The sight of Michelle Obama giving an impassioned speech on the subject of the achievement of hope and aspirations for women in a Western society, to a girls school in London should not have been incongruous.
She
has after all given similar speeches to girls across the globe. However in this case it was in
Tower Hamlets. .. a rotten borough of London, and her audience was 95% Muslim. The young girls wore conservative dress and head coverings, and the talk of the freedom to believe what they liked, do what they wanted, or marry who they wished, must have been almost laughable, if they had even understood the concepts.
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| The Future Of Britain? |
The fact that up to 70% of the girls will possibly go on to further education, doesn't change the fact that they will not marry who they wish, nor will they be able to believe what they want. They would undoubtedly be at serious risk of assault, or even death, at the hands of the males in their own families or local Islamic activists, if they dared to attempt to do either of those things.
Even their
careers are limited to those which their religion and their families consider
'seemly' for a woman, and which will enhance her marriage value to a cousin back in Bangladesh. For every one of these girls who evades that fate, there are one hundred who won't.
So
although they beamed away and waived US flags for the photographs ... theirs is a closed future. One circumscribed by religion, and male rules, and that will never allow them to share Mrs Obama's
'dream'.
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