Deutschländer” to any of the alternatives.  Personally speaking, I can identify with it quite well, even if there is a type of sausage of the same name.  The term “Deutschländer” includes the country in which we live and emphasises the sense of belonging to it and its society” (pp26-7).

Ateş then sketches out attitudes and the genesis of present day integration problems.  First generation immigrants arrived with the expectation that they would not stay permanently.  They felt and behaved like guests.  They wanted to earn money, which they would set aside and take back to Turkey with them.  Initially they did not bring their families with them either because they only envisaged a short spell in Germany.  Children were left behind with relatives, brought up within the extended family.  When the immigrant workers were recruited nobody took the trouble to point out to them that their belief that they would only remain for a year or so before returning with a large amount of savings was unrealistic and that the likelihood of their spending many years or even the rest of their lives in Germany was far greater.  Ateş characterises this as the crucial difference between Germany and a genuine immigrant country, such as the US.  Nor were her parents enamoured of the idea that Germany might be their new home.  They had neither the will nor the inclination to integrate.  However, as Ateş makes clear, it would be grossly unfair to blame the first generation for failing to do so.  Irrespective of the fact that the country was not geared towards integration, no efforts were made by society at large to teach the immigrants anything other how to perform their jobs correctly.  They were patronisingly addressed in “Tarzan German”, in keeping with the lowly status accorded them.  Most were unskilled workers filling in vacancies that Germans did not deign to accept.  Their physical constitution was of greater concern than their level of schooling.

The second generation was far more heterogeneous.  The extent to which they integrated depended to a large degree on the timing of their arrival.  The older they were, the lesser the chances of completing their education successfully.  Again this should not be taken as an indicator of a lack of desire to adapt on their part, but rather as a serious charge against a system that foresaw no dedicated support for them (thankfully this has been remedied in the meantime, although the opportunities that now exist for those who failed to leave school with any qualifications smack of palliative activity, an “alibi function”, as Ateş puts it, as most do not have any real prospect of employment).

For those who settled in Germany in the 70s their future hinged on whether they were placed in classes reserved for immigrants or in classes where the majority of pupils were Germans.  The prevailing policy of the time was to gather together Turkish children in segregated classes, although in those days mixed classes would have been perfectly possible.  Those who were incorporated into ordinary classes quickly made friends and secured better results.  Ateş attributes the stubbornness displayed by the school system in separating off children of different ethnic extraction to simple lack of interest based on the misguided assumption that they would soon be going back home anyway.  Her verdict: the second generation was shut out of the education system.  A complicating (and still highly relevant) factor was that certain Muslim families did everything in their power to keep their daughters out of school to avoid their being “led astray”.  In addition, many second-generation children were sent to remedial schools because of learning difficulties arising from their imperfect command of German.  The result was that huge numbers left school with nothing to show for it and this severely restricted their employment prospects.

The fortunate few as a rule outperformed their German classmates in the knowledge that they had to do better as immigrants if they wanted to carve out a decent living for themselves in later life.  Girls were under even greater pressure to achieve because they had to prove that their ethnic origin did not mean they were less intelligent.  Upward social mobility was their prize, but even the most successful members of the second generation felt torn between their own vision of how to live a good life and that of their parents, leaving them unable to pass on any clear guidelines to their own children.  On the one hand, they sought to distance themselves from the first generation whilst on the other they were only too aware of being excluded within their adopted homeland.  Fluent in two languages and equally comfortable in both cultures these few are feted as examples of successful integration and their identity is transcultural.

This group does not accurately reflect the situation of the majority of second-generation immigrants whose mastery of German and qualifications are not comparable, who were the first to lose their jobs in the recession following reunification and who had little option but to fall back on the social security safety net.  Their fate had a direct impact on the third generation who have lost out in every respect, having grown up to believe that they are neither wanted nor needed in Germany and that regardless of how much energy they devote to improving their lot their exertions will remain futile as far as their labour market opportunities are concerned.  At the same time they learn that it is possible at least to get by on benefits.  Ateş classifies them as the lost generation, living proof of the disastrous consequences of the chronic aversion to confronting the real need for integration.  Most are unable to speak either German or Turkish properly, in the throes of a permanent identity crisis.  The combination of feeling as if they do not belong, lack of recognition and paucity of life chances leads them back to the culture of their forebears and they reject mainstream German lifestyles.  Against this backdrop, violence is rife with large numbers of young men convicted for it (every third persistent offender, defined as having committed more than ten crimes a year, comes from an immigrant background, with Turks, Vietnamese, Poles and Lebanese topping the list).

These young people are positioned between cultures with all the tensions thus implied.  Their parents are often anxious that the old traditions not be lost (although very few observe them strictly), but their children lose sight of their positive elements, absorbing instead those related to power and violence.  The nihilism of hopelessness gnaws at them, their emotional poverty coupled with material deprivation.  As if this were not bad enough, they also experience the narrowing of horizons and poverty of ambition of the chronically disadvantaged: of school leavers without qualifications, 9.2% are “native Germans” compared with 20.5 of Deutschländer (figures from 2003-4).

That integration would take place by osmosis or immersion within the wider mainstream without the need for any outside agency or support has been shown up as a myth.  Ateş dismisses the idea that the extent of integration depends on social class, since approximately 80% of Deutschländer do not feel they form part of German society.  Integration is not a one-way street: both sides have to meet half way.  If majority society is unwilling to adapt, German nationality, speaking the language and living in German surroundings will still be considered inadequate.  In spite of above average fluency and impressive educational backgrounds, fully assimilated immigrants will go on being looked upon as non-German on the basis of their looks and foreign sounding name.  As it is, they are treated like walking miracles even though what they have done is exactly what the majority demands of them.  More German than the clichéd German they are performance-oriented and highly disciplined.  What more are they supposed to do to gain acceptance?  Even the complete assimilation entailed by Germanising their names (Ayşe to Anja and Mustafa to Manfred) cannot eradicate the mark of exclusion constituted by their appearance.

