Forced-marriage discourse frames Muslim culture as feudal and unintegrable

Evidence

From the book’s beginning, the problem of forced marriage is analysed as essentially one of culture clash between the West and those non-Western societies where feudal values still rein and where ‘an individual’s worth is entirely dependent on religion, clan, caste, and class.’ There has not been open debate about the problems that non-Western immigrants bring to the West because older colonial countries are too guilt-ridden, the book declares. Even Scandinavia, where debate is more open, Storhaug laments, is still polarized for and against immigration. In contrast, Human Rights Service is primarily interested in integration. Immigrants are failing to integrate because they marry within their own cultures, often bringing spouses from their countries of origin, and thus perpetuating the feudal cultures from which they come. The book’s argument is a simple one: marriage patterns indicate that immigrants marry persons from their homelands. Often such marriages are forced and involve rape. These practices occur because immigrants want to bring their relatives to the West through family reunification, and they occur because such cultures are deeply patriarchal. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 260

Categorization

• DEFINE: Lays out the core culture-clash framing Razack will critique: feudal vs. Western, guilt-ridden colonial silence, integration-as-ending-endogamy.
• XREF: Resonates with the ‘imperilled Muslim woman’ and racist-feminism argument in the book’s broader thesis; parallels the author’s other work on race and feminism.
• ADDENDUM: Could supplement the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ piece’s logic: here moral panics are weaponized as integration policy rather than dress policing.