Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Matrimoni forzati diventano best sellers in Germania

EUROPE'S MUSLIM WOMEN
Best Selling Books Tell the Horrors of Forced Marriage
Stories of the suffering of young Muslim women forced into marriage are 
best sellers in Germany. But are these books about rape, violence and 
abuse socially beneficial or simply a cynical and salacious way of 
making money?
Autobiographical accounts of forced marriages are flying off the shelves.
Zoom
Autobiographical accounts of forced marriages are flying off the shelves.
Hülya Kalkan shakes with nervousness as she waits for her younger 
sister, Esme, in the arrivals area at Frankfurt's Rhine-Main Airport. 
Esme is fleeing from an arranged marriage with one of her Turkish 
cousins in Antalya. She is traveling with a forged passport arranged by 
Hülya.
The family in Turkey has been searching for Esme for some time now. 
Normally, she isn't allowed to leave the house for even a few minutes 
without an escort. When Hülya, still waiting at the airport, receives a 
call from her mother, all the mother can do is scream, "I hope you both 
die," into the phone.
Hülya knows exactly what Esme has been through. She also fled back to 
Germany from Anatolia to get out of a marriage her mother had arranged 
with a stranger. Like Esme, she was suddenly taken out of school in a 
southern German town at the age of 13 and sent back to Turkey to attend 
one of the country's strict and now forbidden Koran schools. It's a fate 
Hülya and her sister share with thousands of other girls of Muslim heritage.
After years of shame and silence, Hülya Kalkan, 26, has written the 
story of her life, titled "I Just Wanted to be Free." It's not the only 
accusatory essay of its type. There are now many books that recount the 
experiences of oppressed women in Islamic societies and call for the 
liberation of Muslim women. Almost all are top-sellers in the German 
book market. German publishers are launching six new titles this summer 
alone.
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The books are almost identical in terms of form and dramatic structure: 
first-person accounts, usually in the present tense, simple 
chronological arrangements of events and dialogues. But the gruesome 
details of these women's stories of suffering are disturbingly specific, 
stories of men imprisoning their wives, routinely beating and raping 
them, pouring acid on their "dangerously attractive" faces, of 
grandmothers who mutilate the genitalia of their young granddaughters 
with glass shards to prevent them from feeling sexual pleasure.
The details of these tortures seem to strike a chord with a broad 
readership that's apparently fascinated by the sheer horror of it all. 
The stories of the suffering endured by these women promise to provide 
grisly entertainment value to readers ennobled by the sensation of 
helping to further a good cause.
The seductive titles serve this purpose perfectly:
* "I Accuse," by Ayaan Hirsi Ali * "Nobody Asked Me," by Ayse * "Choke 
on your Lies," by Inci Y. * "Fundamentalism Against Women," by Nawal El 
Saadawi * "Kidnapped in Yemen," by Zana Muhsen
The books are selling like hotcakes. Eighty thousand copies of "I 
Accuse" have already been sold. Readers snapped up more than 20,000 
copies of "Choke on your Lies" within a few weeks after it hit the 
bookstores. The publishing houses expect similar successes from "Nobody 
Asked Me," "I Just Wanted to be Free" and "Fundamentalism Against 
Women," initially published in printings of up to 30,000 copies each.
In most cases, the women wrote the books with the help of journalists. 
The manuscripts were offered to publishers through literary agents or 
directly by the ghostwriters. To protect themselves against attacks by 
their relatives, Inci Y. and Ayse did not use their real names.
An Author in Hiding
Inci Y. has also refused to be photographed and hasn't told her children 
that she wrote a book. "Only when they are old enough to understand my 
story will I reveal my identity to the public," she says in an interview 
with SPIEGEL, "for my family, the book is a good enough reason to kill me."
Inci Y., 35, has brown eyes and angular, sharp features. Her voice is 
clear and deliberate. She meets with interviewers in her apartment in a 
small German city. The door to the interior courtyard of the well-kept 
subsidized apartment is left open to allow a small amount of daylight to 
penetrate into the tiny front room with its plain gray furniture. It is 
here that the author very occasionally meets with visitors.
More Muslim women than is commonly thought suffer abuse in forced marriages.
Zoom
AP
More Muslim women than is commonly thought suffer abuse in forced marriages.
She was born in Germany in 1970, the child of Turkish guest workers. 
When she was a year old, her parents sent her to Ankara to stay with her 
grandparents. From a very early age, she was taught that girls and women 
are less important beings, and that they should remain silent in the 
presence of men. As a teenager, Inci Y. returned to Germany, where her 
lack of a decent education kept her from finishing even the lower level 
in a German secondary school. "The teachers have their own strategy to 
abdicate all responsibility," she writes, "they just give you what's 
called an 'n.d.' (not determinable), instead of a grade; that's the key."
But then came the biggest shock of her life. Her mother married off the 
attractive, 17-year-old girl to a dim-witted Turkish car dealer in 
Anatolia, forcing her into a marriage that turned into a prison. Rape 
and beatings sometimes bordering on life-threatening attacks soon became 
part of a daily madness. Once, when Inci Y. refused to grant her husband 
Hikmet the "matrimonial privilege," he sprayed her with insect spray, 
"like an annoying fly."
One day Inci Y. decided to escape from her hellish marriage and obtained 
a divorce. Soon the entire family clan began hounding her and calling 
her the "sinner."
In an effort to gain custody of the child they had together, her 
ex-husband tried to blackmail her into signing a pre-written 
"confession," which contained passages like the following: "I am a whore 
and I do not want my daughter to become a whore, as well. That is why I 
waive my right to custody of my daughter Sila and relinquish sole 
custody to my husband, Hikmet."