In the rhetoric of politicians, “integration” should not be taken at face value, but read as “assimilation”.  Ayşe might not want to become Anja, however, as her identity and personality derive sustenance from both cultures.  She possesses an intercultural competence, which can only be of benefit to society.  This is precisely why there are no reasonable grounds for her to turn her back on her Turkish culture.  Only once politicians wake up to the vast potential that is being squandered in parallel societies, that there are young people who speak two, three or more languages will an important step towards a feasible integration policy have been taken.  The worst possible message to transmit would be to urge the Deutschländer to preserve their original culture completely intact with no concessions to the German environment, that they can expect no help in becoming German because the native population is ashamed of its own culture.

The burden of responsibility for peaceful co-existence rests on the shoulders of the second generation, as the attitudes of the third will be moulded by them and their long-term input will continue as grandparents to the fourth generation.  It is from their ranks that the “cultural chauvinists in the Islamic Associations and the hate preachers in the mosques” are drawn (p40).  These are the parents who refuse to send their children to nursery school, ask permission for their daughters to be excused from lessons and marry them off forcibly, who instil in their sons an image of humanity and of women in particular that shows contempt for rights and law alike, transforming them into violent guardians of “honour” and even into murderers.

Having thus clarified the context, Ateş moves on to the substance of her analysis: the situation of Muslim women and girls in Germany.  Her position is unequivocal.  In the same way as no democracy worth the name can function whilst women are oppressed, integration is doomed to failure as long as women are denied equality, the opportunity to lead a fully autonomous life on their own terms.  As a result, integration policy across the globe must have the emancipation of women as its first priority.

Discrimination against women in the Turkish and Kurdish communities begins before birth.  Prior to conception, both men and women hope for a boy, as the birth of a daughter is not so much a cause for celebration as regret.  Bringing a boy into the world is viewed as a proof of the husband’s manhood and enhances the status of the wife.  Ateş herself was spared the trauma of being grudgingly tolerated as two older brothers had preceded her.  Pre-natal diagnostics allow the gender of the foetus to be established and female embryos are aborted with monotonous regularity, a practice which has spread to Germany (compare this with a recent article by Paul Bracchi, Britain’s missing babies, Daily Mail, 3^rd December 2007, which publicises research revealing that between 1990 and 2005, about 1,500 fewer girls were born to Indian mothers living in England and Wales than would have been statistically probable for this group.  The expert who collated the information insists that the discrepancy in birth ratios is too “sudden and pronounced to have a likely biological or environmental cause… the most probable explanation is sex-selective abortion”).

Girls bear the brunt of an authoritarian tradition of rearing children that does not balk at corporal punishment as they are the repositories of the family honour.  The onset of puberty is fraught with conflict, with every male relative interfering in a girl’s upbringing and asserting their claim to power by force if necessary.  Bringing pressure to bear is not the exclusive preserve of men, however, as female relations and friends can also help uphold “virtue” (As Phyllis Chesler remarks in The Death of Feminism (Houndmills, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005: “Arab and Muslim women are not exempt from universal women’s ‘ways of being’.  This includes female-female aggression, competition, conformism, sexist policing, gossip, envy and hate – as well as female-female kindness, compassion, support for resistance and rescue from violence”, p124).  The girl must not suffer damage to her “reputation”.  This is often the juncture at which even daughters of “modern” Turkish families start wearing headscarves, rebelling against their more progressive parents by adopting this potent symbol.

The one socially acceptable role for a Muslim woman is that of being a good wife and mother.  The more suitors a girl can boast of, the greater her standing.  She might show off about the number of proposals she has received without fully grasping what is at stake.  The resulting “marriages” cannot be deemed voluntary in any genuine sense.  The brides are mostly between 12 and 18 years of age and are “joined in wedlock” by Muslim clerics, the couple living together until they have reached legal adulthood and can be officially married at a registrar’s.

Amongst the Deutschländer, marriages are quite literally family affairs as opposed to a commitment entered into by two individuals.  Entire clans have to get along with each other and frictions are often rife.  Daily life can be soured by gossip and wrangling, the older generations convinced that they know best and advising the husband on how to extract obedience from his spouse.  Even when the marriage has the potential to work, it often founders because the newly weds are not permitted uninterrupted time together, under a continual obligation to prove their loyalty to their respective extended families.  Daughters-in-law have a particularly hard time of it, as they are required to submit to the authority not only of their husbands, but also of all the other male relatives.  They have no choice but to run both their own households and those of their parents-in-law.  Until they have children of their own they are in many instances put in charge of caring for their nieces and nephews.  None of these duties is a matter of choice, but taken for granted and the women concerned are never consulted as to their opinion.

Ateş makes no bones about her stance: “[The situation of Muslim girls and women] is an excellent yardstick against which to measure integration policy.  If one really had existed, there would be no need to lament such deplorable circumstances in the lives of many Muslim women and girls today.  The integration of all Deutschländer would have progressed a long way further.  The manner in which a society treats its women and children also demonstrates the level of civilisation and democracy it has attained.

State and society have allowed Muslim women and girls to fall victim to antiquated traditions and patriarchal structures which show contempt for humanity.  Even now thousands of them are locked up in their dwellings and beaten.  They can barely string two words together in German and have no contacts with anyone outside their family.  Many of these women live in the so-called [ethnically segregated] neighbourhoods where they virtually never encounter any native-born Germans.

The situation of Muslim girls and women is being played down in order to justify decades of omissions in integration policy” (p44).

Counselling services and courses are on offer to introduce Muslim immigrants to German society (though many initiatives tailored specifically for women have been abandoned due to a chronic lack of funding).  It has become increasingly apparent, however, that for them to stand any chance of success the entire family has to be involved.  The taboo against any meddling in the private lives of people from a different cultural background long hindered such realisation.  Since the amended immigration law entered into force in 2005 it has been compulsory for all newcomers to attend an integration course to enhance their language skills as well as improve their knowledge of social, cultural and economic life in Germany (and overcoming the ingrained recalcitrance of the Left has been an uphill struggle: “We have spent decades convincing the multicultural dreamers that it is not racist to demand of immigrants that they learn German.  It was a hard slog.  But we are far from having won everyone over yet.  Integration is not contingent upon language knowledge some continue to maintain in all seriousness”, pp236-7).  Following reforms (applicable as of July 2007), the length of these courses has been increased from 600 to 900 hours.  The possibility of penalties for non-attendance has also been opened up.

