Hundreds of Muslim women may not be married

HUNDREDS of Muslim women in Bolton who have been married by the town's Imams may not be legally wed, it has been revealed.

Only one of the borough's mosques is registered to carry out services which are legally binding in the UK without the presence of a registrar.

Women therefore, who have been married elsewhere, but have not had a registrar present or a separate civil ceremony, may not in fact be married.

Nick Lewis, a marital law expert at Bolton-based KBL Solicitors, said he had been consulted "on a number of occasions" by Muslim women who were seeking a divorce.

He added: "They have been distressed to find that they have not been married at all."

Mr Lewis said that in many cases the ceremony was conducted by an Imam (holy man) either in a mosque or elsewhere, in a traditional ceremony. The couple then signed a register which would have been kept at the mosque.

He said: "Unfortunately, the simple fact is that, unless the venue is registered for the solemnisation of marriage and the person conducting the ceremony is authorised under Civil Law to do so, there is no legal marriage. There must be a separate civil ceremony.

"This means that, for many women who had thought they were wed, the upsetting truth is that they have been deprived of the protection given to them and their children by virtue of being married.

"In these circumstances, they are not entitled to maintenance for themselves, and the court cannot make orders -- save in exceptional circumstances - in respect of any property owned by them."

Mr Lewis said the problem had been "bubbling under for several years without any successful resolution."

A spokesman for Bolton Council told the Bolton News that non of the 18 mosques in Bolton are currently registered to solemnise marriages.

That means every marriage conducted by an Imam must be attended by a registrar, or followed by a separate civil ceremony.

A spokesman for the Registrar General's office said mosques can apply for Certification and Registration of Religious Buildings for Worship and Marriage.

If it is granted then 12 months later the mosque can nominate a person to be authorised to legally register the marriage.

If no one is appointed then the marriage ceremony needs to be attended by a registrar to complete the marriage formalities or a separate civil ceremony at the register office needs to be held.

Cassandra Balchin, spokesman for the national pressure group Women Living Under Muslim Laws, said the problem of Muslim marriages not being legal is a growing one in the UK.

She estimates one third of women approaching Sharia councils for a religious divorce find that their marriage is not recognised under British law.

Marriages abroad, if legal in the country they take place in, are recognised as legal in Britain, but Ms Balchin says the numbers of these taking place involving British Muslims is dropping with many choosing to marry in this country.

Ms Balchin says a small number of couples actively decide just to have a religious ceremony and not involve the State for political reasons. But she believes increasing numbers of young men are deliberately avoiding making their marriages legal to ensure that, if the marriage fails their wives have less of a claim on family assets.

"Younger men have a more exploitative attitude in how they want the relationship to work," said Ms Balchin.

She added that even educated women don't suspect arrangements for their weddings don't include the legal formalities. "A lot of women have absolutely no idea that their marriage is not valid. You would be surprised by how many have been duped."

Ms Balchin is among a group of leading Muslims who are working to try and raise awareness of the problem and pressing the Government to make it easier for mosques to qualify for registration.

11:18am Friday 30th May 2008

By Angela Kelly

Man imprisons daughter; fathers 7 children by her

Austrian police find them in windowless cell
Associated Press




AMSTETTEN, Austria --Some of the children locked in the basement had never seen the light of day.

A retired electrician has confessed to imprisoning his daughter for 24 years and fathering seven children by her in a windowless cell sealed by an electronic keyless-entry system, police said Monday. One died in infancy and was tossed into the furnace.

The suspect, Josef Fritzl, 73, owned a greystone apartment building, lived there with his family, and rented the other units to relatives. He faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted on rape charges, the most grave of his alleged offenses under Austrian law.

His daughter, now 42, was 18 when she was imprisoned, said Franz Polzer, head of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs. "He admitted that he locked his daughter ... in the cellar, that he repeatedly had sex with her, and that he is the father of her seven children," Polzer said.

Elisabeth said she gave birth to twins in 1996 but one died several days later, police said. The surviving children are three boys and three girls. The oldest is 19; the youngest, 5. Three lived with the grandparents, who said they'd found them outside their home. The others -- aged 19, 18 and 5 -- "never saw sunlight" until a few days ago, authorities said.

