Anti-forced-marriage law polarizes communities more than it reduces violence

Evidence

Producing a civilized Europe and a stigmatized and closely watched non-West, these laws and policies foreclose a consideration of other factors that operate in the lives of Muslim youth. For example, they do not foster a positive climate in which Muslim youth and more progressive Muslims can internally contest patriarchal narratives. Instead, they polarize. Like Storhaug’s handbook for Muslim girls on the perils of their culture, they do not imagine what an educational approach that promoted more positive ideas of Islam might actually accomplish. Instead of considering school dropout among young Muslims as a clear indicator of Muslim cultural deficit, we might consider, as so much schooling literature has shown, that schools in fact fail racial minorities through an inattention to their specific educational needs, and through a school climate of racial hostility. Teaching young Muslims about the superiority of European culture increases this racial divide and does not respond to educational needs more directly connected to their mastery of the curriculum and to the hostility of the school environment. It may well be that laws and policies such as those currently being considered stigmatize and exacerbate tensions within communities more than they actually give rise to the conditions under which less violence might occur. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 316