The laudable intention behind the courses is that women should be given a helping hand in becoming more independent and thereby empowered to take charge of their own destinies.  Ateş regrets the fact that the courses have not yet attained the conceptual maturity to be able to reach women who have been conditioned by traditional thought patterns.  The most serious problem is that participation is only mandatory for new arrivals.  Women who have been resident in Germany for a longer period are unfortunately not entitled to take part in them.  Not that the women themselves would necessarily want to take part if left to their own devices.  Ateş recounts an incident whereby a Turkish woman had been given a placement under a job creation scheme, not an integration course proper, but a similar initiative.  She complained to the teacher that she could not even work half days because of having to look after the children.  Later on, she confided in one of the other Turkish participants: “‘These Germans simply can’t get their heads around it: I can’t go out to work because it is a question of honour!’”.

Ateş shows little sympathy towards such attitudes, asking why the state should foot the bill for such misogynistic traditions, as what it boils down to is these women claiming benefits because in the eyes of their husbands remunerated employment outside the home is incompatible with his sense of “honour”.  For which read anxiety that their wives might be corrupted by coming into contact with strange men and developing sexual desires of their own.  One of her clients had been severely battered by her husband for having the temerity to express a wish to supplement the housekeeping money from social security by helping out in a shop.  He snarled at her that what she really wanted was to be ogled at and felt up by other men.

Ateş dismisses the notion that this represents an extreme manifestation of simple jealousy, classifying it instead as the will to regulate and control every aspect of female sexuality on the part of Muslim men.  For her, this insatiable appetite for power and domination is the single key issue determining the position of Muslim women in Europe, the unpalatable truth which underlies the wearing of the headscarf, forced marriages, honour killings and domestic violence.

The majority of women Muslim immigrants in Germany (and here she draws on her vast experience as a lawyer) are largely confined to less privileged social milieus and are not particularly well-educated.  They are highly dependent on the family network and would be at a total loss without it.  Everything revolves around the family group, individuality is downgraded.  Many immigrant women have never learned how to take decisions of their own let alone take charge of their lives.  For some of those who succeeded in breaking out of forced marriages being freed from the constant threat of violence and always being told what to do by others was entirely new.  Even something as self-evidently banal as doing the shopping when they wanted and for what they wanted imparted a heady sense of freedom.

Not that Ateş idealises the realities of life in Western Europe for non-immigrant women, acknowledging that we have not yet achieved full equality regardless of what the statute books stipulate.  Most immigrant women have not yet taken the first faltering steps towards catching up, however, and precisely because of their lack of education and social vulnerability require assistance to pluck up the courage to set off down the road to emancipation.  What we witness instead are clear trends towards a new religious conservatism, turning back the clock to the 7th century.  Ateş regards the headscarf as the visible indicator of this tendency.  Whereas most Turkish and Kurdish women of the first generation deliberately and demonstratively cast their headscarves aside when they came to Germany, more and more women of the second and third generation are covering themselves up.

Ateş goes on to address the myriad flagrant abuses of human and women’s rights committed in the name of culture in great and harrowing depth, meticulously tracing the cultural history of forced marriages (“Silence is a very widespread reaction on the part of Muslim women when asked whether they would like to marry this man or another one.  Silence, because they have never learned to give a genuine answer to enquiries because they are ashamed.  In certain families fathers no longer speak to their daughters once they have reached a certain age.  At most they issue the occasional instructions, but no real conversations take place – and a chat about such an intimate matter as marriages is certainly off limits” (p55); “One motive for forced marriage which is only seldom mentioned is the homosexuality of the children, particularly of the sons.  Marriage is expected because it offers the possibility of a ‘cure’ for this sexual orientation, which is viewed as an illness by many Muslims and is fought against with the utmost vehemence.  The wife frequently only discovers that her partner is gay late on.  Sometimes the spouses come to an arrangement.  The man says: ‘OK, I will fulfil my duty to father two or three children, but then I will leave you in peace.  In return please let me go about living my own life’.  Here too the men are at an advantage.  A lesbian who is paired off in a forced marriage has barely no chance of leading a double life, certainly not on the basis of making an arrangement with her husband” (p56); “Some of my clients were beaten on a regular basis for years on end by their mothers-in-law for refusing to have children.  In part, these women stated quite clearly that they did not want to start a family yet, or they did everything in their power to prevent a pregnancy from happening.  All but the tiniest number of these women had no access to contraception.  Only very few had friends or neighbours who acted as their accomplices and obtained the pill for them in secret.  This is why many women have recourse to subterfuge to prevent unwanted pregnancies.  It is not a rarity for them to fake migraines or other physical ailments over such a long period that real somatic illnesses or depression ensue.  For other women by contrast children represent the only source of solace, the only positive feature in their lives” (p57)), and the range of practices flanking it, such as the pathological obsession with virginity as the mark of honour, the unrelenting supervision and chaperoning of young people and the plight of imported brides (according to the prevailing legislation they only acquire an independent right of residence once two years have elapsed and have to endure their husband’s brutality in the meantime as they can be deported for trying to escape the marriage except in circumstances of demonstrable hardship, p59).

Ateş proposes a series of remedies, the first of which is to make forced marriage a criminal offence in its own right.  This would not only allow it to be punished more effectively than hitherto, but also serve to raise awareness of the wrongfulness of the practice, not only amongst perpetrators and victims, but also within the judicial system itself.  Most of the former do not realise that it is already prohibited by law as a particularly serious form of coercion (not that its victims are generally of an age or possess the requisite education or specialist legal knowledge to be able to invoke the protection it affords), and making its illegality explicit would chip off the veneer of tradition that renders it acceptable.  The penalties meted out thus far have not sufficed to convince families of the injustice of selling their daughters and calmly sitting in the room next door whilst she is raped.  Although it would be possible to convict those responsible for forced marriage of rape, coercion, grievous bodily harm and deprivation of personal liberty simultaneously, most judges have shied away from doing so because alleged cultural peculiarities are involved.

