Forced marriages
From Mina Godi Sir: I am a British Iranian Muslim woman who is allowed to keep her own passport. I am also a college lecturer, and I feel a responsibility to write in response to Theodore Dalrymple's offensive, racist article (`The abuse of women', 27 October).
Three generations of women in my family have been to university. None of us has been beaten, abused, forced out of school or into marriages against our will. All of us share Dr Dalrymple's disgust at these practices. Growing up in a Muslim household, I was taught that education, enlightenment and a sense of social responsibility were duties. None of us would describe, as Dr Dalrymple does, all non-Muslim women in this country as `lumpen sluts'.
Economics is the more likely culprit of the crimes Dr Dalrymple describes, and not Islam. The families he discusses are originally from Pakistani villages: impoverished, uneducated and deprived communities.
Mina Gorji
Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford
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