October 3, 2009

South Asian men who marry British women... and are abused by them.

BBC reports:
"All they wanted was someone to earn money for them. I was being treated like an animal. All my dignity and self-respect had been taken away and I was also worried about the threats to my sister. I was powerless to do anything to stop it."

Due to feelings of shame Mahmood decided not to tell his family back in Pakistan.

"My wife would wake me up in the middle of the night and beat me, demanding money, and when I did not have any, my brother-in-laws would come and punch me and beat my back with iron bars. It was a living hell."...

Karma Nirvana, a group which helps abused Asian men and women, believes most men do not seek help as many victims marry cousins and can share the same uncles, aunts and even grandparents. Project team leader Shazia Qayum said: "Men would feel embarrassed to admit that they were having problems and choose to suffer in silence for the sake of respect."

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

This doesn't sound like a British or Western problem at all.

traditionalguy said...

Some people can handle a British woman and some people cannot. We need a new Olympic event for South Asian men leading British women over a controlled course.

Skyler said...

Sounds like a CAIR sponsored piece of journalism. Western woman are so evil, I guess. Better start a jihad.

Anonymous said...

Pakistani Mahmood Muhammad (not his real name) married a British-born Asian woman

This is a Pakistani woman, with a bunch of thuggish Pakistani relatives acting in the very worst ways of the old country without old country norms bounding them, no?

I'm not bashing Pakistanis here. Salt of the earth and all that. But we aren't talking about Hermoine Grange getting a mail-order groom.

Or am I missing something?

Automatic_Wing said...

Deceptive headline. I was picturing these little Pakistani guys marrying big, pasty, gap-toothed English girls and getting whacked with frying pans or whatever.

But it's really about Pakistanis marrying other Pakistanis in the UK and the guys getting beat up by the wife's brothers and uncles. In other words, vibrant cultural diversity. Or is it culturally diverse vibrancy? Whatever, it can only be a good thing.

Fred4Pres said...

By South Asian, you mean Indian and Pakistani, not Thai or Vietnamese.

Don't let Thai and Vietnamese guys fool you. A lot of them know marital arts and are good at them.

Fred4Pres said...

Maguro, you are right. I also initially though the reference was to big drunken Ladettes laying into their immigrant husbands after a long day.

careen said...

So tell the stupid bitch to earn her own money. She's a Western Woman, she can do that.

Retriever said...

It's very misleading. Reported that way, no doubt, to highlight the relatively rare phenomenon of men being the victims of domestic violence.

It's a problem of recent immigrants being exploited by earlier arrivals. Happens here all the time with Latin Americans, Asians, Africans who come here (illegally) hoping for a better life, but end up exploited, often by people from their same group. Cruel, but not the same as domestic violence without an economic motive. These men were lured (presumably they wanted the Brit equivalent of a green card, and the marriages might not have been solely about love?) by people who wanted to exploit them.

Shanna said...

It's probably not a good idea to marry without really knowing your spouse. These sound like arranged marriages, right?

And yes, the title was misleading.

Balfegor said...

Re: Fred4pres

A lot of them know marital arts and are good at them.

Is . . . is that a pun?

Re: Shanna

It's probably not a good idea to marry without really knowing your spouse. These sound like arranged marriages, right?

Don't know about that first proposition -- arranged marriages seem to have worked out well among my relations. Generally better than the love matches, at least.

But yes, these do sound like arranged marriages. This is the problem, though, with arranging marriages when one family is far away, and you don't have the ties to their community to assess what they are really like. Best to go with a family you know.

Shanna said...

This is the problem, though, with arranging marriages when one family is far away, and you don't have the ties to their community to assess what they are really like. Best to go with a family you know.

Then perhaps the problem is that the arrangers didn't really know the spouse either.

MJ said...

my brother-in-laws would come and punch me and beat my back with iron bars..

That should be brothers-in-law.