Take this summary for example. The emphases are very different.

It’s easy to criticise from a distance, but considering these issues in light of media reports alone is unlikely to give a fair view.

Girl should have told boy to f*** off and go play with his Adobe. Better, girl should have reported boy to uni authorities and got him disciplined or expelled for sexual harassment (which is the only issue here – all unis deal with it).

Even better, the boy should be personally arrested by Sir Ian Blair, publicly named and shamed, taken to the forecourt of the University of Oxford Street, pelted ruthlessly with rotting vegetarian Hindu fare, have old dal from Hare Krisha soup kitchens poured over his genitals, and then bundled off to Guantanamo, via a torture stopover in Egypt (Uzbekistan, if the weather is nicer.)

This is about RSS Hindutva men and women wanting to control Hindu women, their choices and their exposure to different ideas (at uni!) NHSF has been running the same campaigns since the 1990s when I was at uni(always and forever with UJS). I bet NHSF of HFB is even now trying to find a credible victim or plumped up stats of forced conversions – watch this space.

This is what leads to the kind of vicious communal violence that happened in Slough and other parts of west London and Birmingham – take blokes from two religions or ethnic groups, add woman from one of the groups, add a sexual rumour (especially one that draws attention to the shrivelling willy size or floppiness of men from one of the groups), grab a comfy chair, a pint of Worthingtons, sit back and watch (rewind, play, rewind play, rewind, play…) Well done, Sir Ian.

A few months passed on, and one day, Wasif hit me with a new and even more shocking bombshell. He told me I had to convert to his religion. I was about to die of shock. Convert??? Why??? I would never do this. He brought me some religious books, with titles like “How to be a true Muslim” and so on, and said “You best start reading them.” I refused to take them and told him to leave me alone and that being friends with him was the biggest mistake I had ever made. He became really aggressive and forceful. I was very scared and wondered how long this would go on and what I had done to deserve this. I thought to myself “How can this guy who seemed so down to earth and normal have turned out to be a religious fanatic and a psycho?”

Soon after, he threatened that he would go to my family and show them pictures of him and me together – sexually. I thought to myself “How can he do this, we haven’t been together in any other way apart from at Uni”. But something came to mind. He was very talented with graphics, including manipulating photographs. I had seen some really good pictures of him with celebrities, that all looked so real, even though they weren’t. I couldn’t put it past him that he could use the same techniques to make pictures of him and me. Now I was totally scared. What if he carried out his threat? What would my family think of me? What would everybody thing of me? Surely they would think it was somehow my fault.

Wasif then started asking me to pay him off. “Oh my God – pay him off?” All I did was tell him I didn’t want a relationship, are you meant to pay guys off who you don’t want to be with? How was I supposed to pay him off? I had a student loan myself and was frequently in overdraft. Surely if I was rich I wouldn’t have had to have a student loan or be in overdraft.

Finally I ended up telling my sister, after nearly two years of going through hell. She told my parents. I was in tears while she was telling them. “I’ve really let them down”, I thought to myself.

I’m not sure what we’re meant to understand by ‘forced conversion’. When someone is forced to do something – eg to hand over money; to take their clothes of – it is pretty clear from the outcome that some coercion has taken place.

So what does the outcome of a forced conversion look like? Are young women reporting “Oh no! I’ve been turned into a muslim!” And during the conversion itself, how do they convince their aggressors that they’re not simply pretending?

Poke at most urban myths and they begin to look a bit…unlikely. Apply those critical faculties, guys! As they say on Children’s cable TV, “Get media smart!”