Inci Y. fled to Germany to escape the clan's harassment. After a second 
failed marriage, she and her now 15-year-old daughter and 11-year-old 
son moved to a cramped apartment, where they have been living for the 
past four years. She has no contact with her family and the father of 
her children. Her apartment is lovingly decorated. Inci takes a stack of 
photographs from a cabinet. She has only one photograph of herself with 
her first ex-husband. "I was truly disgusted by him and his stench," she 
says.
Forced marriages and the associated violent subjugation of young women, 
as described in these books, are not as uncommon as one might think, and 
not just in the Islamic world.
Marriages which are arranged and enforced by relatives are part of a 
phenomenon that has developed over the centuries in patriarchal family 
structures and authoritarian societies in the Middle and Far East, as 
well as in Africa. According to the women's rights organization "Terre 
des femmes e.V." in Tübingen, near Stuttgart, the practice also affects 
Greek, Italian and Brazilian women. In Germany, most women forced into 
arranged marriages are of Turkish descent, because Turks and Kurds are 
Germany's largest immigrant group.
Why Do Families Force Their Daughters to Marry?
Forced marriage is a strategy. Muslim families are usually part of a 
minority in the countries into which they immigrate. The only way to 
strengthen their base in a "strange land" and secure family assets is to 
encourage family relations within a clan. At the same time, by marrying 
off their children, they believe they are establishing a home "back 
home" to which they can return in old age.
The girls, who are often underage, are easily married off at a tender 
young age if they come from places like Turkey. The parents know that 
the younger the daughter is at the time of her wedding, the sooner her 
new husband will be paying her expenses. Besides, the girls haven't lost 
their virginity at this point.
Under recent changes in German law, forced marriage is now considered 
severe coercion, a criminal offence. But if women are married in another 
country, they are subject to the laws of that country.
Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has also written a first-hand 
account of her experiences in a forced marriage, is under constant 
police protection.
Zoom
REUTERS
Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has also written a first-hand 
account of her experiences in a forced marriage, is under constant 
police protection.
The things she experienced, says Inci Y., are "hair-raising" and 
"disgusting." Nevertheless, she adds, she doesn't want her book to 
generate pity. The authors' accounts, she says, should help Turkish 
women living in Germany "understand the core of their own tragedy," a 
tragedy in which they are refused all basic education and strapped to an 
"intellectual wheel chair." If they lack the necessary education, says 
Inci Y., "how can they gain independence and get on their own two feet 
to start a career?"
Written by Turks, Read by Germans
The readers these books are supposed to target are other women in 
similar situations. But do they even reach these women?
Most are either not permitted or have no desire to read such books. 
Wolfgang Ferchl, director of Munich-based Piper Publishing, says: 
"Titles like 'Choke on Your Lies' are bought almost exclusively by 
German women -- because they are beginning to become interested in the 
lives of the Muslim women who have been their neighbors for decades. 
Suddenly they feel a sense of solidarity."
In this way, the message tends to reach its intended audience 
indirectly. Seyran Ates, a Turkish lawyer in Berlin who represents 
countless women tormented by forced marriage and domestic violence, says 
this phenomenon is "terrific." "We urgently need the German women to 
disseminate the message," she says. Ates, who published the story of her 
own experience two years ago under the title "Big Journey into the 
Fire," says the books by young Muslim women are "important because they 
encourage people," and because they create awareness of the problems 
among Germans. "It's important that the readers realize what a horrible 
parallel world exists in their own country," says the attorney. That's 
because courageous Muslim women who fight for their liberation are still 
portrayed in their own culture as denigrators of their own kind -- and 
support from German women can sometimes be helpful in these situations.
Since March of this year, the popular Turkish newspaper Hürriyet which 
is also the most-read Turkish paper in Germany and has published 
articles condemning the male stranglehold on power, has been running a 
series about the authors of these first-hand accounts. The paper 
publishes excerpts from the women's books, but also prints its own, 
supposedly well-researched opposing views of their stories, which are 
intended to expose the women's confessions as vulgar lies. "They portray 
the women as greedy swindlers just looking to turn a profit with what 
'Hürriyet' calls their made-up stories," says Ates, who is committed to 
the cause and expects to see many other first-hand accounts "in the 
style of Inci Y." in the future. "The more, the better," she adds, 
"because at least then German society will slowly but surely begin 
despising the violent patriarchs."
One-Sided Accounts
As disturbing as these stories are, the accounts almost always lack a 
differentiated tone and dramatic polish. Few of these books contain any 
passages of cooler argumentation or even a more dispassionate view of 
these women's plight. "After all, the Muslim man isn't born as a filthy 
pig," Inci Y. concedes in her interview. He too is cheated of almost 
everything that "can take place between a man and a woman." The Muslim 
man, she says, is put on the spot because he is the one who is expected 
to wield power.
Most of these authors justifiably fear violent retribution by 
fundamentalist Muslims as soon as their books are published. Ever since 
the murder of her colleague, Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh 
("Submission"), Ayaan Hirsi Ali for example has been under constant 
police protection in the Netherlands.
But Inci Y. remains combative. She puts out her cigarette and says: "Let 
them to try to kill me. I'm not afraid of anyone."
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

 Best Selling Books Tell the Horrors of Forced Marriage
che sia una indicazione che la popolazione tedesca ed in generale quella 
europea si sta acorgendo della situazione reale della multiculturalità???
Questo significa che in pochi anni potrebbero esserci sommovimenti 
importanti e molta meno tolleranza per questo genere di pratiche.
Agli islamici non piace molto quando i loro veri comportamenti diventano 
di dominio pubblico.
Mirco