Believe me I am not as heartless as my title above suggests. We have a very serious and growing problem with abuse of women and girls in the immigrant population and it is especially hard to eradicate in the Muslim community that views women as the property of men.
The difficulty in rooting out the problem is compounded by our reverance for the concept of cultural relativism—multiculturalists would have us think that all cultures are equal. It is not true, and immigrants and refugees must be taught to assimilate to our culture and the standards we set in this country for the treatment of women. From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:
The first time her screams brought police to the house, the Lakewood mother lied. She told the officers that her husband did not strike her.
She was thinking of her immigrant community and the role she was expected to play. Faithful wife. Submissive mother. Mostly, she was thinking of her children and how she would support them without an income.
The night the police came back, she did not have to weigh what to say. She heard her enraged husband admit that, yes, he smacked his wife. He owned her. He could hit her.
“No, you cannot,” she recalls the officer answering, and he led her husband out of the house and out of her daily life.
The Lakewood mother asked that her anonymity be protected because she fears further angering her husband or his family. She is a Palestinian Muslim who last year took a step almost unheard of in her community. She declared herself a victim of domestic violence, secured an order of protection against her husband and filed for divorce.
Good for her! Since we have been posting lately about the Palestinian refugees, I am wondering how this Palestinian family came to be in the US. I don’t see any statistics at the Office or Refugee Resettlement database to indicate we are taking Palestinian refugees, yet.