Hege Storhaug, HRS
Gjennom flere år har HRS vært bekymret for en politisk villet utvikling i blant annet barnevernet, som åpenbart er et resultat av den multikulturelle ideologien, altså gruppetenkningen som blant annet fører til forskjellsbehandling av barn på bakgrunn av hvilken opprinnelseskultur foreldrene har. Barnevernet (og andre instanser som eksempelvis sosialkontor), rekrutterer aktivt ansatte med ikke-vestlig bakgrunn som det forventes innehar ekspertise som er nyttig i saker om ikke-vestlige barn. Vi har sett mang en tragisk utgang av denne tankegangen, som i utgangspunktet selvsagt er velmenende, men som vi mener kan gi svært uheldige konsekvenser for det enkelte barnet. Barnets rettigheter og behov etter norsk standard, lover og regler, skyves i bakgrunnen til fordel for ”kulturekspertenes” ønske (eller opplevelse av press) om å beskytte eget miljø, klan, bekjente osv. Denne særskilte rekrutteringen er et utslag av mangel på forståelse i det offentlige (og i det politiske livet) for kulturforskjeller mellom vårt individbaserte rettighetssamfunn og kollektivistiske samfunn der beskyttelse av ære og underkastelse i de hierarkiske strukturene er en grunntanke. En grunntanke som får forrang også for et lidende barn.
Denne ofte misforståtte tankegangen og de katastrofale resultatene i konkrete saker, har vi ikke minst sett på nært hold den siste tiden etter at vi har jobbet aktivt opp mot somaliske miljø. Tross det man må kalle ekstreme voldssaker, og endog åpenbar fare for forestående kjønnslemlestelse av barn og påfølgende tvangsekteskap, har barnevernet sviktet å agere etter fornuft og regelverk etter at ”kultureksperter” i de somaliske rekkene har blitt tilkalt for å analysere barnas/familiens situasjon. ”Kultureksperten” kan ha lojaliteten hos foreldrene (og egen klan), ikke hos barna. Følgende er hjerteskjærende – uten at barnevernets ledelse ser ut til å forstå det fnugg av hvilke mekanismer som de selv er med på å sette i sving.
La det være sagt; HRS mener ikke at alle i barnevernet og i andre sentrale offentlige institusjoner er illojale overfor det norske systemet. Men vi ser et klart mønster; ofte sviktes barna idet kultureksperten er inne i saken. Dette var også nylig tema for et politisk møte vi hadde med en sentral politiker knyttet til barnevernet, der vedkommende politiker selv hadde forstått at den fremtredende trenden med å benytte folk med samme kulturbakgrunn som foreldrene, ofte kan føre til at barna sviktes.
Erfaringene til britiskfødte Hannah Shah avdekker det samme mønsteret. Boken ”The Imam’s Daughter”, handler om et barn som misbrukes seksuelt av faren fra hun er fem år gammel. Faren skal være høyt respektert i det pakistanskmuslimske miljøet der familien bor i Nord-England. Faren innvandret fra Pakistan for rundt 40 år siden, men det som skjedde med Hannah er som en kopi av forhold vi kjenner til hører hjemme i Pakistan. Den ”største synden” Hannah har begått var å falle fra islam etter at hun endelig klarte å hjelpe seg selv bort fra den brutale faren. Han og rundt 40 menn var etter Hannah for å drepe henne, skriver Dominic Lawson i timesonline.co.uk:
We are all too familiar with the persecution of Christians in countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan. Yet sitting in front of me is a British woman whose life has been threatened in this country solely because she is a Christian. Indeed, so real is the threat that the book she has written about her experiences has had to appear under an assumed name.
The book is called The Imam’s Daughter because “Hannah Shah” is just that: the daughter of an imam in one of the tight-knit Deobandi Muslim Pakistani communities in the north of England. Her father emigrated to this country from rural Pakistan some time in the 1960s and is, apparently, a highly respected local figure.
He is also an incestuous child abuser, repeatedly raping his daughter from the age of five until she was 15, ostensibly as part of her punishment for being “disobedient”. At the age of 16 she fled her family to avoid the forced marriage they had planned for her in Pakistan. A much, much greater affront to “honour” in her family’s eyes, however, was the fact that she then became a Christian – an apostate. The Koran is explicit that apostasy is punishable by death; thus it was that her father the imam led a 40-strong gang – in the middle of a British city – to find and kill her.
Hannah er i dag gift med en kristen. Hun kommer ikke til å anmelde faren. Hun orker ikke å såre moren ved å påføre familien enda mer skam (altså er hun fremdeles på et vis et produkt av æreskulturen som hun selv er slik et grotesk offer for):
Hannah’s own voice is quiet and emerges from a tiny frame. She is clearly nervous about talking to a journalist and the stress she has been under is betrayed by a bald patch on the left side of her head. Yet she has a lovely natural smile, especially when she reveals that she got married a year ago; her husband works in the Church of England, “though not as a vicar”.
