Dominic Kennedy, Times of London, December 27, 2008
The death of a model who learnt that her husband was already married has shone a light into the murky world of Muslim polygamy in Britain.
Sahar Daftary, 23, fell 150ft from the twelfth storey of a block of flats where she had gone to collect her belongings at the home of a businessman whom she had married in a religious ceremony last year.
Her husband, Rashid Jamil, 33, was arrested on suspicion of murder but bailed by police after they found no evidence that the death was anything other than an accident or suicide.
Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, the head of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, told The Times: “This story is very common, unfortunately. We have tried to plug some of the holes in the whole system, but unfortunately our clerics do not live on this planet.
“They don’t understand. For them, controlling the sexuality of the woman is far more important than justice, so we have this problem.”
Ms Daftary, a Sunni Muslim from London whose family comes from Afghanistan, was crowned Miss Face of Asia in a beauty contest last year. She was found critically injured by the apartment block in Salford Quays near the Manchester United football ground on Saturday. She had been helping with make-up at a fashion show in the city but left early to collect clothes from Mr Jamil’s home.
Ms Daftary also wanted to arrange an Islamic divorce from him. She had undergone a Muslim wedding ceremony in Brentford, West London, only to learn later that her husband already had a wife.
Her sister, Mariya Massumi, a hairdresser, said: “A few months after they got married we had a phone call from Narissa Amjad, and she said she was Rashid’s wife. We were very shocked and we confronted him.” Relatives learnt that Ms Amjad, 29, a marketing executive, was expecting a second child by Mr Jamil.
Islam traditionally allows husbands to take up to four wives at a time. A confrontation took place at Mr Jamil’s detached house in Altrincham, Manchester, where Ms Amjad lived.
Ms Massumi said: “When we arrived he was very calm. He said to Sahar he was not happy with his wife. He said in front of his wife he wanted to live with Sahar. His wife Narissa was also very calm and said that was OK. We were all so shocked. Rashid told Sahar he loved her.”
Mr Jamil also had a former wife, Sebina Malik, a lawyer. They had a daughter but were formally divorced. According to relatives, Mr Jamil had also undergone an arranged marriage in Pakistan that ended in divorce.
Dr Siddiqui said some British Muslim clerics performed polygamous marriages. The ceremonies are unrecognised by law. Clerics let husbands end marriages by saying “I divorce you” three times. Ex-wives have no rights.
Ahmad Thomson, a barrister and founder of the Association of Muslim Lawyers, said that polygamous marriages could work in Britain if all parties were open and in agreement. But he added: “Sometimes the husband has tried to keep the earlier marriage secret. When the second or third wife finds out, it’s devastating.”
Sahar Daftary.
Original article
(Posted on December 31, 2008)
Comments
“Ahmad Thomson, a barrister and founder of the Association of Muslim Lawyers, said that polygamous marriages could work in Britain if all parties were open and in agreement.”
No Thomson, they won’t. That’s because polygamous marriages are illegal in Britain.
I am having trouble putting the name, Sahar Daftary to the photo shown. All these non Anglo-Saxon or even European names in England are beginning to overcome ages old European spellings and language it seems. Do White, indigenous English now change their names to appear Islamic in order to feel trendy or what?
Whatever it is, England seems fairly far down the road on cultural suicide. Racial/ethnic suicide is close behind.
Whiteplight - click on the link to the Times to see a real picture of her. She’s an Asian - ie. Afghanistani as it says in the article. Not sure who that is in the photo above but it looks nothing like her or has been touched up to make her look European.
Polygamy could be good for the white race.
“Posted by at 8:02 AM on January 1” wrote:
“Polygamy could be good for the white race.”
A ‘good choice’ for males, perhaps, for women - not really.
Whiteplight - Most Afghans are Caucasians and between them, the “european look” is common(specially in Tadjiques). You can confirm this in any site with pictures of “Afghan people”.
Sure, the notion of “white” is not the same for North Europeans and South Europeans…
From the article:
Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, the head of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, told The Times: “This story is very common, unfortunately. We have tried to plug some of the holes in the whole system, but unfortunately our clerics do not live on this planet.”
As much as I disapprove of the very notion of a “Muslim Parliament of Great Britain,” this Siddiqui person shows uncommon good sense for a Mohammedan: yes, the more radical clerics in The Religion of Pieces [TM] are, by any meaningful measure, INSANE. They are crazy people. They are mentally ill. And it’s one of the most basic rules from history that insane people — regardless of their religion or ideology — must NEVER be allowed into positions of power.
Either “moderate,” “Westernized” Muslims like Siddiqui must get the more extreme ones under control; or Britain (and indeed most of Western Europe) will be irrevocably Islamified.