Furthermore, the one-year period which must elapse before a marriage can be annulled should be scrapped and the rules governing the right of residence of victims revised to make it possible for girls carried off to Turkey to be married to a partner they barely know to return to Germany even in cases where they have spent over six months abroad in the interim.

Finally, girls who have not yet reached legal adulthood should be given the opportunity to flee to refuges without their parents’ consent being required as this puts them at greater risk: most do not want a complete break with their families, but neither do they wish to be married off against their will and the law as it stands confronts them with a dilemma many cannot cope with.

Reformed legislation must be accompanied by preventive measures, such as lessons incorporated into the official curriculum at nursery and primary schools and letting girls know about where to turn to for help.  From her legal practice, Ateş can corroborate that many women only find out about their rights and the support mechanisms in place when they start attending the aforementioned integration courses.  Passing on this vital information should therefore become a mandatory part of the courses.  Since the entire family is usually implicated in arranging a forced marriage, cooperation with immigrant associations is likewise indispensable given that they play such a key part in relaying the laws, values and standards of majority society.  As Ateş points out, many of these associations have been accepting subsidies to carry out integration work for decades without, to the best of her knowledge, fulfilling their side of the bargain in an active and satisfactory fashion.  On too many occasions they have simply denied the existence of the problem or are guilty of trivialising it.

Honour killings are not condoned by Islam, but, originate from much further back in history, and are deeply entrenched in the tribal societies of the Near and Middle East.  However, passages in the Koran and traditional Islamic texts pertaining to the appropriate conduct of women are often cited by way of justification.  Mosques and Islamic associations therefore ought to be the first to correct misapprehensions amongst their brethren.

Her resounding indictment: “It is deeply shocking that even in a country such as Germany many women had to die before the debate reached its current stage.  The bogus tolerance of so-called cultural peculiarities has led to the toleration of violations of the most fundamental human rights.  For this reason I also accuse the multicultural fanatics of a share of the responsibility for what has gone wrong in Germany.  Honour killings were already being committed in the 1970s and 80s, just as they are today.  But neither the media, mainstream politicians or the diehard Leftists, who were part of the squatter movement and caught up in their autonomous struggle against the ‘filthy state’ bothered their heads about human rights abuses that were taking place right under their noses.  It was the hard-line Left that learned about the immigrant community, including its darker side, from us Turkish and Kurdish women who worked together with them in the widest possible variety of projects.  Many such Leftists did not want to shake the foundations of a world view that cast the foreigners as the good guys and the Germans as the bad”, p62).

Women are regarded as property, not merely of the husband, but of the entire community.  Article 1, paragraph 1 of the German Constitution states that the dignity of the human being is inviolable and that the state is called upon to both respect and protect it.  Unfortunately, large segments of the Turkish and Kurdish communities in Germany do not feel bound by the strictures of the Constitution, which to their minds only applies to native Germans.  Once again, therefore, Ateş suggests that honour killing be included as a separate offence.  Turning a blind eye to this appalling negation of women’s worth would be obscene and cannot be treated more leniently as the product of a different cultural tradition (the so-called “culture bonus”).  We have a moral obligation towards those who cannot defend themselves against social pressure (increasingly, women are being driven to suicide by their relatives in preference to overt slaughter) and to condemn harmful and archaic traditions.

We should not lose sight of the fact that honour killings are not an exclusively male crime.  Because the honour of the entire family is believed to have been besmirched or compromised, female relations are also complicit, though their participation is usually restricted to the planning phase (or furnishing alibis), leaving the actual “execution” (in both senses of the word) to the men.  Mothers in particular might be motivated by envy or resentment to remove the “taint of disgrace” (Chesler agrees: “Many women know that at any moment they might be ‘honour’ murdered by a male family member with the approval of their female relatives.  Like men, many women also internalise their society’s hatred of women and suffer from low self-esteem and feelings of unworthiness.  Like men, women are sometimes exceptionally cruel toward other women”, op. cit., p132).

One of the central messages of the book is made explicit in connection with domestic violence: “It also has to be clear that German laws apply to all the nationalities that live here.  It might seem self-evident, but it is not.  The patriarchs from the parallel societies have laws of their own.  As long as it is not impressed upon them, with all possible rigour, that they are subject to German laws every bit as much as their native-born neighbours, nothing will change.

Again and again I hear certain Turkish and Kurdish men say ‘I couldn’t care less about German laws’.  It is not a matter of coincidence that some Islamists contend that Germany is the most Islamic country in the world because democracy and freedom of religion prevail here.  For which read: ‘Here I can do whatever I want with my wife.  All I have to do is invoke my religion’.  And the not especially religious men say: ‘I am not in the least bit interested in what the German laws state.  I am a Turk and I have a different culture’.  Unlike the German ‘namby-pambies’ these men know how to treat women.  Of course this does not apply to them right across the board.  There definitely are also Turkish and Kurdish men who are labelled ‘namby-pambies’ by their compatriots and fellow males when they treat their women lovingly, with respect, humanely and as equals and neither hit them nor insult them with swearwords” (pp114-5).

 Once again, Chesler concurs: “While some Western men are also domestically violent, woman-battering is no longer culturally acceptable.  Indeed, thanks to Second Wave feminism, it is increasingly prosecuted.  Also, Western woman-battering does not spring from a culturally induced source of shame and honour.  Because of this, preventing, tracking, and abolishing woman-battering among Muslims and non-westerners may need to evolve in different ways” (op. cit., p13, emphasis in original).

No mere scrap of cloth the headscarf is indeed more than a religious symbol, condensing a whole vision of society and how it should be ordered, which advocates the segregation of the sexes in a kind of gender apartheid.  Ateş is not surprised that the most ardent champions of covering up are men since what is really at stake is their ability to assert their supremacy and enforce their view of female sexuality.  On the question of whether women adopt the headscarf voluntarily, Ateş recounts the experience of an acquaintance of hers, a very devout man who never misses Friday prayers when on holiday in Turkey, but who shuns most of the mosques in Berlin because he objects to the imams demanding of the men that they ensure their wives take the veil.  For the thirty years since she first arrived in Berlin, his wife has not worn a headscarf and he could not imagine attempting to compel her to put one on again.  He often feels that he is being accused of not being a proper Muslim and that the mosques are driving through a political agenda.