Sikhs especially have auto-immunisation to this kind of rhetoric because of our history — a history that was marked, sadly, by abductions, violence and forcible conversion to Islam of both women and men (including jihads launched against Sikhs and the martyrdom of Sikh children and abduction of Hindu and Sikh women from Punjab to Afghanistan throughout history)

As such, it is easy to transpose those historical themes to contemporary British society when extremists lock horns and people have to deal with modern faultlines and tensions that exist amongst Asians in Britain. It becomes a default paradigm for how we view each other. I would not be surprised if a Sikh or Hindu girl converted to an extremist form of Islam at some campus in the past, much the same as socially marginalized or mentally deficient people are attracted to extremist Islam of all creeds (black, white, Jewish) and as part of their process of proving the purity of their new faith denigrate their former life. This is characteristic of conversion to extremist Islam – the Jew becomes an anti-semite, the Christian curses Christ, the Afro-Carribean detests the culture he was born into. The campus uglies would have jumped on this as part of their ‘dawah’ and through Chinese whispers it got transformed into brigands and descendants of Ghaznavi pillaging the campus for kaafir girls. For organized Hindu or Sikh identity politicians, the historical resonances were manna from heaven. It has its roots in the demented nature of extremist Islamic politics on University campuses in the 1990’s; something that people were in denial about until recently.

If an IMV was set up by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Zalmay Khalilzad, I would feel very different to one set up by Tariq Ramadan and Yasmin Alibhai Brown, even though the principles professed might be identical. I would not believe their interpretation of those principles would have anything in common with mine.

Anyway, back to the original story, I was thinking what the reaction would be if there as a letter telling families to defend their Sikh and Hindu menfolk from being preyed upon by Muslimah seductresses. I’d assume it would be laughed away in a swift swaggering backlash along the lines of “we don’t need defending from their loose women”. I don’t know what other people think, but this does seem a patronising letter to me from that perspective.

But another element is that women can be more vulnerable in relationships if the surrounding culture supports men setting the rules for women in a relationship, while making it ridiculous for women to do so for men. In that context, the letter and the reaction to it is more understandable. It is okay for our men to set the rules for women, because they will be our rules. Other men will set different rules and so we must protect women from those alien rules.

It is the underlying assumption of what a relationship between women and men consists of that needs to be challenged before the letter can be seen as the patronising trash it would so clearly be in less patriarchal cultures.

“of course forcible conversions have happened and not in such pleasant ways that can be ‘covered up’ – there was plenty of evidence that girls were being raped in egypt and forcibly converted.”

And the evidence is?

Sex out of wedlock is a sin, but rape isn’t?

This is getting really stupid.

edward,

what you’ve just outlined is precisely the equivalent of much of the current distinction between anti-zionism (ie legitimate political discussion, fair comment) and anti-semitism (tush and fie, disgusting isn’t it). suffice it to say we still know who really appears to be meant and it has far more to do with the speaker than the addressee.

b’shalom

bananabrain

Well there’s enough fascists within the Asian communities, of all religions, totry and manipulate people too. Just look at how much froth daily is generating on this topic. Comical.

One obviously suspects they are being disingenuous. They just happen to have singled out the largest minority group in the country, but they’re borrowing a secular, liberal, and not-necessarily-racist arguments.

In this context, one wonders what the origins of this hate propaganda are. Is it put about by Sikh or Hindu militants? Or are Sikhs and Hindus perhaps the victims of white racist propaganda? It would certainly be a win-win situation: Muslims demonised; Sikhs and Hindus terrified; disunity amongst British Asians.

As a bit of an outsider, can anyone fill me in on the state of play of joint Hindu/Sikh/Muslim opposition to racism? Has Islamophobia maybe taken any of the heat off other communities?

Oh. Im sorry. I must have read that all wrong. NOT

“even ‘victims’ can’t be questionned?”
Its not your job or mine to question the victims. The police will do that when they are ready. The victims have come for help so lets give them help instead interrogating them and making them feel like they are the guilty ones.
I now understand why women who are raped are so afraid to speak out.
You mentioned Sita, and look what happened to her! Its such an ordeal for women to prove they are innocent because society wont rest till they have been hounded and hanged. After 5,000 years we have learnt nothing.

“Secondly don’t even go there matey with how I have a lack of concern for the victims of conversion on campuses.”
I don’t want to post a tit for tat reply but lets say you didn’t show your concern at all in this piece.