The case unfolded after the 19-year-old was found gravely ill on April 19 in the building and was taken to a hospital. Authorities publicly appealed for her mother to come forward.

After receiving a tip, police picked up Elisabeth and her father on Saturday near the hospital. Fritzl freed the three captive children that same day, Polzer said.

Police said Elisabeth agreed to talk only after police assured her she would no longer have to have contact with her father and that her children would be cared for. She told police her father began sexually abusing her when she was 11. He explained her 1984 disappearance by telling people she had joined a cult.

Authorities said the victims and Fritzl's wife, who was unaware of the other children, are under psychiatric care.

Multinationals make billions in profit out of growing global food crisis

Tuesday, 06 May 2008
The Independent
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor


Speculators blamed for driving up price of basic foods as 100 million face severe hunger


Giant agribusinesses are enjoying soaring earnings and profits out of the world food crisis which is driving millions of people towards starvation, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. And speculation is helping to drive the prices of basic foodstuffs out of the reach of the hungry.



The prices of wheat, corn and rice have soared over the past year driving the world's poor - who already spend about 80 per cent of their income on food - into hunger and destitution.



The World Bank says that 100 million more people are facing severe hunger. Yet some of the world's richest food companies are making record profits. Monsanto last month reported that its net income for the three months up to the end of February this year had more than doubled over the same period in 2007, from $543m (£275m) to $1.12bn. Its profits increased from $1.44bn to $2.22bn.



Cargill's net earnings soared by 86 per cent from $553m to $1.030bn over the same three months. And Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world's largest agricultural processors of soy, corn and wheat, increased its net earnings by 42 per cent in the first three months of this year from $363m to $517m. The operating profit of its grains merchandising and handling operations jumped 16-fold from $21m to $341m.



Similarly, the Mosaic Company, one of the world's largest fertiliser companies, saw its income for the three months ending 29 February rise more than 12-fold, from $42.2m to $520.8m, on the back of a shortage of fertiliser. The prices of some kinds of fertiliser have more than tripled over the past year as demand has outstripped supply. As a result, plans to increase harvests in developing countries have been hit hard.



The Food and Agriculture Organisation reports that 37 developing countries are in urgent need of food. And food riots are breaking out across the globe from Bangladesh to Burkina Faso, from China to Cameroon, and from Uzbekistan to the United Arab Emirates.



Benedict Southworth, director of the World Development Movement, called the escalating earnings and profits "immoral" late last week. He said that the benefits of the food price increases were being kept by the big companies, and were not finding their way down to farmers in the developing world.



The soaring prices of food and fertilisers mainly come from increased demand. This has partly been caused by the boom in biofuels, which require vast amounts of grain, but even more by increasing appetites for meat, especially in India and China; producing 1lb of beef in a feedlot, for example, takes 7lbs of grain.



World food stocks at record lows, export bans and a drought in Australia have contributed to the crisis, but experts are also fingering food speculation. Professor Bob Watson - chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who led the giant International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development - last week identified it as a factor.



Index-fund investment in grain and meat has increased almost fivefold to over $47bn in the past year, concludes AgResource Co, a Chicago-based research firm. And the official US Commodity Futures Trading Commission held special hearings in Washington two weeks ago to examine how much speculators were helping to push up food prices.



Cargill says that its results "reflect the cumulative effect of having invested more than $18bn in fixed and working capital over the past seven years to expand our physical facilities, service capabilities, and knowledge around the world".



The revelations are bound to increase outrage over multinational companies following last week's disclosure that Shell and BP between them recorded profits of £14bn in the first three months of the year - or £3m an hour - on the back of rising oil prices. Shell promptly attracted even greater condemnation by announcing that it was pulling out of plans to build the world's biggest wind farm off the Kent coast.



World leaders are to meet next month at a special summit on the food crisis, and it will be high on the agenda of the G8 summit of the world's richest countries in Hokkaido, Japan, in July.

IMF head gives food price warning

The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that hundreds of thousands of people will face starvation if food prices keep rising.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn said that social unrest from continuing food price inflation could cause conflict.

There have been food riots recently in a number of countries, including Haiti, the Philippines and Egypt.