To quote Chesler again: “Of course, women may wear the hijab for reasons of modesty and to express their respect for both God and the family.  They may do so, just as Catholic nuns or Orthodox Jewish women do, in order to set themselves apart from secular standards of behaviour.  Perhaps some women also feel that such garb might protect them from male sexual violence.  Still, Muslim women bear a greater symbolic burden than their Muslim male counterparts and are more closely scrutinised, no matter what they do” (p155).

For Ateş, regardless of whether the wearing of the headscarf is a religious duty, it stands in flagrant contradiction to Article 3, paragraph 2 of the Constitution, which talks about the equality of everyone before the law.  Men and women enjoy equal rights and the state must ensure that this equality is implemented as well as working to remove disadvantages.  Nobody may be discriminated against or given preferential treatment on grounds of their gender.  When the wearing of headscarves is aimed at influencing others or is abused politically in public life to undermine the principle of equality it becomes an issue of crucial social significance.  It has no place where the state is being represented in any capacity, since the state, unlike the individual, has an obligation to obey the provisions of the Constitution in its entirety and must prevent everything that creates the impression that the sexes do not possess equal rights.  In the context of schools in particular the state’s duty is to impart these rights and put them into practice.  It damages its own credibility if it applies double standards, absolving one group, in this instance Muslims, of the responsibility of observing the principle of equality.

Following an examination of controversies over veiling within Islam, Ateş concludes: “When a religion calls for the complete subordination of the woman to the authority of the man, or cites such religious precepts in order to justify such subordination, limits have to be placed on the freedom of religion and belief.  I am of the view that the headscarf is not a religious, but a political symbol of the subordinate position of women.  The headscarf is a gender-specific outward mark of differentiation between men and women, which emphatically postulates such a difference.  It does not demonstrate the religious subordination of women in their relationship with God, but the social subordination of women under the dominion of men.  For this reason it should not – as repeatedly occurs – be treated as the equivalent of the cross or the kippah, which are exclusively religious symbols and do not in any respect define gender roles.  The headscarf signals the sexual value of the woman, which would arouse men if it were not concealed.  It is a symbol of the reduction of women to a sex object” (p126).

The German Constitutional Court’s so-called headscarf ruling from 24^th September 2003 was a landmark victory for cultural relativism and a complete cop-out.  Prospective Muslim teacher Fereshta Ludin was instructed by the Baden-Wurttemberg Ministry of Culture not to wear a headscarf whilst giving lessons.  When presented with the opportunity to introduce uniform legislation by instituting a complete ban, the Court left the decision to the discretion of each federal state.  The minority opinion from the dissenting judges found fault with the ruling because it neglected to consider the implications of the headscarf in terms of the role accorded to women, the view that veiling guarantees the woman’s subordination to the man being very widespread amongst Muslims and therefore clashing with the Constitution’s stipulation of equality.  As Ateş remarks, it was, ironically, the conservative judges who adopted this firm stance in favour of equal rights.

Fitting in with the crowd can be a reason for adopting the headscarf for schoolgirls, but the real unifying factor is the wish to dissociate themselves from their Christian and Jewish peers and display their Muslim identity for all to see.  Ateş expresses irritation at young girls and women who wear a headscarf, yet at the same time plaster themselves with make-up and wear figure-hugging, erotic clothes.  Some of them even combine the headscarf with bare midriffs that show off their belly piercings.  Whereas for Ateş this approach is riddled with contradictions the standard retort from the women themselves when challenged about why they wear sexy apparel when a headscarf is supposed to stop them being looked upon as sex objects is that just because they wear one it does not mean they have to walk around looking ugly.  As long as their hair is covered, putting on make-up and being pretty is no sin.

Ateş: “These women are of course, however, making themselves into sex objects since they are also playing up to men’s fantasies of what might be concealed beneath the covering.  I can see no genuine difference between a woman draped half naked for advertising purposes over a car bonnet and one hidden under a veil.  In both cases she is a sex object and is reduced to that alone” (p131).

We should be under no illusions about the seriousness of the threat to equality for girls.  For example, in its judgement on excusing a Muslim girl from mixed gym classes dated 24^th March 1992 the Supreme Administrative Court of Bremen stated that in deciding whether the pupil could be exempted it did not matter whether her religion discriminated against her as a woman.  Such scruples as whether Muslim girls were as a result of religious commandments (such as wearing the headscarf) being treated as full equals according to Western standards or whether such practices impinged on their equality as women within Western society were likewise deemed irrelevant.  In other words, in the Court’s learned estimation the equal rights to which Western girls and women are entitled cannot be demanded for Muslim women because their religion obstructs it.

Ateş is dumbfounded by the mind-boggling hypocrisy that informs such a verdict, which completely overlooks the fact that we live in a secular, pluralist society in which even Muslim schoolgirls can hardly escape noticing the “nudity” of others given that we are all bombarded with highly sexualised advertising images of naked women on the TV and in magazines.  The Court’s pronouncement smacks of ignorance and indifference, an easier way out than subjecting the (massive) social implications to careful scrutiny.  More perniciously, such reactions from the authorities make it possible for girls to be confined in an Islamic parallel society against their will.  Parents who want to keep their daughters away from all Western influences feel vindicated in their strivings by such a response.  Letting the girls off gym lessons is entirely at odds with the school’s educational brief, and it is incompatible with the right of the child to equal opportunities and to develop her full potential within mainstream society.  Efforts to promote religious and cultural diversity are taking place at the expense of women and girls when traditions that show contempt for human beings in general and women in particular are endorsed out of a misconceived notion of a multicultural society and when their irreconcilability with inalienable rights is ignored.

