A BBC article entitled "Forced marriages targeted" -  The raising of the age at which a person can apply for a spouse from outside the European Union to be allowed to live in Britain has been criticised by groups representing UK Muslims.

"The move is being seen as a response to widespread concern about schoolgirls being forced into marriages with men from their parents' home countries, who go their own way once they have been granted residency in the UK."

An article by by Azam Kamguian on the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society (ISIS) website entitled "Girls' Nightmare in Muslim Families: Forced Marriages in Europe." 

"Every year, many thousands of young girls, living in Muslim inhabited communities in European countries face forced marriages. In Muslim immigrant families, often rom the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey, teenage girls are struggling against the pressure of tribal culture and Islamic customs imposed on them by their and forced marriage is often their fate."

"A women group against sexual mutilation of women, ;formed in 1980s in France, estimates that more than ;30,000 young girls have been involved in forced marriage since 1990. In Britain, south Asian women groups have records of numerous cases of young girls who have been forced to marry by their parents."

In an op-ed piece in Daily Times (Pakistan) entitled "Judgement against forced marriage" by Ishtiaq Ahmed in which he discusses a Pakistani judges' rulling;

"Justice Jilani reviews a variety of gender-biased forced marriages. First of all, there are forced marriages in which the girl is coerced into marrying a man she does not like or approve of. She can be subjected to various types of physical and mental tortures. In some cases the punishment can be murder by the family members obsessed with 'family honour'."

(...)
The so-called high cultures of Middle Eastern and South Asian origins uphold the male's superior position and status over the female. The rate of female feticide in South Asia is the highest in East Punjab where increasing prosperity, modern clinics that determine the sex of the child and a reactionary culture privileging male children produce an efficient system of filicide directed against girls.

In the absence of statistics for West Punjab, one can't be sure of percentages but there is a strong possibility that female foetuses are aborted in West Punjab; perhaps also other provinces of Pakistan. There is certainly a high incidence of the abominable practice of 'honour killings'.

Now in fairness to Muslim societies in our criticism of their practices, and in the interest of historical perspective, gender bias and oppression of women in the Judaeo-Christian religious, cultural and legal traditions have existed in the past (i know, some might argue that cases of such bias still exist), but not the type of society-wide oppression and forced marriages in modern Judeo-Christian societies, as is the case in the Islamic communities we are talking about here. The emerging theme we continue to see in Islamic society, particularly in the fundamentalist cohorts, is abuse of women, tolerated violence against their own women and men, and violence against non-Muslims.

A pattern is a pattern as much as a duck is a duck. It just is what it is, and the pattern we continue to see in Islam is intolerance, violence, oppression and brutality against men and women within Muslim society, and against others on the outside of Muslim society, especially if a Muslim choses to leave Islam. We had better stay alert to the problems we face, especially when we see such violence and abuse within the Islamic societies themselves. Whether we speak of forced marriages, forced conversions, or forced submission to authority, we are still talking about violence and we are surely talking about Islam.