Meeting in Washington, the IMF called for strong action on food prices and the international financial crisis.

Market turmoil

Although the problems in global credit markets were the main focus of the meeting of the IMF's steering committee of finance ministers from 24 countries, Mr Strauss-Kahn warned of dire consequences from continued food price rises.

"Thousands, hundreds of thousands of people will be starving. Children will be suffering from malnutrition, with consequences for all their lives," he told reporters.

He said the problem could lead to trade imbalances that may eventually affect developed nations, "so it is not only a humanitarian question".

Food prices have risen sharply in recent months, driven by increased demand, poor weather in some countries and an increase in the use of land to grow crops for transport fuels.

The steering committee also called for "strong action" among its 185 members to deal with "the still unfolding financial market turmoil and... the potential worsening" of housing markets and the credit crunch.

The finance ministers did not dissent from the IMF's previous forecast that only a moderate slowdown in world economic growth is the most likely outcome over the next year or two.

Religious Headscarf a Fashion Statement in Turkey

Religious Headscarf a Fashion Statement in Turkey
By Dorian Jones
Istanbul
17 March 2008


The wearing of a headscarf in accordance to Muslim belief is the center of a major political controversy in Turkey, after the ruling Islamic-rooted AK Party changed the constitution to ease a ban on the wearing of Islamic dress in the country's universities. But Dorian Jones reports for VOA from Istanbul that in Turkey there is more to wearing a headscarf than just religious belief.


In one of Istanbul's new and luxurious shopping malls, among the thousands of women checking out the latest fashions are religiously dressed students Ayse and Sibel. Along with traditional long coats, they are wearing brightly colored scarves in shades of hot pink and vivid purple. For Ayse, the scarf is not only a religious symbol, but also an important fashion accessory.

"When we enter a store we walk directly to bright colors," said Ayse. "There are some brands that we follow the same way we follow for our clothes. But maybe when we get older we might end up wearing darker colors, like our parents., the way you wear your scarf says so much about who you are."

Most religious women in Turkey tend to buy home-grown fashion labels, but according to Huand Gokcen, the city's religious jet set considers Italy to be the only place for scarves.

'They particularly enjoy Fendi scarves, Ferrari scarves; it is all about status for them," said Gokcen. "They like to show off to each other, and they always keep up with the newest collections. They know what is new, what is not, what is last season, but they are always willing to give big money for the scarves."

Gokcen travels to Como in northern Italy - the world capital of scarves she says - to serve the insatiable demand of her rich religious cliental, who think nothing of paying $700 for the latest Italian model.

But doesn't wearing brightly colored scarves in fashionable patterns contradict the Muslim habit of covering a woman's head to protect her virtue? Gokcen says her clients do not see the paradox.

"They feel they are being modest by covering themselves, only by covering, they are being modest they do not need to wear black," she said. "They still need to be women. The fact they cannot show their hair, they have to compete in other ways, they are not able to dye their hair color, so they use the scarves as a way of competing with themselves. Even if they are covered they still want to show their femininity in certain way. I guess they have found this outlet."

Turkey's own fashion industry, however, is changing to meet the demands of the country's increasingly prosperous and fashion conscious clients

At the Tekbir fashion show, models parade down the catwalk displaying the latest headscarves. Tekbir is one of Turkey's leading religious dress labels.

Company founder Mustafa Karadurman says it is not only the colors and styles that define Islamic women, but also the way the scarf is worn.

"Ninety eight percent of the population in Turkey is Muslim and 65 to 70 percent of the women are covered," said Karadurman. "But there are so many different ways women wear their scarf, which says so much about them. Some just tie it under their chin, which is traditional way women wear it in the countryside. Others cover their head and neck, which is more religious. Some show a little hair, while others do not, this also says a lot about a women. It is a serious business, but also an increasing lucrative one. We had a target for 100 stores, we opened 30 so far, but there is capacity to open for another 70 more stores."

For Turkey's Islamic fashion producers, business has never looked better. Whether in somber tones for the more conservative or vivid colors for the young and adventurous, the head scarf has become in Turkey not only a religious symbol, but also a statement of fashion and class.