Turning to the Sharia (the primary sources of which are the Koran and the Sunna, as set out in the Hadith), Ateş is careful to dispel any misconceptions by reminding us that the “path to the watering hole” is not a coherent, monolithic, clearly delineated set of rules, containing as it does both legal and moral components.  The Sharia is not a conventional legal text in the sense that it has been codified, could be purchased in book form and used as a reference work.  Nor is there one single Sharia, with identical rules applicable throughout the Islamic world.  Instead there are five major legal schools, four Sunni and one Shiite and even within the schools themselves no general consensus exists amongst scholars as to how it should be interpreted beyond the fundamental matters of religious observance, which takes up its bulk.

The Sharia does provide regulations governing every aspect of life, encompassing civil and social law, which includes family and marital relations, criminal law, ethics and precise edicts on religious practice, such as praying five times a day and fasting during Ramadan.  No area of human activity is omitted, which is why many of Islam’s critics feel that secularisation attempts are doomed to failure by definition.

Crucially, the Sharia does institutionalise inequality between men and women (equal worth in the sight of God not being quite the same thing, as evidenced by the Cairo Declaration of 5^th August 1990, which already in Article 1 diverges from the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  It avers that all human beings form part of a single family, whose members are linked through subjugation to God and as descendants of Adam.  They are all equal in the sense of fundamental human dignity, rights and duties.  “True faith is the guarantee for the enjoyment of such dignity on the path towards human perfection”.  Article 24 leaves no doubt as to the source of authority, specifying that all of the rights and freedoms mentioned in the Declaration are subject to the Sharia.  In Article 6 women are accorded equal human dignity with men and we are told that they too have rights and duties.  They come under autonomous civil law and are financially independent as well as entitled to retain their own name and descent.  The husband must provide for his family and its welfare).  Family, inheritance and criminal law are the best sources for gauging the legal situation of women according to the Sharia.  Ateş believes that we are living through an Islamic Reformation of equal historical significance (and every bit as traumatic) to its Christian counterpart, the most striking difference being that so many of its leading figures and thinkers are women, both in Muslim countries and the West.

Many of the rules in the Sharia are misogynistic and for Ateş the real question is whether or not they can be changed.  Many of them appear so backward that they cannot be salvaged for use in a modern, liberal democracy, such as the lesser value attached to a woman’s testimony, the smaller portion of an inheritance granted her by virtue of her sex and the right of a man to physically chastise her, or polygamy.  Ateş is baffled as to how women’s rights campaigners in certain Muslim countries can sincerely believe that if only Islam were interpreted correctly the disadvantages accruing to women would vanish.

Equality can only be arrived at through a root and branch reform of Islam, which would require agreement being reached amongst Muslims that certain parts of the Koran have to be consigned to the past.  That the sacred texts are held to be direct revelations of the timeless and eternally valid will of God acts as a barrier to jettisoning practices which have been overtaken by social evolution.  In spite of ongoing exertions to bring laws up to date in countries such as Turkey, the tacit assumption is that women are inferior and subordinate to men.  One of the principles of Islamic law is that like must be treated as like and unlike as unlike.  When He created them, Allah gave men and women equal worth, but because of their differing natures assigned different tasks to them, from which follows that their rights and duties are not identical.  Furthermore, the fact that women possess fewer rights than men should not be seen as unjust as men are the breadwinners and protectors of their families and as such have a heavy burden incumbent on them.  Some Islamic scholars go so far as to contend that women are thereby given preferential treatment.

In the meantime, Europe can no longer avoid interrogating the issue of whether the Sharia and the rights it sanctions for men (and denies for women) is compatible with secular, enlightened principles of the rule of law and what the limits to religious freedom are.  Within German society (and the same is true elsewhere in Europe) there is a group of people who want to withdraw from the prevailing legal order altogether.  This would mean introducing the Sharia in matters pertaining to family and inheritance law for the Muslim community: “I am of the view that the Sharia, even in its most liberal interpretation, is not in harmony with our Constitution.  Because it represents a religious system of laws, which lays claim to regulating every area of the individual’s life and only recognises Allah as lawmaker.  Such a system of laws shuts itself off from any secularisation.  It should not become established in Germany and Europe through certain parts of it being permitted to apply to Muslim citizens.  For Islam too the line of secularisation must run through religion and politics.

If the Sharia were – even in part – to be introduced into Germany Muslims would obviously assess it as a sign of acceptance.  They would thereby be given official permission to bid farewell to the generally applicable system of laws and set up an Islamic parallel society with laws of its own.  This is in my opinion quite clearly the objective of those Muslims who are clamouring for the application of the Sharia in Germany and other democratic societies.

Given that in Islamic law Allah is understood to be the sole legislator, a principle is articulated that is incompatible with the central proposition of the rule of law, namely that laws are devised by human beings and may therefore be changed.  This is precisely the aspect stressed by many opponents and critics of Islam, who believe that Islam cannot be reformed.  If the people or its representatives cannot convince the legislator to the need for better and more appropriate laws that take account of contemporary realities because Allah as legislator is not available to mankind then the laws are inalterable and irrevocably fixed” (p159).

Ateş opens her chapter on sexuality in Islam with characteristic frankness: this is the area where women’s relative lack of privilege is most blatant.  Provided that women follow the rules drawn up exclusively by men they are accorded a right to exist, but this is a far cry from a life lived to the full since participation in social life is reserved for men.

In the Muslim world an extreme hostility to sexuality holds sway alongside a high degree of sexualisation with all the tensions this implies.  Double standards are rife.  All matters sexual are hedged about with shame and taboo and sexuality is repressed, combated and subject to controls whilst at the same time men satisfy desires that are not always compatible with religious commandments.  In this context, Ateş draws attention to the use of prostitutes as a proof of male potency and the hypocrisy of married men who lock their wives up at home allegedly to protect their decency and shield them from the predatory gaze of other males before heading off to the brothel.  Amongst orthodox Muslims men have the freedom to do whatever they like, they are entitled to take pleasure from sexual congress, whereas a woman’s role is to be available, arouse her husband and supply the clan with male heirs, enduring her reproductive burden without any cravings or enjoyment of her own.  That intercourse leaves the believer somehow dirty and impure is revealed by the injunction to wash immediately after the act (when the man is considered ritually unclean).  For Ateş, sexuality needs to be liberated from the influence of religion, which would benefit both men and women alike.

