[Note: the 'law against incitement to religious hatred' mentioned here exists in the UK but not the US. It is posted as a warning to those who seek to blur the line between state and superstition in the USA. Some seek to blur it from the 'right' (anti-choice legislation) and some seek to blur it from the 'left' (hate speech law) - in the end, the theocracy we get stinks just as much. - Trevor]

Only last month a Hindu priest was jailed for 12 years for raping a woman at a temple in Croydon. During the 90s, there was the widely reported case of a Sikh woman in Southall, Sunita Vig, who was raped by a Sikh priest. Another Sikh woman, a recent convert to Hinduism, was sexually and physically assaulted by a Hindu priest who left her with a near-fatal gash in her neck. These are the more dramatic cases, but on a daily basis, women find their aspirations quashed by religious leaders. They cannot leave oppressive homes because of the stranglehold of culture, religion and enforced mediation by religious leaders.

When Asian women first started exposing the underbelly of our communities, we were told that we were providing ammunition for racists. For us it wasn't a choice. We couldn't hide one evil to fight another. [...] But when minorities ditch race for religion as a marker of their identity, the pressures on women increase a hundredfold. A "cultural" practice is difficult enough to challenge but one which has been given the dubious honour of being ratified by a holy book, open as that may be to interpretation, is even harder to resist. Our choices are limited by our ascribed roles: as guardians of sexual morality; transmitters of cultural values to the next generation; and vessels bearing the honour of the community.

[...] Religious and cultural pressures are an important part of the equation that keeps Asian women at the bottom of the pile. [...] [H]arping on about the racism of the liberal establishment can become an excuse for inaction in our own communities. This was exactly the kind of polarisation that occurred during the Salman Rushdie debate which led to the formation of Women against Fundamentalism. Then, as now, it was important to challenge the racism of the liberal intelligentsia regarding "backward Muslims". But, as women, we had to adopt a Janus-headed approach: then, as now, we have to fight the authoritarian strands in our own communities too. The very presence of the "incitement to religious hatred law", no matter how it is worded, will strengthen the voices of religious intolerance and choke off women's right to dissent. This is too high a price to pay to appease an alienated community. Religion may be a central part of your identity and culture, but at the end of the day it is a set of ideas. Any state policy that privileges religion over all other systems of belief must be dismantled.