The very fact that the possibility of legalizing/legitimizing Islamic polygamy is even being discussed in a White Western nation suggests that this de-christianizing, deracinating devolution of the White West has already gone way too far.
Either “moderate,” “Westernized” Muslims like Siddiqui must get the more extreme ones under control; or Britain (and indeed most of Western Europe) will be irrevocably Islamified.
Does it really matter if our countries are Islamified by radical islamists or moderate islamists?? either way, we lose.
Polygamy doesn’t need to be “exposed” in Britain; it is already officially recognised (and thus encouraged) among Muslims by the tax and benefit system there.
So that makes at least four wives for him — that we know about!
As for her, I have to wonder if she’s half-English. She certainly looks it! Too bad they don’t tell us anything about her mother or background. She’s hardly typically Asian (of any sort).
But for her to be “The Face of Asia”? And living in London? C’mon! Shouldn’t The Face of Asia be someone living IN ASIA?
Re. her ethnicity, I see that she is listed on Iran.com as “Iranian of the Day”. In the comments, there is a lot of bickering between Afghans and Iranians about her ethnicity, and particularly there is annoyance that she married a Pakistani (evidently that’s considered marrying down). There is nothing said about her mother’s side. Of course, to Moslems, the father determines descent and the mother is irrelevant.
I especially noticed this revealing, typically fatalistic Moslem comment, by Zubair
“she died as she was meant to die, like that it was her destiny…. none of your damn businessss whether she was iranian, afghan paki, indian or whatever.”
Also, his husband’s vague business was, allegedly, a “property developer,” but was he actually involved in producing porn? Was she his “property” that he was developing? His first wife even states that two OTHER girls had arrived at her own door, both pregnant, and claiming that he had promised to marry them!
‘Additionally, among speculations that Daftary committed suicide because of her husband’s other marriages are statements about her being upset about a sexually explicit video of Daftary’s being released on the internet. Considering the police have said this video is not relevant to their investigation, the mentioning of the video appears gratuitous and sensationalist. ”
Let me get this straight: her husband (a really fine Moslem!) had released a sexually explicit video of her on the Internet and she was known to be upset about it and wanted a divorce. In other words, he [as her pimp] was selling it; I’m sure he wasn’t offering it for free. But yet the police say that this is NOT RELEVANT to their investigation? And they are considering the death to be only a suicide or an accident? Are these British police living on cloud nine? It seems they will do anything to protect a Pakistani or Moslem.
http://muslimahmediawatch.org/2008/12/30/life-lost-the-tragic-case-of-sahar-daftary/
To Whiteplight
No, the photograph of Sahar Daftary is unlikely to have been re-touched to make her look more European. The Afghans are an Aryan people (quite literally, not in any “Nazi” sense of the word), and often quite fair-skinned and light-haired. The good looks of this unfortunate woman are therefore unsurprising.
To the first, anonymous poster, I should clarify that while it is (for the time being) illegal to contract a polygamous marriage in the UK, polygamous marriages legally contracted elsewhere ARE recognised there as legitimate for tax and benefit purposes.
To the anonymous poster at 9.26am January 2 and Skip:
You are labouring under a delusion if you imagine that Dr Siddiqui or his so-called Muslim Parliament (!) of Great Britain are in any way “moderate”. They are merely playing a longer game in the process of Islamising the UK.
“I am having trouble putting the name, Sahar Daftary to the photo shown.”
There are a lot of Afghans in Los Angeles. They are of the Pushtun ethnic group. They look like Sahar, very European. Most have fair skin. About half have brown hair, half have black hair. Lots of the children have blond hair that turns brown when they get older. Few have true blue eyes, but most have hazel or grayish or greenish eyes, not the dark brown almost black middle eastern eyes. She looks like a typical Pushtun Afghani.
Other Afghans, Hazeera, Tajik are central Asian. They look central Asian, a mix of Asian and White with black hair and fair or light tan skin and dark brown eyes.
To the anonymous poster at 9.26am January 2 and Skip:
You are labouring under a delusion if you imagine that Dr Siddiqui or his so-called Muslim Parliament (!) of Great Britain are in any way “moderate”. They are merely playing a longer game in the process of Islamising the UK.
Johnny English, don’t misunderstand me, as far as I am concerned ALL MUSLIMS are radical islamists and should be treated as criminals to the civilized world.
““Ahmad Thomson, a barrister and founder of the Association of Muslim Lawyers, said that polygamous marriages could work in Britain if all parties were open and in agreement.””
It is extremely rare to find any polygamous marriage in a Muslim country where all parties are open and in agreement. Polygamy causes problems for everyone. The husband has to support all the wives and children financially. Then he has to arbitrate the fights among the wives. Unless the husband is wealthy enough to give each wife her own separate apartment there are enormous day to day problems of living together. Of course the parents and relatives of each wife have a lot to say about how their relative is treated.