She goes on to tackle the obsession with virginity bordering on the manic that ruins the lives of young women (touching upon sensitive issues such as the frequency of recourse to anal sex in order to preserve chastity and the rising demand for hymen reconstruction operations prior to marriage), segregation of the sexes, male sexuality as portrayed by the sacred texts, polygamy, “temporary marriages” (outlawed in certain Muslim countries as a form of prostitution, the duration of which can vary from an hour to several years, and which can offer a means of gaining sexual experience before marriage and an opportunity for single and divorced women to engage in legitimate sexual contact), attitudes towards homosexuality, sexual abuse of children and the image of women as potential whores and seductresses.  On that latter question, Ateş does not gloss over the fact that inculcated sexism spills over the community divide: “German [woman] teachers and many German women in general are confronted again and again with the sexist image of women harboured by Muslim youths and men.  And this sexism differs from that of native German men in that it is accompanied by a certain racism.  When challenged about their brusque treatment of native German women most of these youths and men reply: ‘They are only Germans, after all.  They are all whores in any case’.

I get the impression that the causes of the contempt evinced towards Western women by Muslim youths and men in the form of sexual insults and terms of abuse have not yet been given an appropriate airing within the integration debate.  We do talk about the insults experienced by women in part, but we do not speak openly about the origin of the contempt of the free Western way of life.

Offence given to Muslims, such as in the caricature dispute, for example, and the insults meted out to Muslim women who are looked at with suspicion and disapproved of because of their headscarves are dealt with frequently, however.  The insults and offence given to German women, secularists and atheists by contrast are discreetly passed over and we speak even less about the religious and cultural-specific dimensions of this contempt.  I am even repeatedly accused of going so far as to ethnicise sexism.  You do have to ask yourself, however, why you hear phrases in Turkish or German such as ‘I’ll fuck your mother’s cunt’ spoken on the Metro or in the playgrounds by Turkish boys who are often not older than about six, whereas you at most overhear the like from German children when they have become integrated in their neighbourhoods into the community of Turkish, Kurdish or Arab children.  I believe that quite a few people make life easier for themselves in the course of the integration debate when they put the blame exclusively on the social problems of these children and youths and fail to take account of their religious and cultural character.  Only an open and honest discussion unimpeded by false taboos and mental blocks can lead to a dialogue from which solutions can emerge” (pp188-9).

The freedom to practice one’s religion is a fundamental right in Europe and guaranteed by the German Constitution.  What is understood by such freedom, however, is one thing in the Western, Judaeo-Christian and Enlightenment tradition and quite another in the Islamic world.  Whereas for the former, tolerance, sensitivity and respect for other faiths take centre stage, in Muslim societies pushing for absolute precedence to be given to one’s own religion is the norm.  Ateş describes this as absolutism and sees in it a defining trait of Islam rather than simply the reflex of a minority subsumed, but not integrated, within a wider society.  She roundly rejects accusations from certain Islamic associations of growing Islamophobia in Germany.  On the contrary, Islam is benefiting from uncritical preferential treatment compared with other religions, with the state responding to the problems of parallel societies and lack of integration by enhancing the faith’s institutional status (although, as she immediately comments, it is surely well nigh impossible to institutionalise a religion that itself knows no institutions).  Political parties and churches have created posts for Islamic affairs specialists, lessons on Islam are in the process of being built into the school curriculum, the German public service broadcaster ZDF has created an Internet portal that showcases a different Muslim every Friday and there have been calls to set aside one or more important dates in the Muslim calendar as public holidays nationally.  Ateş asks the pertinent question as to why the idea of Jewish public holidays has never been mooted, or even a day on which the nation could contemplate the immense sufferings visited upon the Jews by the Nazi regime, discerning in the special treatment granted to Islam a capitulation to the fundamentalists, an appeasement in the face of terror threats.

Worryingly, this preferential treatment is being carried over to the realm of jurisprudence where even the most abstruse interpretations of the Koran are accepted.  Ateş makes reference to a case which gained notoriety in spring of last year when a plaintiff of North African origin petitioned for an early divorce on grounds that she was being battered by her husband.  She had already been given sole right of occupancy of the marital home and a restraining order had been issued against her abusive spouse.  Her application for an accelerated divorce was turned down by the woman judge, however, who quoted the husband’s right of physical chastisement according to the Koran and added that any woman who entered into matrimony with a Muslim man must be aware of what she was letting herself in for.  Identical rights and laws should appertain to all, irrespective of religious affiliation: “I can discern a dangerous development in Germany whereby, under the guise of freedom of religion and worship, Islamic law and, with it, an authoritarian, archaic-patriarchal parallel society is being established with the seal of approval as it were of the courts, which is diametrically opposed to the modern, enlightened principles of the rule of law and will erode the latter step by step.

State neutrality towards religions should not be allowed to go so far as to accept breaches of fundamental and human rights in the name of freedom of religion and worship.  Every religion should be subject to an audit to determine the extent to which it upholds the Constitution.  Clear limits should be placed on the freedom to practice and spread one’s faith where they impinge on fundamental rights.

Native Germans cannot simply turn round and say that forced marriages, honour killings, violence against women and girls, exemption from lessons at school or even the slaughter of animals are just Islamic customs and traditions, which are none of their business.  Because these traditions and customs are being practiced in German society and the people who practice them and those who suffer from them are for the most part German citizens.  The in many ways misconceived tolerance of German society promotes and bolsters in an extreme manner the parallel societies that already exist as well as encouraging the stream of adherents into fundamentalist faith communities” (pp202-3).

We feminists have precious little to congratulate ourselves on: “It may well be the case that native German men do not necessarily have to develop a great interest in the sexual liberation of Muslim women.  What about the native German feminists, who, for example, see in the headscarf a symbol of emancipation, regard most forced marriages as arranged marriages and are every bit as reluctant as their fellow male multiculturalists to take note of the oppressed sexuality of women in Islam?  What kind of barrier exists in the minds of these women, who are able to criticise the Catholic church again and again for its inimical attitude towards sexuality and women only to defend Islam in the same breath?  What about sexual self-determination, which they fought for so bitterly?  Does it really only apply to sexually liberated Christian women?  Is it not misogynistic to the umpteenth degree to put up with the oppression of women on the pretext of freedom of religion?” (pp189-90).