“But I’m slightly sceptical (putting it mildly) how the Hindu A-Team can help.”
Can you name me any other organisation who stood up and took complaints from these students seriously? It seems teams like the Next Generation Network are more concerned about hanging these women then helping them.

“Why not work with Asian women organisations (who deal day-in-day out with abuse of this kind) why not look at it as a student saftey issue?”
Which Asian Women organisations? Where are they when the girls need their help?

“you could also look at it as an issue across faith-communities as conversion and the fine line between choice/force will be a key issue.”

The Hindu Forum have clearly stated they want to work with all religious groups. Did you even read/hear their side of the story?

“if women are policed from these backgrounds to make sure they only hang out with, dress and educate themselves exclusively about their “own” faiths than what is this?”

Youre learning well from Sunny. Twisting things that is. Policing is not about stopping them from what they enjoy or even who they go out with. It is about giving someone help and support when they need it.

“We’re not Sitas in the jungles who need circles of fire drawn around us to protect our divinity because the evil Ravan is hunting us down to get back at Ram. Take your chauvinist ego battles somewhere else, we’ve got better things to fight for.”

Firstly there is nothing wrong with men protecting women even in the 21st century.
It is a very noble deed. Where then does this ‘chauvinist’ crap comes from?

Savita if you are Hindu and you have a brother then I assume you may have tied a rakhi on his hands? In return the brother offers his protection. Are you going to call him a chauvinist? In fact the Hindu Sister equally offers her protection to her brother in return during Bhaibeej (after Diwali).

Secondly again- if you read or heard from the Hindu groups the protection offered to women was by women also. The ladies from the National Hindu Students have offered help to these girls. So where does this male dominated chauvinist come from?
You see why I am annoyed at this article and the way you have gone about it.

Anyway enough said.

For those who say conversion doesn’t exist in Hinduism/Sikhism, yes it may not formally but if women are policed from these backgrounds to make sure they only hang out with, dress and educate themselves exclusively about their “own” faiths than what is this?

Firstly, the tile ‘Stop using women for your own battles’ is not Hindu bashing in the slightest, it doesn’t even mention religion! And even if it did and what? Do you think a story that concerns faith and even ‘victims’ can’t be questionned?

Secondly don’t even go there matey with how I have a lack of concern for the victims of conversion on campuses. I have said clearly enough that these voices should be heard. But I’m slightly sceptical (putting it mildly) how the Hindu A-Team can help. Why not work with Asian women organisations (who deal day-in-day out with abuse of this kind) why not look at it as a student saftey issue? Come on Daily…

Even if something was true it is still worth asking the question is the issue becoming a composite part of a battle of male insecurities.

Further what exactly is going on if something is going on. Would it be low level manipulation which could be possible considering how some members of religions can act but this may not be just Muslims.
If something is going on is it a small or very small quantity of situations. In connection with this here is another anecdote which pulls the issue away from just Muslims.

A few years ago a female freind of mine who was Christian got into a relationship with a guy from a particular Christian group. I met the guy and he tried to convert me. I have discussed religions with all kinds of people from all kinds of religions and this was the only time I lost it with someone. He was scary. A couple of weeks later I met my freind and she told me that her partner and someone from the same Christian group had locked her in a house. The idea of locking her up was the following. She was Christian but not fully converted yet because she was still under the influence of satan. Locking her up was so they could get access to her to drum the truth into her. She told me that they were right to do this, and that she now realised that she was led astray by satan. She married the guy and last year I discovered she was still married to him.

Such things happen but hopefully very rarely and if rare would it be just Muslims.

I love it when people say stuff like that.

Funny how this sort of nonsense never appears in the literature of the actual fundamentalist groups like HT and even al-Muhajiroun.

Daily, your ranting would be funny if I could work out what the hell you are trying to say/do. You are clearly doing exactly what the piece is accusing – using women to fight your own, different battle.

My evidence? In all your posts, except to quote the title of the piece you have not used the words “woman” or “women” one single time.