The wives compete for the husband’s attention and money. The wives also compete for their children to be the favorite children. The husband’s Mother lords it over the wives who she often treats like servants. The children are all jealous of each other. There is also the problem of step sibling incest which is epidemic in polygamous families, especially in the strict muslim societies where young people are not allowed to socialize with the opposite sex.
With monagamous marriage there is of course infidelity and divorce. Many a spouse finds themself divorced and sees their former partner marry the lover who broke up the marriage. But that is nothing to the polygamous arrangement whereby a wife will open the door one day and find a new wife on the door step ready to move in.
Monagamy is not easy. Polygamy has a lot more practical and day to day problems than monagamy. Where are the feminazis in all this? Blaming White English men for the problem I am sure.
I don’t claim to be an expert on Islam, but from comments to the article, I understand that husbands are not required to tell their wife (or wives) of additional wives, and are even encouraged to keep it secret, if he deems that desirable to maintain the peace. It’s all at his discretion.
—————————————
There are many Sheiks and Imams that have publically stated “You do not have to tell your wife if you marry another woman, it is your right”. There are countless Sheiks even on You-Tube pushing the message that you do not have to tell your wife your decision of marrying another. An example of this happened this year in Toronto where the controversial Imam Aly Hindy from Salahuddin Islamic Centre (a well-known Toronto imam, at his Scarborough mosque) who performed numerous polygamous marriages, advised the men to keep it a secret from your first wife as long as you can.
This Iman states, ”I don’t encourage people to do it, unless they have reason for it. Life ends up being very complicated. You have to jump from one house to another all the time.” That’s why Hindy advises men to keep the second marriage a secret as long as they can. There have been instances where he has gone with the men to their homes to break the news to the first wife, in an attempt to help lessen the blow.”
This is what happened to Safa Rigby in Toronto. “Hindy had advised Rigby’s husband to stay quiet. When Rigby emailed Hindy, soon after discovering he had conducted the marriage, he offered little support. “You have to stand beside him in these difficult times. You should stop causing problems to him. You will not get anything by divorce except destroying your life” he told her. At that moment, Rigby realized how lonely her path would be. Since the marriages are shrouded in secrecy, women are embarrassed to speak about their situations, have few supports in place, and are often forced to deal with it alone.”
http://muslimahmediawatch.org/2008/12/30/life-lost-the-tragic-case-of-sahar-daftary/
Sahar Daftary – beautiful, young Afghan model commits “suicide”?
I can even begin to describe how upset I was upon hearing the news of the passing of this beautiful young Afghan woman. I wish condescends to her family and loved ones. It was the passing of Sahar – and the responses to this – which prompted me to register for an account and get some things off my chest. First of all, I have read numerous disturbing forums and posts on other sites by Muslims who are condemning Sahar for committing suicide, and at the same time excusing the monster (I won’t even dignify him by stating his name) that was her ‘husband’ stating that it is permissible to have three wives in Islam. This tragedy is not about the Islamic right to polygamy – but rather the fact that this man had hidden his other wife and children from Sahar – making the marriage fraudulent by Islamic standards. Sahar had no idea that he was married three times and had a miscarriage upon finding out the truth.
Secondly, the monster was a possessive man who would not let Sahar go – according to friends and family. When the poor girl made it clear that she was not to be his concubine – he released a pornographic video of her with him – thus ruining her name in the eyes of the Islamic community and making her unsuitable for marriage in the Islamic community. He had a history of violent behavior which the police were aware of. Sahar also made a sexual assault complaint with the British police, which she did not follow through with after the split. Apparently, he also had people following her. So she was not the love-struck lover, by all accounts she was trying to ESCAPE from him.
Thirdly, let’s not judge Sahar – for the alleged “suicide” – if that is in fact the case. From everything I have read in is my belief that Sahar did not commit suicide. She had just enrolled herself in college, bough an expensive plan ticket to Dubai with plans to go celebrate her birthday there with family and friends and from all accounts was a strong and religious girl. It just doesn’t add up – she went to her ex’s home to pack up her belongings. Keep it mind that the break up and miscarriage happened two months before her death. Why wait for two months? Why make future plans with no intentions to carry them out? And finally, why would the person who is trying to end the relationship take their own life? Like I said he had a history of violence and was charged with assault on another female. He was unwilling to let her go. When she moved her stuff out of his house – it signaled the end and maybe he couldn’t handle it. He should be the one who gets all the hatred and venom on the forums – not the victim! I hope the police open an investigation and I truly hope that someone starts a victim’s fund for her poor widowed mother.