"The cases that come to our attention are very serious. The young people
involved are very upset and want our assistance and protection," Shwabsky says.
Arranged marriages are an important part of many Asian, European and Middle
Eastern cultures, and the practice has long existed in multicultural countries
such as Australia.
However, concerns have arisen that marriages are being arranged in Australia
for teenagers too young for such commitments.
Welfare workers say there are several hundred cases across the country, mostly
in Sydney and Melbourne, of girls dropping out of school to get married.
Although it varies from state to state, the average legal school-leaving age is
16. In Australia people under the age of 18 need a court order to marry
legally.
Concern centres on Australian-Arab communities, although not all the teenagers
involved are Muslim. Some girls happily consent to these arrangements. Others
find their own fiances. But a few -- such as those handled by the embassy in
Lebanon -- are forced into it.
Australian embassy staff eventually put the 14-year-old girl on a plane back to
her mother in Australia. The girl says her husband never touched her sexually
and agreed to end the marriage. But other cases are not so simple, sparking
long, bitter legal battles.
"Where a marriage is arranged, which is the majority of cases, and the parties
are willing, then the embassy does not get involved," Shwabsky says, adding it
is important to remember that the legal age for marriage is 18 in Australia and
16 in Lebanon.
"But when a girl of any age comes to us and says that they are being forced
into a marriage against their will or pressure is being placed upon them, such
as their passports have been seized and they are told they won't be able to
leave Lebanon until they agree, then it's a very different and difficult
position," she says.
"And the embassy will go a long way to try to protect and help those girls.
These are Australian girls asking for help."
Back home, welfare workers tell a similar story of girls dropping out of high
school to get engaged to their peers or slightly older men. The Victorian
Islamic Women's Welfare Council is concerned these girls, who legally marry
after turning 18, seem unaware of, or uninterested in, other options such as
further education, work and careers.
They and their families feel they don't belong in mainstream Australian
society, which they think distrusts Muslims, the council says. So rather than
try to integrate and participate in society, they isolate themselves on the
fringes.
"Because of the ongoing tensions after September 11, rightly or wrongly they
think that whatever chances they had of integration [no longer exist]," says
council manager Joumanah El Matrah. "And it's not a sense of blame or anger,
it's being pragmatic. They are going to just live quietly and exist on the
fringes. It's quite bleak.
"Our experience has been that Muslim women can almost be divided into two
groups. One is high achieving with good education levels, good careers and good
participation in their community. And the other drops out of school early and
then drops out of their community. There really is this crude division, there
is no in between.
"That's not what you see in other communities."
The council is among grassroots groups tackling the problem, speaking to career
advisers in high schools with significant numbers of students of Arab and
African background. It also runs workshops for female students, addressing
self-esteem, empowerment, leadership and cultural identity.
"Girls in Year 10 are telling their career advisers, 'Don't worry about helping
us, because we are just going to get married'," says one of the council's youth
workers, Moona Hammoud, 21.
"Their expectations are not high and they think they have few options. They are
not encouraged to continue their schooling or it's all getting too hard," says
Hammoud, who has helped produce community newsletters discussing the issue.
"I know one Iraqi girl who has been allowed to finish high school but then she
will marry a local Iraqi boy. She doesn't really have a choice but she sort of
likes him and is going along with it.
"She says, 'My friends are all getting married so what's the big deal?"'
The big deal is whether they fully comprehend the responsibilities of marriage
and parenting. Besides, dropping out of school restricts their employment
options and financial independence.
"Their future health and wellbeing is dependent largely on the kind of person
that they marry," says El Matrah.
Victorian Arabic Social Services manager Leila Alloush says many arranged
marriages, especially among older couples, are loving and successful. But if
they do break down, the suffering can extend beyond the couple in question.
Families on both sides, often friends beforehand, are torn apart in communities
that frown on divorce.
"What we try to tell parents is yes, the kids have consented, but the kids are
so young, and kids change their minds about relationships 10 times before they
get married," says Alloush, adding that VASS seeks to inform parents about the
legal age for marriage and leaving school.
Parents often pressure their children to find a partner or accept one they
suggest, because marriage is the best protection against Western vices.
"Protecting teenagers is pretty scary for all parents. They worry about drugs,
violence, sexuality, prostitution," a community worker says. "But it's scarier
for these parents because their cultures are more conservative to begin with:
their dress code, their behaviour, almost everything."
Other parents are concerned about their Australian-born children losing their
cultural identity or religion.
"Parents are scared their children are adopting an Australian way of life. For
some [marriage is] the only way [of maintaining] control over their kids, of
holding on to their cultural identity. And of course they are scared of their
daughters becoming promiscuous," another community worker says, adding that sex
before marriage is taboo. "There's a cultural clash going on here."
Alloush worries about publicising the problem, which could embarrass and
stigmatise communities already reeling from a backlash against Muslims in the
wake of terrorist attacks overseas. She fears parents as well as their children
may then stop seeking out support services, thereby driving the problem
underground.
Instead, grassroots groups need more funds to work with clerics and community
leaders to educate families about the pitfalls.
Some groups say their pleas for funding from the Victorian Government have been
consistently ignored.
Australia's most senior Islamic cleric, Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, says he is
doing all he can. Opening a cabinet in his office in Sydney's Muslim heartland,
he points to a manila folder containing details of marriages, some of them
arranged, that have gone wrong.
He worries about girls heading to Lebanon to marry men suggested by their
families. He says often husbands agree to marriage just to obtain a visa for
Australia.
"We have automatic visa stamped on our heads," says one woman who has been a
victim of the scam.
Another young mother waits patiently in Hilali's office for counselling about
her failing marriage. She wed her husband, who is 10 years older, when she was
18. She saw him about three times in Sydney's Lakemba before he asked her
father for her hand.
"I didn't know him at all, we had never spoken," says the woman, who does not
want to give her name for fear of shaming her family.
But she explains she agreed because she wanted to please her parents; besides,
the idea of starting her own family seemed exciting at the time. Now in her
mid-20s with two young children and a husband she doesn't understand, she fears
she made a mistake.
"I feel like I've lost so much of my life," she says. "When you are 18 or 19,
you haven't thought through the marriage, what it means to start a new life."
