Marriage

Lord Ahmed Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmed]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the right reverend Prelate on securing the debate in National Marriage Week. Whether this is coincidence or spiritual power, at least it gives me the opportunity to say a few words. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, on her excellent maiden speech, and look forward to hearing more about her expertise in this field.

While marriage is a private choice for some people, it is not for Muslims. If you can afford it, marriage is compulsory and encouraged. Cohabiting is not allowed. As we have heard, in many other religions and cultures, marriage is also desired and encouraged, as the noble Lord, Lord Sacks, and the right reverend Prelate, said. My noble friend Lord Parekh has expertise in ethnic minority issues and gave his expert advice to the House.

For many of us in the first or second generation, arranged marriages worked well. Unfortunately, however, the divorce rate for arranged marriages, too, is getting higher, as we heard from my noble friend Lord Parekh. In 2001, I was joint chairman of the forced marriage working group. We produced a report called A Choice by Right. Much has been done, but unfortunately some marriages do not work well. A very high percentage of arranged marriages works well in the first, second and third generations. Sometimes we read bad stories in the newspapers. A very small minority of marriages are entered into for economic purposes with partners from overseas who become what I would call domestic servants to young men who might be involved with drugs and alcohol, and whose parents arrange a marriage from abroad because they think that the boy will then involve himself with the marriage. Unfortunately, those marriages have great difficulties.

Ethnic minority communities, and in particular the Muslim community, have in the past sorted out these problems alone; they have never needed help from the state. After 7/7, the Government asked me to chair a working group, the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board. We thought we would be dealing with the training of imams to deal with marriage guidance, teenage pregnancies and other challenges of modern British society such as drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence and conflict resolution. Unfortunately, MINAB has not gone forward. I would be obliged if the Minister would say whether there is any financial support for MINAB or for any other organisation that helps to support marriages and families in difficult times. We must also target communities with these particular problems.

My final point relates to divorce. When the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, introduced a Bill on divorce in 2000, he asked for a provision to be made available to women of the Jewish faith to apply for a divorce in court to obtain a religious divorce before a decree absolute was given. The provision was also to apply to other religious minorities. Unfortunately, judges are not aware of that. Therefore, when Muslim women or women of other faiths go to the British courts for a divorce, they get a divorce from the court, which is a legal document, but their religious ties are not broken. Therefore, for khula or its equivalent in other religious groups, women have to go abroad and it takes years before they can move on. The man is allowed to move on and remarry because he has his legal divorce, but the woman cannot. Perhaps the Minister will say what guidance is given to judges and courts on this matter.