Phyllis Chesler also exhorts us to reexamine our attitudes: “In the name of multicultural correctness (all cultures are equal, but formerly colonised cultures are more equal), the feminist academy and media appear to have all but abandoned vulnerable people: Muslims, as well as Christians, Jews, and Hindus, to the forces of reactionary Islamism.

Because feminist academies are now so heavily influenced by left ways of thinking, many now believe that speaking out against headscarves, face veils, the chador, arranged and child marriages, polygamy, forced pregnancies, or female genital mutilation is either ‘imperialist’ or ‘crusade-ist’” (op. cit., p2).

And: “I did not foresee the extent to which feminists – who, philosophically, are universalists and therefore interventionists – would, paradoxically, become both multiculturalists and isolationists.  Such cultural relativism (in the presumed service of antiracism) is perhaps the greatest failing of the feminist establishment” (op. cit., pp2-3).

Apathy does not become us: “Islamic terrorism is threatening to destroy what feminists and other forces for democracy have accomplished thus far.  But even as Western feminists decry sexist oppression everywhere (and they do, they do), their own doctrine of multicultural relativism allows them to have one standard for western women and another, much lower, standard for women who live under Islam.  In my view, such multicultural relativism is an ingeniously disguised form of racism and sexism.  The presumed compassion involved in viewing the veil as a free choice or polygamy as a colourful cultural custom is, I believe, tragically misguided and a betrayal of feminist principles” (Chesler, op. cit., p36).

Ateş’ invaluable contribution to the debate should function as both clarion call and admonition.  No longer should we turn a blind eye to the injustices being committed in our midst.

All translations copyright © The Chameleon, 2007

The snowflakes would muffle the sound of passing cars as they descended sedately to settle on the lawns and bare twigs, the pristine blanket dented by crusts scattered for the blackbirds and sparrows. Christmas tree lights shone through the net curtains of every living room offering cheer to the passer-by in the brooding darkness that only grudgingly lifted. The hamper was almost empty, perhaps a pudding dense with raisins and essence of rum.

Hogmanay, fiddles and accordions on the radio, sentimental ballads and tartan on the small screen. My Mother in the kitchen preparing the feast, cutting the cheddar into small cubes (in the days when the refrigerated section of the supermarket was filled with vacuum-packed lumps of the stuff, distinguished in strength by the intensity of the shades of orange, perhaps some Philadelphia and a few cuts of Edam, which she never forgot to purchase for me, milder and correspondingly paler than our native variety with its red wax rind) and skewering them with cocktail sticks, frying mini sausages and heating the oven for the sausage rolls. The smoked glass serving dish was split into four compartments, one for salted peanuts (we hadn’t yet encountered dry roasted), one for silverskin onions preserved in vinegar so bitterly acidic it instantly corroded the taste buds, one for crisps (usually salt and vinegar flavour) and one for the cheese. Slices of Mother’s Pride Scottish Plain (crusts removed for me) in a stack, buttered with unsalted, oatcakes and Jacob’s Cream Crackers. Decorative plates retrieved from the china cabinet for the shortbread Petticoat Tails unadulterated by chocolate coating. Finally, my Father’s favourite, the vol-au-vents, which she filled with egg mayonnaise and mushroom.

The wooden folding table would be summoned forth from the coal cellar and adorned with one of the few pieces of embroidered linen to have survived the boiler leak. We only dined together on Christmas Day, arriving home at different times, balancing a tray on our knees as we devoured the children’s programmes between four and five forty-five.

The drinks cabinet that was kept under lock and key for the rest of the year opened to reveal a bottle of Grouse, the garish yellow of Advocaat, Babycham (for my then immature palate, spirits too shudder-inducingly strong and wine as yet undiscovered) and raspberry diluting cordial for my Father who never touched a drop. My Mother would take a glass of sherry for the bells, the annual reward she allowed herself for all her toil. “Happy New Year, Auld Ane,” my Father would pronounce as he kissed her on the cheek. Our cheeks were flushed with excitement and fatigue, we felt giddily grown-up awake so late. Once Big Ben’s sonorous and solemn tones had reverberated round the room the more modest ring of the telephone would ensue, aunts and uncles with warmth and optimism in their voices. Once the greetings had been exchanged, my Father would take the phone off the hook and wrap the receiver in cardigans and coats; he was a light sleeper who did not want to be disturbed by wrong numbers (this instilled in me a dread of the phone I have still not overcome, a recurrent nightmare involved me creeping downstairs in the middle of the night because nobody else would answer and being rooted to the spot as an evil stranger filled my defenceless ear with obscenities). I would sink into a fitful sleep, startled awake by the wailing and cursing of staggering drunks who sometimes strayed down the driveway to relieve themselves. My heart would thump in terror as I imagined them hauling themselves on to the concrete ledge above the front door to tap on my window.

After the long lie, we would wait with anticipation for the doorbell to ring. First would be Uncle Ian, the classic tall, dark and handsome man, spindly and with skin so pale it was almost translucent he always looked too fragile in his best dark suit, a half in his pocket, bearing a lump of coal and black bun. We knew that there was never any danger of the god-fearing Mrs Brown (we would drape a carrier bag containing her Sunday Post around the fencepost, as the paper van always blared its horn in announcement of its arrival whilst she was busy with her devotions in the North Church, the highlight of whose earthly span was when her minister son Colin appeared on Late Call) ever coming round, as she was as likely to permit herself any enjoyment as she was to miss Sunday service or emerge into public view without a panty girdle beneath her constricting tweed skirt and we instead looked forward to our other neighbours dropping by (my Mother would gladly accept a wee nip diluted with lemonade). Now the composition of the street has changed completely and the sense of community evaporated with the sprouting of the satellite dishes. All the original families have left, our laughter and anxieties, conflicts and reconciliations soaked up by the mute custodians, the house’s bricks.