Here's a hypothetical:
A man wants a family matter settled by a Sharia court. It has to do with his daughter.
His daughter, who is over the age of legal independence, doesn't want to have anything to do with that.
In fact, she wants to convert to another religion.
Now. Tell me what might happen
there?
Here's a hint, I think.
Seyran Ates (pictured), aged 43, is a lawyer, specialising in women's rights. From a practice in Berlin, she had become well-known and her skills were eagerly sought by Muslim women. In 2005, she was named "German woman of the year". She has long campaigned for forced marriages to be made illegal in Germany. Most of her clients have been Muslim women who have been trapped into forced marriage and other demeaning aspects of Muslim "honour" culture that persist. Many of these women are, like herself, from Turkish/Kurdish backgrounds. She also campaigned against the ultimate aspect of Muslim "honour" - Muslim honour killings.
Seyran was born in 1963 in Istanbul, and moved to Berlin with her family when she was 6. She has lived in Berlin since then. As she stated last year: "I grew up in a Turkish family. My parents are Turkish. My father is Kurdish, my mother is Turkish, and I grew up in a very traditional family and I ran away when I was 17 years old because I can't stand this very hard traditional life and living in a very modern surrounding in Germany and living in a very traditional Turkish family was not so easy for me. So I grew up with this idea of women have to stay home, they have to marry someone some time and they get children and live very traditionally. You see, this is also the idea that also German people have all over the world, we have this traditional structure that women have to live in the house and men live outside the house."
Speaking in English, she said of honour killings and Muslim women in Germany: "And I think that more than 50 percent live in such a situation of fear of honor killings or to be killed. Many of my clients, I am working as a lawyer here in Berlin and I make family and criminal law, many of my clients, women, they say they are feared to divorce because their men say, "If you divorce, if you go to court to divorce, I will kill you."
"So we have a very high number who are very silent, who stay home and don't go out, don't ask for divorce, because they are in fear of being killed because of honor."
She has attacked Germany's bland acceptance of "multiculturalism", and has said that it keeps Muslim women in slavery, rather than forcing the Muslim community to adhere to the same standards as other people living in Germany.
But sadly, news comes from the Telegraph today and from Monday's Deutsche Welle that the constant death threats which have been made against her by Muslim men have become too much. After two decades of defending the rights of Muslim women from abuse, Seyran Ates has finally announced that she has closed her practice.