I tell Hannah that the passages in her memoir about her sexual abuse are almost impossible to read – but I also found it hard to understand why, now that she is in her early thirties, independent and married, she has not reported her father’s horrific assaults on her to the police.
“What has stopped me is that if my dad went to prison, the shame that would be brought upon the rest of the family would be horrific. My mum would not be able to . . . I mean, it’s bad enough having a daughter who’s left, is not agreeing to her marriage and is now a Christian. Then to have my dad in prison would be the end for her.”
I tell Hannah, perhaps a little cruelly, that in her use of the word “shame” she is echoing the sort of arguments that her own family had used against her.
“I understand that, but what I’m saying is that if I do that, then there will never be a door open to me to have contact with my family ever again. I’m still hoping that there will be some opportunity for that.”
Hva om familien og miljøet skulle avdekke at hun er pseudonymet Hannah Shah?
“To be honest, I don’t even want to think about that. Either they will decide between them that they are not going to say anything because it will bring shame on all the community, or they will decide that they want to take action. Then my life will become even more difficult, because they’ll all be looking for me.”
Hannahs imam-far var ikke nådig da han forstod at hun hadde snudd islam ryggen. Hun er ikke tvil om at han ønsker henne drept.
Hannah’s description in the book of the moment when her “community” discovered the “safe” home where she had fled after becoming an apostate is terrifying. A mob with her father at its head pounded and hammered at the door as she cowered upstairs hoping she could not be seen or heard. She heard her father shout through the letter box: “Filthy traitor! Betrayer of your faith! Cursed traitor! We’re going to rip your throat out! We’ll burn you alive!”
Does she still believe they would have killed her? “Yes, without a doubt. They had hammers and knives and axes.”
Hvorfor tilkalte hun ikke politiet for hjelp? Hun trodde ikke på beskyttelse fra myndighetene, med god grunn. Hun hadde opplevd kulturekspertenes svik allerede, og hun mener at hun langt fra er den eneste jenta i nød som har opplevd dette sviket:
“First, I didn’t think the police would believe me. That sort of thing just doesn’t happen in this country – or that’s what they’d think. Second, I didn’t believe I would get help or protection from the authorities.”
Hannah had good reason for this doubt. When, at school, she had finally summoned the courage to tell a teacher that her father had been beating her (she couldn’t bring herself to reveal the sexual abuse), the social services sent out a social worker from her own community. He chose not to believe Hannah and, in effect, shopped her to her father, who gave her the most brutal beating of her life. When she later confronted the social worker, he said: “It’s not right to betray your community.”
Hannah blames what is sometimes called political correctness for this debacle: “My teachers had thought they were doing the right thing, they thought it showed ‘cultural sensitivity’ by bringing in someone from my own community to ‘help’, but it was the worst thing they could have done to me. This happens a lot.
“When I’ve been working with girls who were trying to get out of an arranged marriage, or want to convert to Christianity, and they have contacted social services as they need to get out of their homes, the reaction has been ‘we’ll send someone from your community to talk to your parents’. I know why they are doing this, they are trying to be understanding, but it’s the last thing that the authorities should do in such situations.”
At erkebiskopen av Canterbury støttet britiske myndigheters opprettelse av shariadomstoler i fjor, mener Hannah er et ytterligere svik mot muslimske kvinner.
“I was horrified.” If you could speak to him now, what would you say to the archbishop? “I would say: have you actually spoken to any ordinary Muslim women about the situation that they live in, in their communities? By putting in place these Muslim arbitration tribunals, where a woman’s witness is half that of a man, you are silencing women even more.”
She believes the British government is making exactly the same mistake as Rowan Williams: “It says it talks to the Muslim community, but it’s not speaking to the women. I mean, you are always hearing Muslim men speaking out, the representatives of the big federations, but the government is not listening to Muslim women. With the sharia law situation and the Muslim arbitration tribunals, have they thought about what effect these tribunals have on Muslim women? I don’t think so.”
Hannah peker også på dette paradokset: Hvordan britiske myndigheter viker i frykt når muslimske rekker presser religion inn i samfunnet, men slår hardt ned på misjonering motsatt vei:
It’s fair to say that Hannah Shah is an evangelical Christian, who clearly feels a duty to spread her new faith to Muslims– something with which the Church of England’s eternally emollient establishment is very uncomfortable and the government even more so. She points out that even within this notionally Christian country, people are “persecuted” for evangelism of even the mildest sort. She cites the recent cases of the nurse who was suspended for offering to pray for a patient and the foster parents who were struck off after a Muslim girl in their care converted to Christianity.
“Such people – I’m not talking about apostates like me – have been persecuted or ostracized in this country simply because they want to share their faith with others. People call this political correctness but I actually think it is based on a fear of Muslims, what they might do if provoked.”